Steam game listing achieves knockoff singularity by aping Pokémon, Zelda, and even Overwatch designs with a shamelessness Palworld could only dream of

Steam game listing achieves knockoff singularity by aping Pokémon, Zelda, and even Overwatch designs with a shamelessness Palworld could only dream of | PC Gamer Skip to main content Open menu Close main menu PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES US Edition UK US Canada Australia Subscribe Sign in View Profile Sign out Search Search PC Gamer Games Hardware News Reviews Guides Video Forum More PC Gaming Show PC Gamer Clips Software Codes Coupons Movies & TV Magazine Newsletter Affiliate links Meet the team Community guidelines About PC Gamer PC Gamer Magazine SubscriptionWhy subscribe?Subscribe to the world’s #1 PC gaming magTry a single issue or save on a subscriptionIssues delivered straight to your door or device From$1Subscribe now Don’t miss these Games In what may be the worst new game reveal ever, Robocop: Rogue City was briefly replaced on Steam by an unannounced World of Darkness game Roguelike Slay the Spire 2 dev says its Marathon joke turned out ‘a bit meaner than expected’ in hindsight: ‘To be fair I didn’t think we’d actually pass Marathon in concurrent users’ FPS Highguard’s failure is emblematic of something that has tormented videogame investors for years now: past live service hits do not equal future live service hits Card Game Please send help: We can’t stop opening packs in Wikigacha, a browser-based card game where you collect Wikipedia articles like ‘List of Red Hot Chili Peppers band members’ or ‘Bariatric Surgery’ RPG Monster Hunter Stories 3 review: An excellent monster battler bogged down by a war story without stakes Gaming Industry The Pokémon Company criticises Trump administration’s use of its imagery in political memes, says Pokémon is apolitical, Trump spokesman uses decade-old Clinton post to accuse them of bias MMO Project: Gorgon has recaptured the old-school MMO magic I thought was dead and gone by letting me ask a pig about its mother so hard it dies RPG The new game from Disco Elysium’s studio feels like the first Christmas after your parents’ divorce FPS Highguard review Roguelike Mewgenics review: The creator of The Binding of Isaac has transcended his own past work with this sprawling, ridiculous, and endlessly surprising roguelike Games The best cyberpunk games on PC FPS Laid-off Highguard developer cuts loose on the reaction to the infamous Game Awards reveal trailer: ‘We were turned into a joke from minute one’ FPS Highguard is fine when you don’t have an internet in your ear telling you it’s nasty FPS The internet is not convinced it should care about another PvP hero shooter, drops a collective eye-roll that plunges the big Game Awards final reveal into a YouTube dislikes hole Card Game Palworld takes the ‘red rag to a bull’ approach to its Nintendo lawsuit, announces ‘a 2-player competitive card game’ PopularNEW: PC Gamer Clips!MarathonArc RaidersBest PC gearQuizzes Games Survival & Crafting Steam game listing achieves knockoff singularity by aping Pokémon, Zelda, and even Overwatch designs with a shamelessness Palworld could only dream of News By Lincoln Carpenter published 9 March 2026 I don’t feel good. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Networkgo) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 1 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter PC Gamer Get the PC Gamer Newsletter Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Every Friday GamesRadar+ Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you’re going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them. 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From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we’ve got you covered. Signup + Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Signup + An account already exists for this email address, please log in. Subscribe to our newsletter Back in our January 2024 launch impressions of Palworld, I wasn’t kind about its shameless design counterfeiting, calling its creatures “a surreal gallery of familiar eyes, limbs, and silhouettes” built from “the reassembled pieces of existing Pokémon, adding a color swap and a couple tweaked details to hide the Frankenstein stitching.”I understand now that I had no idea what shamelessness really looks like. True shamelessness looks like Pickmon, which appeared as a Steam listing this week and should immediately communicate the depth of its blatant apery with its name alone. I mean, look at that thing. That’s just Pikachu with dyed eyebrows and a couple bits stuck on. Come on, man. (Image credit: Networkgo)Like Palworld, Pickmon claims to be an open-world survival game where you’ll “team up with your Pickmon to fight, farm, and build industrial empires.” And yes, its Pokémon have guns, too.Article continues below You may like The latest Steam Next Fest features a pile of Palworld-likes as witches and airships battle over the creature-collecting survival subgenre Palworld takes the ‘red rag to a bull’ approach to its Nintendo lawsuit, announces ‘a 2-player competitive card game’ A Pokémon-like gacha game should be such an obvious win that I’m shocked I can’t find much to like about Aniimo Compared to Pickmon, however, Palworld feels like a paragon of creative integrity. Pickmon hasn’t filed the serial number off of Pokémon—it’s just crossed it out with crayon. And it didn’t stop there: In its trailers and screenshots, Pickmon is also copying homework from the Legend of Zelda,