Today, Palworld left early access with a massive 1.0 patch that brought an avalanche of changes and has drawn hundreds of thousands of new and returning players with the seductive allure of making creatures work in conditions that OSHA would object to if they were people.

Unmentioned in its massive 1.0 changelog, however, are a series of visual reworks the patch made to a handful of Pals that previously bore the most blatant resemblance to preexisting Pokémon designs.

I think this is all redesigns from r/Palworld

At launch, Palworld attracted derision with its inclusion of Pals that tested the definition of creative inspiration. These weren't just conceptual similarities: These were Pals constructed in Frankenstein fashion from recognizable Pokémon silhouettes, limbs, details, and design elements—often without even changing the color palette.

Now, even Pocketpair seems to agree that some of those Pals were in particularly poor taste. Players have identified a number of Pals who've been reimagined to add some plausible deniability when they're compared with their Pokémon counterparts.

Verdash, one of the Pals more commonly cited as proof of Palworld's creative indecency for being a Cinderace lookalike, has been given less-humanoid proportions and is no longer aping the legwear of its inspiration. Robinquill and Fenglope are no longer using the color palettes of Decidueye and Cobalion, respectively, and both Pals have received a detail rework to further distinguish them from their doppelgangers.

Don't worry, though. Cremis is still Cremis—and definitely nothing else.

To be absolutely clear: Palworld's character designs were never the basis of Nintendo's still-ongoing lawsuit with Pocketpair, which is instead centered around a series of patents that Nintendo holds on specific creature-capturing and riding mechanics. We could speculate that the 1.0 patch's redesigns might have been part of an as-yet undisclosed settlement agreement—but there's no immediate reason to do so. Especially considering the amount of doubt that has been cast on the validity of the Nintendo patents in question since the lawsuit was initiated.

Still, the Pal reworks are a quiet acknowledgment from Pocketpair that its creature designs weren't a sterling example of creative integrity. Now that it's made its millions, however, that's evidently a fixable problem.

But hey: At least it wasn't as blatant as Pickmos, the game formerly known as Pickmon.