The Pokemon Company has pulled a new immersive Pokemon TCG Pocket card depicting Generation II Pokemon Ho-Oh, citing a “production issue” and pledging to conduct a “broader investigation” into the ways in which it commissions artwork.
In an announcement on the official Pokemon website, the company says that the card in question has been “replaced with a temporary placeholder”, as has its Lugia counterpart (although the issue doesn’t appear to apply to the Lugia card as well).
Just in case you’re in the dark on this one, Redditor SPARKisnumber1 posted a Reddit thread yesterday alleging that artwork for an immersive Ho-Oh card for the latest Pokemon TCG Pocket expansion Wisdom of Sea and Sky was plagiarized from a 2021 fanart piece.
According to The Pokemon Company, the artist who drew the card in question, Sie Nanahara, was given “incorrect materials as official documents”, so it sounds as though the company gave her the aforementioned fanart and essentially told her to copy or trace it.
However, without further official details, all we can do on that front is speculate. What we do know is that the Ho-Oh card is no longer in the game (although The Pokemon Company stops short of admitting plagiarism, of course), and it will be replaced with new art “as soon as it’s ready”.
Additionally, the company says it will conduct “a broader investigation to ensure no similar issues exist elsewhere in the game”, so if there is any other plagiarised art based on fan work in Pokemon TCG Pocket, it’ll likely be found and replaced soon.
Let’s hope that’s not the case, though. I’m sure The Pokemon Company doesn’t want to end up in a similar situation to Destiny 2 and Marathon developer Bungie when it comes to plagiarized art.
We’ll have to wait and see how this situation develops, but in the meantime, Pokemon TCG Pocket‘s new Wisdom of Sea and Sky expansion is out now on both Android and iOS.
