January 23 update: This article was posted on January 22. In it, I speculate whether Nintendo will take legal action against this Palworld mod, as it has taken against similar projects in the past. It has been less than 24 hours, but according to Toasted Shoes' Twitter feed, it appears that a copyright complaint has been filed:

The extent of the legal action is unclear, but as of this writing, the promised video has not yet been uploaded to YouTube. Original text follows.

Original text because the inevitability of a Pokémon modification to Palworld is statistically more likely than both.

Medicine may overtake death in a few hundred years. But the moment someone could send Pikachu into the mines, they were going to do it. Thus it is written, and thus it shall be.

As YouTuber Toasted Shoes (whose latest project transferred Pixar and Disney characters into Mortal Kombat and had them kill each other in a glorified melee) had warned on Twitter, this whole thing was a big copyright It's just a strike. But like moths are drawn to flames, Toasted Shoes is drawn to the intuitive image of Ash Ketchum with a gun. I don't blame him.

Given Palworld's obsession with thematic forced labor, this short preview was as mentally disorienting as one might imagine. Pikachu is forced to swing a pickaxe (pika-xe?) for profit, Misty is given a full shotgun, and Ash Ketchum dodges Electra Buzz's fierce swings while Team Rocket's Jesse cheers, presumably for his blood. Technology is amazing these days.

Even if this were inevitable, it still feels like poking the bear. That said, publishers do lawyer up against modders, but it's mostly to shut down emulation efforts, like Rockstar, re3, reVC, or even Nintendo.

Whether the company has any reason to go after Toasted Shoes' throat beyond the inevitable suspension of sales of his videos is another story entirely. However, Nintendo has brought the hammer down on such modding efforts before - such as Pixelmon, the Pokémon Minecraft mod that it moved to shut down in 2018.

Granted, this also assumes Nintendo cares enough to experience legal headaches, but Palworld's surge in popularity may be enough to attract the company's burning, all-seeing eye.