Pokémon TCG Pocket latest card game to be hit with plagiarism issues

If you ever thought even the mightiest of businesses were infallible, you’re wrong. The Pokémon Company has been hit with a bout of plagiarism, after a Chinese artist found a traced version of a piece of art in the latest update to Pokémon TCG Pocket.

Early morning on July 29, artist Lanjiujiu on X, formerly Twitter, spotted that a new piece of art hitting the popular trading card game (TCG) spin-off looked eerily familiar. The original image was posted in 2021, featuring various Pokémon birds soaring into the sky, prominently featuring Ho-Oh (that’s the giant orange bird).

The card itself is just of Ho-Oh, drawn by regular Pokémon TCG artist Sie Nanahara. However, after a little bit of sleuthing by Lanjiujiu, they found it had been traced over. This would have gone unnoticed until the release of the set if Pokémon TCG Pocket hadn’t gone through a leak, showing off some of the upcoming cards in the game.

Pokémon Company leaps to explain plagiarism problems

The Pokémon Company itself quickly leapt into action, releasing a statement confirming the issue. It appears to be a bit of a miscommunication issue, but we won’t really know (even though we’ve reached out for comment), as it’s an impenetrable wall when dealing with the Pokémon franchise sometimes.

In the statement, the company said that:

“After internal review, we discovered that the card production team provided incorrect materials as official documents to the illustrator commissioned to create these cards.

“As a result, both cards have been replaced with a temporary placeholder that the team is actively working to replace with new artwork as soon as it’s ready.”

Some crossed wires, it seems, as one team handed over what appeared to be official materials to use as a base. Card art in TCGs will sometimes come with notes of what needs to be depicted, with references. It appears that Nanahara might be caught up in the crossfire of bad management.

Lanjiujiu also released a statement, essentially trying to calm down the situation, and didn’t appear to carry any bad blood. In it, they say:

“Having seen the official announcement, I appreciate the prompt resolution and hope this matter rests here…

“As discussions escalated beyond control, I intentionally refrained from social media engagement yesterday…

“[I have] profound gratitude to the operations team for their attentiveness and swift action in removing the image.”

It’s not just Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering has fallen victim too

Plagiarism in trading card games like Pokémon isn’t too common, but has been cropping up a little more frequently in the last few years. In 2021, Magic: The Gathering, made by Wizards of the Coast and owned by Hasbro, Jason Felix was caught in the act, as both the card and original art featured the same mistake of giving character Nicol Bolas five fingers.

In 2023, another artist, David Sondered, was caught reusing a background from another piece of art by Lorenzo Lanfranconi. Then again, in 2024, artist Fay Dalton was caught repurposing a Cyberpunk book’s front cover for a card, with the original artist, Donato Giancola, stating that the work was “stolen.”

Marvel Snap, too

Wizards of the Coast had suspended working with those caught, but they’re not the only ones to be hit with these problems. In March, Marvel Snap, the superhero-themed digital card game, was found to be using plagiarized art.

Fan art and official pieces of art were taken and turned into pixel variations to collect. There’s a Reddit post highlighting some of the work that was used in Marvel Snap, where it appears that even more than just the initial two pieces uncovered in March were built on plagiarism.

Some of it comes from statues, toys, and comic panels. The Rocket Raccoon art appears to be pulled directly from Marvel vs Capcom Infinite. However, the two pieces for Sentry and M’Baku are lifted straight from fan art.

2025 is a mile a minute, but remember Bungie’s plagiarism scandal?

Destiny developer, Bungie’s latest game, Marathon, has had to scrap a ton of art as it was found that a laid-off member of the team had been “inspired” by particular designs. It’s theorised that the art was never meant to be seen, but because the industry is fairly trigger-happy with its lay-offs, when it launched the beta, whoever was involved wouldn’t have been able to alert staff to the problem.

I suspect that plagiarism will be a continued story in gaming as the industry tries to straddle the technological and business messes we find ourselves in. Artificial intelligence-generated art has already been found in games like Call of Duty. How long until someone points out that the model they used was trained on their art, and thus, leads to even more scandals?