'Pickmos', a new title that faced intense backlash for blatantly lifting designs from heavy hitters like Palworld, Pokémon, and The Legend of Zelda, has finally been removed from the Steam store.

Initially unveiled in March as 'Pickmon', this open-world adventure game wasted no time in courting controversy. It shamelessly borrowed core imagery from the likes of Pokémon, The Legend of Zelda, Overwatch, Final Fantasy 14, Kamen Rider, and Palworld.

Consequently, the dev team announced on the 10th that they were rebranding from 'Pickmon' to 'Pickmos'. However, the creatures within the game remained labeled as 'Pickmon', and their designs stayed exactly as they were—needless to say, the criticism continued.

Things took a turn recently when the Pickmos Steam page was confirmed to be deleted. When users demanded answers, publisher NetworkGo took to the official Pickmos X account on the 16th, stating, "NetworkGo has decided to participate directly in development," and added, "We will supervise the dev team from a player's perspective to ensure the game continues to improve."

An hour later, the developers themselves issued a statement on X. They claimed they were "modifying the game to eliminate controversy" and promised that "the game will be re-released on Steam once it receives final approval from the publisher." It seems the publisher finally had enough of the mounting public outcry and decided to pull the game from Steam themselves.

The community's response was as expected: "Saw that coming," "Control has effectively shifted to the publisher now," and "They should probably scrap the whole project and start from scratch."