The Pokémon Company has released a statement objecting the use of a Pokémon Pokopia meme by the Trump administration.
The meme in question has been widely used by many others, and sees people taking the colourful cover for Pokopia and replacing the game name with text of their own choosing. You can see a similar example of how it looks thanks to Jim Trinca below.
The Trump administration has continued its trend of jumping on a video game meme bandwagon to promote its political agenda, and yesterday the official White House social media account shared one that riffs off Pokémon Pokopia. In its own image, the White House replaced Pokémon Pokopia with the words “Make America Great Again”, captioning it “MAGA” with an American flag and lightning bold emoji.
Soon after, The Pokémon Company issued a statement addressing the Trump administration’s use of the Pokopia-themed work, stressing it did not grant the White House permission to use its intellectual property for social content.
“We are aware of recent social content that includes imagery associated with our brand,” a company spokesperson told The New York Times. “We were not involved in its creation or distribution, and no permission was granted for the use of our intellectual property.
“Our mission is to bring the world together, and that mission is not affiliated with any political viewpoint or agenda.”
Pokémon Pokopia is not the only game to be given a distasteful White House treatment this month. Just a matter of days ago, footage from Call of Duty was used in a video released by the White House’s social media team, which showed a character calling in a Kill Streak before a montage of real-world military bombing appeared on the screen with ‘+100’ point indicators.
Responding to this specific post, Infinity Ward co-founder Chance Glasco said he wasn’t surprised to see it, and recalled that after Activision took over post-Respawn formation, there “was a very awkward pressure” for the studio to make the next Call of Duty game about Iran attacking Israel. Eurogamer contacted Activation to ask if it had any statement on this, however the company did not respond.
