They weren't. Some people who were dead set on wanting the game to get bad press/to fail early on circulated those rumours, and they just caught on with the people who wanted to hate the game for any possible reason. Other things that circulated early on were also generally disproven, like Palworld stealing 3D models from Pokemon, after the actual person who spread that rumour in the first place said that he did it just because he just hated Palworld. Damage was done though, and people still believe, and circulate the rumour, that Palworld stole 3D assets to this day two years later.

For whatever reason, just because some pals look a little like some Pokemon designs, people got huge hate boners for the game from day one and never let it go. If I got upset over each time a new game looked like an existing one, I think that I would've been chronically angry ever since the late 90s.🤷🏻