https://www.eurogamer.net/palworld-developer-vows-to-fight-nintendo-lawsuit-on-behalf-of-fans-and-indie-developers
Palworld developer Pocketpair has responded to this morning's dramatic decision by Nintendo to file a patent infringeme…
"Multiple patents"
Specifies none
Off to a great start, I see. I know that actual game mechanics cannot be patented or copyrighted (the same principle applies to non digital games), so I'm really curious to what these patents are.
Someone linked a list of all the patents Pokemon Company specifically holds and the very first one was "creature breeding based on good sleep habits."
I know for sure that palworld does not promote good sleeping habits in any shape or form, at least not to my addicted ass
"Method for releasing 927 iterations of the same stale game across multiple platform generations."
It can't possibly be for "Method of splitting one complete game into two mutually exclusive cartridges with separate rosters to entice whales to buy two copies," because if it were they'd have already sued Capcom 15 years ago.
Game mechanics can be patented. It's stupid, but things such as "loading screen mini games" and "overhead arrows pointing to your objective" have been patented. The second I believe even got enforced once.
I think these kind of things have been getting approved less and less, but I wouldn't be surprised if "balls that contain monsters" was patented back in the early days too.
The game during loading screen isn't a "game mechanic" per se, which is why I think it was patented back then. Completely ass backwards that it could be patented, but there's that.
As for the overhead arrow for navigation, I wasn't aware of that one. Was that from EA? I think it can be argued that's not a "game mechanic" either, because it's not "an essential component of the game"
Patents and video games huh? We can't ignore what John Carmack had to say about this:
The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.
--John Carmack
More like he wouldn't be able to sell his solution to others, but yeah I think Patents on simple processes and mechanisms are dumb, especially certain software and firmware.
Is this lawsuit deadass about the game mechanics???
I need to out my fucking reading glasses on.
idk, but the user above me made a general statement about patent laws and I responded in kind.
> The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.
Thats essentially what both an AI does and what ChatGBT does. Are you gonna defend that to?? Just dont take credit for shit someone else made, who cares if its Nintendo. I don't want my game sprites altered and then sold as though whoever altered them made them by hand
I was mislead about what the lawsuit was about and Im retracting all my statements thank you :' )
My cock is not inspired after reading this bad take.
John Carmack is human intelligence and therefore more valuable than artificially generated drivel.
-edit- I mistook inspecting for inspiring for your name. I'm leaving it.
Well I admit im wrong about everything so, may your cock be inspired by that(?)
I never said John is an AI. But there are steps Palworld coulda taken to avoid the inevitable. If anything its just sad they did nothing to prevent this. I can see why thousands of people like it a fuckton. But they did nothing to actually avoid this from happening.
Dont steal my base model that I patented and made entirely by hand and then claim it as your model.
its that simple. As barbaric as the VRCHAT community can be sometimes, I can wholeheartedly agree that it is 100% a crime to take someone else's hard work, tweak it, and then pretend that you own it. Pay people their fucking respects/royalties or take a different approach. Toby Fox did it, Every other Pocket Monster-like Series in Japan did it, and so on. if your gonna make a product similar to another, especially fucking Nintendo with how notorious they are for copyright striking, TAKE THE STEPS AVAILABLE TO MAKE IT DIFFERENT. Don't churn out a "Pokemon with guns" and then get shocked with your copyright stricken. Thats fucking stupid to me. And its even stupider people are shocked it'd fuckin happen.
There's deadass so many routes they could've went with, Art-styles they could've went with, fucking game mechanics they could've went with. And they chose something that 90% of people can agree "looks like Pokémon, smells like Pokémon, functions similar Pokémon"
I mean for GOD FUCKING SAKES, At least GO WITH DIFFERENT MONSTER IDEAS. We have an ENTIRE WORLD Filled with Cryptids and mystical beasts of all kind, and Palworld STILL CHOSE TO GO for Yokai/Japanese based creatures? Get the fuck outta here with that. Homeboy coulda did American mythos and got away with that, no ones holding a patent against the design of The Flatwoods monster?? Let alone is there a "pokemon" clone of Australian Mythos, so why the fuck are we still trying to do what's already been done to death and then getting shocked with it falls flat or is criticized.
You are conflating copyright and patents. Copyright is protection for the expression of an idea, like the art design. This is a patent issue, which is a protection of how something works.
If somehow I patent a vague mechanic like "a method of selecting weapons with the directions of an analogue stick or mouse, presented as an 8 direction on screen circle." Then I could sue Red Dead Redemption and Batman Arkham, despite there being no copyright infringement with whatever game I made with that feature.
Aren't they suing because of the 3d models?? not the design of them but the fact they took Nintendo models and tweaked them???
If im deadass wrong I will 100% shut tf up and delete my rants.
Aren’t they suing because of the 3d models??
No, they're not. The word "patent" is used in every single article about this repeatedly. Patents are not the same as copyrights.
A copyright protects a creative work: A work of fiction, a movie, a character.
A patent protects the method in which the way a thing functions: A machine, a chip, an algorithm, or in Nintendo's assertion certain vague gameplay concepts.
I said this many times before. I was assuming the PATENT they are suing was the base model. Not the design, the base model.
according to first sentence of article, it was a patent infringement lawsuit, so you are deadass wrong.
Pocketpair is a Japanese company too right? That doesn't bode well, Japan has some shit laws for defending these sorts of lawsuits. I really like palworld, and don't want it to go away. Fuck Nintendo.
This isn't about copyright. Is there anybody here that has actually read the article? It's absolutely insane how everyone just opens their mouths without understanding anything.
No, Copyright exists to protect creators. It's just been perverted and abused by the wealthy so that they can indefinitely retain IP. Disney holding on to an IP for 70 years after an author dies is messed up, but Disney taking your art and selling it to a mass audience without giving you a dime is worse.
Anyone who creates anything? If not for copyright Steam would be a sea of games named Undertale Stardew Valley Elsa Spider-Man
Literally everyone who's ever written a book, recorded a song, painted a painting, or created any other artwork.
Idk about that, maybe indefinite copyrights would be but limited term is entirely fair. Like imagine you spend 5 years and $50M to develop something (random numbers here), then the next day someone just copies it and sells it cheaper since they had no overhead in copying your product. There's no incentive to create if all it does is put you in debt, so we do need copyrights if we want things. However Pokemon came out in 96, that's 28 years. There's been very little innovation in their games since. And seeing as Digimon wasn't sued it's not about the monsters, it's about the balls. But those balls haven't changed in almost three decades so I don't think the really have a case to complain
Pokemon: The innovative RPG where you couldn't even walk diagonally until generation 6...
The problem is that IP laws eventually are lobbied by the big copyright holders into being excessively long. How long did Steamboat Willie really have to be copyrighted for, and has their release into the public domain really affected Disney?
Eventually after you get back the money you invested, it's just free money, and people like free money so much they pay lawyers and lobbyists that free money so that they can keep it coming.
However Pokemon came out in 96, that’s 28 years. There’s been very little innovation in their games since.
First, not really, there’s been a LOT of innovation in Pokémon, as much as people want to deny it.
And second, 28 years is really not that much. We’re not in the Disney realm of copyright-hogging, I think 50 years is a fair amount of time. The issue is that it’s often way too broad: it should protect only extremely blatant copies (i.e. the guy who literally rereleased Pokémon Yellow as a mobile game), not concepts or general mechanics. Palworld has a completely different gameplay from any Pokémon game so far, and (most of) the creatures are distinct enough. That should suffice to make it rightfully exist (maybe removing the 4/5 Pals that are absolute ripoffs, sure).
50 years is already excessive, dude or dudette. The north american law originally gave 14 years, plus another 14 years if the creators actively sought after and were approved (most did not even ask, and approval was not guaranteed). This is comparable time to patents, which serve the exact same function, but without the absurd time scales (Imagine if Computers were still a private tech of IBM ... those sweet mainframes the size of a room). 28 years, or lets put 30 years fixed at once, is more than sufficient time for making profit for the quasi totality of IPs that would make a profit (and creators can invest the money received to gain more, or have 30 years to think of something else). 30 years ago was 1994, think of everything the Star Wars prequels have sold, now remeber the 1st film was from 1999, would star wars prequels ventures really suffer if they started losing the IP from 2029 onwards ?
I still think if copyright laws weren’t so oppressive, 50 years would be fair (And still a huge improvement from the current situation).
Maybe have it in tiers or something? First 10 years: full copyright - until 30: similar products allowed, but no blatant reproduction - until 50: reproduction allowed as long as it’s not for-profit - post 50: public domain?
50 years.. 5 maybe. If you have not earned back your investment by then you are just squatting on it.
I agree with you almost entirely, but if we're being honest, there really hasn't been a lot of innovation in their games since Gen 4, and that was almost 20 years ago. Once they figured out the physical/special split, nothing really changed in the major mechanics. They have a new gimmick mechanic every game, like Z-Moves or Dynamax, but they're always dropped by the next game. I guess camping/picnics are evolving into a new feature, but that's about it.
If we’re talking PvP, battling has constantly evolved through new abilities, even without gimmicks the way the game is played changed a lot through the years.
In single player they also changed a lot of stuff since gen 4, although the positive changes were mostly in gen 5/6 and the later ones like wild areas and the switch to “””open world””” were… not as well received.
I think 50 is generally too much, but I think it should depend on categories, so that it is based upon the efforts put into an idea to create and how much it value (like in expected ROI).
I fear, that is hard to define
The people spending 5 years to develop something arent the ones that own the rights to the end product. Like I said, copyright exists so rich people can own more. The people that own the rights to pokemon are not game developers, artists, writers, anyone that put actual work into creating the games and other media. Its people that had a lot of money, shareholders and executives. And then they receive the biggest share of the profits off others work and the feedback loop continues.
How about no. Let people create if your only incentive is money fuck you. If someone spent $50 million to develop something the labor has been paid. You will be first to the market and you can make money if your invention isn't that unique oh well.
Thats a great way to make companies spend 0 on r&d that has longterm benefits and instead focus on squeezing out every penny from current assets.
Want to make something, the people eho want it pay to make it happen, once it's done and paid for, it belongs to everyone. I rather live in the star citizen dystopia than the Disney vampire dystopia.
Making an unlimited reproducible resource artificially scarce for 160 years is really fucking evil parasiticism.
So you tax the fuck out of them and fund invention though schools and unis. But the fact companies won't is not a sure thing.. it just means they will be more pickey.
Welp, I had no plans of buying Palworld. I've been playing Enshrouded instead. But I'll be picking it up now. Screw you Nintendo and your anticompetitive ways.
Thank you for reminding me about Enshrouded. I started playing that a few months ago, but a week into it my gamer friends wanted to start a new Valheim playthrough, and that was that. I should revisit it though
Fuck Nintendo. I think Palworld is a stupid game that I wouldn't ever bother to play but Nintendo is pure evil and they NEED to lose. They do not deserve a monopoly on whatever type of genre that is.
It's still identifiably distinct, I really hope Nintendo lose because allowing copyright of a concecpt is dystopian especially in the context of our lengthy time frames for copyright.
It reminds me of when Apple wanted to patent the idea of rounded corners.
It's not even copyright, they're suing for using things they patented, but their patents are extremely general. I kid you not, they have a patent for MOUNTING CREATURES, something hundreds of games have done.
Abstract: In an example of a game program, a ground boarding target object or an air boarding target objects is selected by a selection operation, and a player character is caused to board the selected boarding target object. If the player character aboard the air boarding target object moves toward the ground player character automatically changed to the state where the player character is aboard the ground boarding target object, and brought into the state where the player character can move on the ground.
I'm no lawyer so I can't tell you how well this would hold up in court but it's ridiculous. See more: https://patents.justia.com/assignee/the-pokemon-company
It's a little more specific, I think the patent is about:
But that's still something multiple games have done in some way I think.
I think Joust did this first. Difference might be that the player is permanently mounted all the time.
I am positive prior art could be claimed for most if not all of those. Square Enix could cry afoul of the "mounting creatures" one as well as I'm sure many, many other earlier games on a plethora of platforms.
You could mount and ride Chocobos in Final Fantasy 2, i.e. the real "2," the JDM only one on Famicom, which was released in 1988. The aforementioned patent was only filed on Nintendo's part in 2024.
They can, to use a technical legal term, get fucked.
Blizzard should be paying attention to this, as it perfectly describes their flying mounts.
I really hope Nintendo just picked a fight with Blizzard/Microsoft lol
Bullies tend to pick victims who can't fight back too effectively, so I doubt they'd go after Microsoft.
All the big tech companies have a bunch of vague patents than in a just world would never exist, and they seldom go after each other, because they know then they'll be hit with a counter-suit alleging they violate multiple patents too, and in the end everyone except the lawyers will be worse off. It's sort of like mutually assured destruction. They don't generally preemptively invalidate each other's patents, so if Microsoft is not a party to the suit, they'll likely stay out of it entirely.
However, newer and smaller companies are less likely to be able to counter-sue as effectively, so if they pose a threat of taking revenue from the big companies (e.g. by launching on competitor platforms only), they are ripe targets for patent-based harassment.
While Microsoft is not a target right now, if that patent for ground-flying mounts is used (which I doubt it will, given it's too recent and widely used by older games), Palworld can just point at World of Warcraft Burning Crusade as prior art and it suddenly becomes MS vs Nintendo.
Yes but it’s fucking expensive to invalidate a patent. Possibly in the millions of dollars. That’s how patent trolls succeed - it’s far cheaper to own a bad patent than to fight one.
IANAL - but I've worked for Big Company and have gone through the patent process a few times. A patent isn't what's written in the supporting text and abstract. It's only the exact thing written out in the claims.
First claim from the patent the abstract is from:
A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having stored therein a game program causing a computer of an information processing apparatus to provide execution comprising:
controlling a player character in a virtual space based on a first operation input;
in association with selecting, based on a selection operation, a boarding object that the player character can board and providing a boarding instruction, causing the player character to board the boarding object and bringing the player character into a state where the player character can move, wherein the boarding object is selected among a plurality of types of objects that the player character owns;
in association with providing a second operation input when the player character is in the air, causing the player character to board an air boarding object and bringing the player character into a state where the player character can move in the air; and
while the player character is aboard the air boarding object, moving the player character, aboard the air boarding object, in the air based on a third operation input.
Exactly everything described above must be done in that exact same way for there to be an infringement.
Which sounds like mount selection based on if onland==True: landmountlist, else: airmountlist. ??? Can you really patent “I used an if statement to change what the mount button does based on a condition”
Boy, better fucking patent that fucking pure genius there’s no way anyone could program that without having copied us.
Like I fucking hope I misread that.
That seems a bit more easy to get around. It is still crazy to think that you have to check your whole game design against that many patents 😅
I mean they successfully defended the motion of swiping up or down as distinctly different than left or right for the purpose of activating a device. Which seems insane to me.
What's weird about it? AFAICT, Palworld doesn't violate Nintendo copyright in any meaningful sense, though it might violate Nintendo's patent claims.
That said, this lawsuit seems really late, and I wonder if that'll factor into the decision at all (i.e. if it was close, the judge/jury might take the lack of action by Nintendo as evidence of them just looking for money).
Seems even more odd because to my eyes Nintendo probably had a better (but not super-good) chance of winning on copyright for some of the models used on the Pals than anything patent related. Stuff like riding/transforming mount animals and vehicles are basic exploration gaming functions. If they failed to defend the patent on other prior games that used those mechanics, they don't really stand a chance here.
It shocks me just the amount of people rallying behind Palworld SOLEY just to "stick it to the big corp"
At worse its blind rage and ignorance
edit: watch me get pelted with downvotes.
I was wrong and I will take my L for it✌
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
IDGAF about Palworld as a game, personally. I've never played it and I don't plan to. But that doesn't make Nintendo's behavior not bullshit, and I still hope the Palworld developers win this battle.
Thats perhaps the dumbest shit I've ever heard and fuels my point if yall only acting like this cus "big gaming industry bad"
Palword did what thousands of scammers, Cryptoland, and some con artists Vrchat model makers do. Take a model or asset that ISNT THEIRS alter it, then sell it.
if they win. Companies like ChatGBT and AI's like it will have free rain to steal whatever shit they want, you think the government will give a shit if its from a indie game? Hell no. Everyone is gonna suffer from this dude.
Im not boutta live in a world where people, anyone ever, can take my stuff, alter it, then profit from it
Yeah, you did not read any of the articles about this or understand the suit.
Nintendo is putting this forth as a patent issue, not a copyright issue. I presume this is because even they are smart enough to realize that they would probably lose a copyright challenge. However, the patents they are attempting to claim are clearly bullshit. They're just doing this as a bludgeon to bully a company they don't like, most likely in the hopes that the sheer cost of litigation will break them.
If they were going to propose that some of the monster models from Palworld originated as Pokemon model rips, they could arguably have a leg to stand on. But that's not what they're saying. The outcome of this case is not going to have any impact on copyright issues. Rather, the potential result is much more dangerous -- it would confirm that a big company can just come in late and retroactively lay claim to large swathes of mechanical concepts that have already widely in use in a particular industry for decades.
Wait.
so this whole situation isnt about Model rips???
I will respectfully shit the fuck up then and delete my comments. Im compulsive, and judging by what everyone else was saying read all if this as
A. Fuck nintendo cus they bad
B. The patent is that they ripped their models.
It is not about model rips. Check your inbox to my other reply to another of your comments.
im a stinky dumb dumb who didnt read the lawsuit. Forgive me im impulsive (u-u)✌
Your wall of text doesn't make sense, contradicts itself and mixes up cases. PocketPair was sued for patent infringement, not intelectual property. If they did commit intelectual property / copyright infringement, you bet they'd be sued before even releasing the game.
That being said, this angry wall of text implies that you might need help with mental health. I'm sure there is a beautiful human being underneath all that, so please, consider talking to therapist.
Why tf would you even say that, everybody deserve the right to own some shit bruh. I fuck with fangames n all that but stealing assets and profiting from them with no consent is fucked.
How much is Nintendo paying you to be their mouth piece?
Have you seen the kind of patents Nintendo are trying to get?
Here is an example :
Publication number: 20240286040 Abstract: In an example of a game program, a ground boarding target object or an air boarding target object is selected by a selection operation, and a player character is caused to board the selected boarding target object. If the player character aboard the air boarding target object moves toward the ground, the player character is automatically changed to the state where the player character is aboard the ground boarding target object, and brought into the state where the player character can move on the ground.
You can check them out for yourself
patents assigned to the pokemon company
So calm the fuck down with your chatGPT which is a whole different situation.
Bitch I pirate all my nintendo games wtf are you on 😭😭😭
Their sueing in Patents. Not how similar it looks.
I dont see this as any different than ChatGBT generating me an essay similar to one that already exists, the only difference is it changed some of it. Thats plagiarism(if not then its just wrong).
Theres even proof of them using THEIR MODELS and altering them. You cant do that shit without being transparent about it. Hoe hard is that to grasp
What do you think I linked dipshit?
With ridiculous patent like that, Nintendo could sue pretty much any companies.
ChatGPT is scraping copyrighted material, not patents.
Nintendo is suing for patent infringement.
I've never been interested in Palworld, and I certainly don't intend to play it, but I'll probably buy it today.
Because fuck Nintendo.
It's just like every other 'sandbox' game out there.
About the only substance is in the early game. Then there isnt much to do but grind out a checklist to collect everything.
It gets repetitive too fast.
Dunno man, it is possible to accept they make good games while still condemning their corporate bs...
Basically my stance. Do I like all the anti-competitive crap they pull? Absolutely not. But they do still make and/or publish most of my favorite franchises. This isn't like, say, Microsoft or Google who bake their evil directly into their products.
Yeah, games like Mario Odyssey, Mario Kart, Luigi's Mansion, etc. are fun as hell and very polished. I can't think of a single first-party Nintendo game that's released riddled with bugs in recent memory, whereas the rest of the industry can't say the same, excepting Sony's first-party games.
I can’t think of a single first-party Nintendo game that’s released riddled with bugs in recent memory
Literally Pokémon. SwSh, SV and BDSP are all a bug-ridden mess. You will probably find more bugs playing SV for an hour than in all gen 3-6 games together.
Although yeah, it’s a (huge) anomaly and the rest of the first-party games are extremely polished. It just sucks to be a Pokémon fan in the 2020s.
I don't think Pokemon is first-party since that IP and the dev studios fall under The Pokemon Company, whereas games like Mario and Zelda are developed by studios within Nintendo itself. I could be wrong.
Edit: I just looked it up, and yep, Nintendo only owns 33% of The Pokemon Company.
If they ain't first party, they're certainly close enough that you couldn't tell the difference.
They make some good games. They also sling out a bunch of crap and repeatedly rerelease games at full price.
But.... they don't. Their games are old the minute they're released. Sure they have enough bare minimum charm to wow the masses, but when you truly take a skeptical and honest eye to them compared to many other games, you realize how lazy they are with the copy/paste approach most of the time, inability to add basic common niceties of modern gaming, and generally lacking worlds that feel unfinished.
If it weren't for the IP name recognition, most of their games would be panned as meh.
I maintain a stance that the only reason they're still around is because of brand recognition. Literally the only reason I could think of anyone liking their slop.
It’s possible to acknowledge that yes but no they don’t make good games, just half-assed rehashed entries in the same 4 tired series they’ve been pumping games out of for decades
Hard disagree. I really enjoy a lot of Nintendo's games, and will be buying Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom right around release. Some favorites:
My kids like Pokemon and my SO like Ring Fit, but I think that series is pretty boring. And here are some I haven't played, but probably will:
That said, I very much don't like Nintendo as a company, especially its opposition to emulation. But I do like their first party titles, and they're very polished at launch, unlike many other big studios.
Yeah, I was gonna say, Gen IX Pokémon looks like some of the clunkiest, most repetitive shit imaginable.
God, I wish Nintendo made the Pokemon games, because then they might actually not be ugly, terribly optimized garbage. Nintendo owns a minority share of The Pokemon Company, which is also owned by Game Freak and a company called Creatures. Each company takes care of different aspects of the franchise. Game Freak still does all the game development, and I wish they wouldn’t because they obviously don’t care about the franchise anymore and haven’t for quite a while.
The fact they put ILCA on BDSP (and how abysmally that turned out) was the nail in the coffin for me for trusting Pokémon games to be of any quality. SwSh was close, but that told me The Pokémon Company will pump out literally any dogshit they want and people will still buy it.
Developers put in charge of BDSP. Before Pokémon, their work was all extremely minor support for much bigger studios. So for example, if you're a big AAA studio and you want to save on precious development time, you might contract out a dozen studios to do busywork, and one of those studios might be ILCA. For example, two people from ILCA are credited in Yakuza 0, but this is as "Casting Cooperation". Their most major game they'd actually worked on themselves before this was Pokémon Home.
So essentially, you're taking a small company where 95% of their existing work is as a supporting role to do relatively easy work for other major studios, and the other 5% is Pokémon Home, and you're telling them "Okay, now remake Diamond and Pearl."
Yeah, waiting for them to put out a few more updates and maybe I’ll try again: they’ve fixed a good chunk of some stuff recently. It’s still not there as a completed game for what it wants to be, but it’s okay as a cooperative PvE survival/monster collector.
Haven’t played since they added the island as more levels, so this may be an old opinion: Theres just no real end game past get a cool base. Dungeons are pretty moot at that point, the raid boss just blows up the whole base for some rewards which isn’t worth it unless you have an empty base to summon shit, and the tower bosses and lvl 50 bosses weren’t a bad challenge but that was about it. After you’ve killed those once there’s not much to do. I guess farm them for very specific drops… to be stronger so you can… idk do nothing else….
But again, I haven’t played since they added the island and higher levels so maybe it’s a bit better in that regard now?
It's pretty much the same thing, but with a longer grind towards the final levels. Legendary bosses (jetragon, frostallion, centaur knights) were bumped to lvl 55, there's a couple of "alien" pals from semi random, timed events (meteorites), and a "final" dungeon as an offshore oil rig, which is filled with max level syndicate goons that can kill you really fast, but there are many places you can stay where their AI will effectively break. The game crashing while you're there is a much, much worse enemy
The core game loop is better than any of the pokemon games though.
I am curious as to why they took so long though. Were they waiting until the hype died down so it didn't look malicious?
Same wasn't even thinking about this game. But now I got to have it. Fuck Nintendo. Never buying a new game from them every again. They should be sued into bankruptcy.
Low-medium settings with 45fps/90hz cap works well enough for me on the oled. Smooth except for in crowded bases
You know Nintendo is just weird.
They file a patent lawsuit against an indie game, just because someone finally got popular. But why don't thay sue digimon or blue dragon, and while their at it, howtotrain a dragon while their at it.
This whole thing is just weird.
Well, they waited for Pocketpair to become big enough to give them money, and not too big to risk losing against them.
The really odd but is being unaware of which patents they're allegedly infringing on
That should be part of the filing shouldn't it?
Also are they going to sue Square Enix for Dragon Quest Monsters while they're at it?
I can read the room here. I know this will be an unpopular opinion, and I want to preface this with a big "fuck Nintendo" and particularly their legal team.
That said, fuck Palworld, too. They are absolutely just straight up copying Nintendo/The Pokemon Company's designs. It's blatant. It's AI bros making money by copying Pokemon designs, plain and simple. Palworld would not have caused the stir it did if not for the blatant "It's Pokemon with guns!" angle.
So, while Nintendo can normally go suck the biggest of dicks when they swing around their lawsuit arms, this time I think they fully have every right to go after these guys, I don't care how much they say they're gonna fight the big bad mega company "for the fans and for indie devs everywhere" lol man, great statement. Guaranteed to get the base riled up.
Thank you for reading, you may downvote.
I love how you wrote all this, and are completely missing the mark. Nintendo is filing a lawsuit claiming that the palworld devs violated their patents, not their copyrights.
Anything palworld 'copied' from pokémon is either japanese lore, or from older games. This is not a copyright suit. If a copyright suit were possible, Nintendo would have brought it waaaay earlier. I'm wondering which patents Nintendo has that were supposedly violated.
I love how there's this entire discussion here about copyright etc... while that's not even what this is about.
I bet Nintendo has a lot of patent violations to choose from. They have a patent on such bangers as, rephrased from legal speech to human speech: "An air mount automatically turning into a ground mount upon landing" Source
According to Nintendo, if I understand this correctly, they have the sole legal right to make a bird mount that can also sprint on the ground if needed, because that sure was a special idea.
I'm not going to downvote you, but, I disagree. Nintendo might have had a leg to stand on if they tried to say Palworld infringed on their Pokemon intellectual property and/or copyright, especially after the mesh controversy, but they didn't attack them on that. They're going after Pocketpair for patent infringement on a so-far undisclosed patent. Probably a game mechanic of some sort. Pokemon did not invent the monster collecting and/or battling genre. Dragon Quest predates it by a good margin.
I'd like to see the patent they claim to have. In what way might Palworld be infringing upon their patent that another similar game, like say TemTem for instance, is not? I hate the idea that a fun game mechanic can be patented and locked down by one company for up to 20 years.
Palworld would not have caused the stir it did if not for the blatant “It’s Pokemon with guns!” angle.
This was 100% a fan reaction to the trailer, and not an official stance by the developers at all. That's obviously what they were going for, but they stopped long before outright saying it out loud and let the consumer make their own inferences.
They have every right to go after them, but I really hope they lose this one. Nintendo doesn't deserve to have a monopoly on fun creature collecting games.
Absolutely. I'm looking at getting Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince soon. I doubt anyone calls it a Pokemon copycat, too.
Man... Reading is great when I decide to actually do that.
aight. Ima piss off, Apologies for my Prozax induced rantings.
They are also making a copycat game "inspired" by hollow knight, obviously doing for the indie devs out there.
If we allow this to continue, we will end up with more content for players to enjoy.
More slop that's copy and pasted from other games?
No, I don't think I want that, thanks though.
Yeah of course, they are only going to ripoff others indie devs out there for the players to enjoy.
Or jigsaw puzzle, the thing is there's nothing 100% original and people always get inspired by others.
Things is starting to get strange when a company only makes games there have the same aesthetic of a more famous game.
This isn't Genshin is Craftopia
This isn't Hollow Knight is Never Grave
Metroidvania and the Open World of Genshin is nothing new, Genshin share a lot of similarities with BOTW and have the combat animation similar to Nier:Automata but this company tried a lot to differentiate only in the mechanics of the game while coping the aesthetics.
Fuck Nintendo and miHoYo but come on don't go and tried to emulate the aesthetic of a indie developer and than say "fight Nintendo lawsuit on behalf of fans and indie developers".
Good call, the shape arranging mechanic existing in board game form before Tetris, and the "challenge approaching from the top of the screen" thing was a staple of many many Atari and arcade games.
They didn't copy Pokemon, they created new content that is similar to Pokemon.
Do you believe it is wrong to create new content that is very similar to existing content that people enjoy?
Is it wrong for Pocket Pair (Palworld's creator) to create new content that is similar to existing Pokemon? Is it wrong for GameFreak to create new content that is similar to existing Pokemon? Morally speaking, why are the answers to those questions different?
If you can't see how blatant it is, I don't know what to tell you. You can be all "it's just SIMILAR wink wink" all you want. Similar is a fucking understatement.
Okay. You don't like the word "similar" I guess. What word would you use?
It is certainly not the same.
I just don't believe in copyright, IP patents or having fences on human culture.
So even if they straight up put Pikachu in their game I think they have the moral right to do so. If they can make a good game with Pikachu in it, who is Nintendo to private humanity from that piece of culture?
My statement is about morality. What's legal or not is another matter.
I mean...artists should be paid for their work right? Fuck Nintendo, but that same logic could be applied to anyone. I'd be pissed if someone just straight up lifted my designs and resold it.
Absolutely. I don't get how someone can say stealing the work of others is morally correct.
I'm not extremely against all of copyright because I believe artists should have some protections (though the law sucks at this), but I also believe that once something becomes a decades-old billion-dollar franchise, non-identical imitation should be fair game. Can you imagine what would happen if companies could simply say that they own whole genres?
I think you could be right, but it depends on the details Nintendo comes out with. I remember people were saying that they thought certain Palworld monsters had been ripped from the Pokemon games and recolored - if Nintendo can demonstrate that, then that's a slam dunk for them.
But if it's just creature designs and collecting them, then I just don't think that "a cute monkey with green fur" is a novel enough concept to be defensible against someone else doing something similar.
It's apparently a patent lawsuit and not a copyright/trademark lawsuit so people don't have to keep comparing pictures of pals (or whatever they're called) to pictures of pokemon. Seeing as it took Nintendo this long to sue I feel they were just salty and looking for something in the patent vault where they actually had a case.
Decided to finally go watch gameplay of this game.
It's definitely a fan ripoff mashing up Breath of the Wild with the newer open world pokemon games.
I'm not saying nobody else is allowed to make these kinds of games. But this absolutely is just trying to rip those off. Looks as unimaginative, boring, and empty as all of Nintendo's adventure games.
They've stolen Nintendos IP of providing half-assed garbage and watching people eat it up.
I mean, it also has very distinct gameplay from Pokemon? The newer open world games but like sword and shield released the same year pal world opened it’s early access (2019). Legends, which is the closest, was 3 years later.
Also, definitely adds FPS gameplay, survival gameplay with base building, and etc.
While it’s still not a great game, it’s definitely A: still early access and B: not just a Pokemon game.
Definitely took more than BotW and Ark than it did from anything else.
I wonder if people actually played Palworld here.
It's an obvious mash-up of existing games, ripping straight from games like Breath of the World, Pokemon and Fortnite, even up to the music chimes.
I don't think Nintendo should be suing, but people here defending how original the game is should really take a closer look at it.
The original part is the specific formulation. Pretty much all games are mashups of other games anyway. Palworld found a formula among popular games that really struck a chord with people, and they executed on it pretty well.
And yeah, I've seen extensive portions of Palworld since my SO is really into it. My SO doesn't care much at all about Pokemon, Breath of the Wild, or Fortnite, though they really like Palworld. That alone is a pretty good argument for Palworld being distinct.
Nintendo is mad that Palworld did a great job with some of their ideas, and I think they want a piece of the action. I don't think they're concerned that anyone would mistake Palworld for any of their IPs, they just want some cash. I'm interested to know which patents they claim Palworld violated, because it's honestly really rare in video games for patents to actually be enforceable because there's so much prior art and a lot of variations in how mechanics can be used.
More like a (much more polished) ripoff of a game that came out a couple years before Breath of the Wild.
Ark with pokemon and fortnite graphics.
Normally I'd say fuck Nintendo but palworld obviously stole the designs and artistic direction for many of their characters.
Most of the pals I saw at first were modified versions of an already existant pokemon with little to seperate it from fan art of that pokemon. This is particularly agregoous as they clashed against the rest of this games aesthetic. Nothing that was original fit with the design of the pokemon rip offs.
Many other games have a pokemon esque aesthetic without direct copying. It looking similar is not my issue. My issue is that while playing I could easily name most pals to a pokemon. Seriously, look up comparisons. It's blatant.
They've moved away from thisbrecently but fuck man if it ain't obvious. If they did the same to some small project I'd assume people would be much more up in arms, rightfully so.
Still though, I won't cry if Nintendo loses. I hope they pay an insane amount in lawyers fees either way and never see a dime out of the case
sharing aesthetic shouldn't be enough to prosecute, especially in the case of patents.
My biggest defense against any claim like that is that they're identifiably distinct. You put two of them side by side and not a single fan of either will be confused which is which.
any fan could tell the difference, but i can see parents being confused, and they're the ones footing the bill for the vast majority of pokemon fans. pair that with the guns and back in the day if my parents caught wind of it, Pokémon would be banned in my household no matter how hard i tried to explain Palworld was different
for the record i am very anti-copyright and think Pokémon should be in the public domain by now, and generally hate Nintendo's over-ligitous practices. i also don't understand the patent angle of this action. but i ln this one specific case i can see where they're coming from, as opposed to if they were going after good-faith tributes like Coromon or Cassette Beasts or a ROM hack
This is very fair, but then again, my parents would get confused over the difference between an Xbox and a PlayStation, so take that for what you will.
Except they didn't steal designs and I'm pretty sure art direction can't be protected. Even if it could, it would be morally questionable at best. The whole lawsuit also isn't about that but about some really fringe patents on Nintendo's part. Patents that Nintendo certainly didn't come up with, shouldn't have and last but not least threaten smaller studios in the game industry. Since Pocketpal teamed up with Sony, I don't consider them indie anymore but it's true that they have to win this lawsuit for indie devs regardless. If Nintendo gets away with this you can say farewell to smaller game studios in Japan.
The fact that Nintendo are going for a patent claim rather than a copyright claim makes me think that they don't think a copyright claim would be successful.
Nor should it be. The standard for copyright violation is pretty high, things don't have to just look similar, they need to actually match, so there's no copyright over the idea of cute, Japanese-themed monsters, especially with other Japanese-themed monster games/shows like Digimon. Even if they matched the art style, you can't copyright art style, you can only copyright the art itself.
For real, its fun to see people shitting on Nintendo on this one, i dislike them as the most, but its absurd here. Pocket Pair just releases copies of other games, they also released a Hollow Knight copy just before Palworld, and on Palworld they almost copied the design 1 to 1 in some creatures. There is a reason you dont see Nintendo suing the other million pokemon clones, which is because they dont went of and almost even used the same geometry for some models. They straight up copied Pokemon like Lucario, Luxray, Cinderace, Cobalion and a bunch of others to the point where people showed their triangles and it was pretty certain they used ripped assets as the base for them.
Copied characters is not what the lawsuit is about. It's like nobody 'defending' the lawsuit has read anything about it.
you say that like you know what the lawsuit is about, which as far as I've read isn't yet known. copied characters seems most likely since people were talking about it as an issue since the game's launch
Palworld developer Pocketpair has responded to this morning's dramatic decision by Nintendo to file a patent infringement lawsuit against the company.
First paragraph of the article, dude. Patent infringement is not IP.
girl, I'm not a lawyer, i don't know the intricacies of IP vs patent law and whether you can patent a character model/design.
Im not defending the lawsuit, im talking about what most people is talking about here without knowing shit about the case, the companies or the games. PocketPair whole schtick has been copying other games, from visual aesthethics to mechanics, you can look at their steam. Also, btw. that article doesnt even talk about what Nintendo is suing for or not, https://www.eurogamer.net/nintendo-sues-palworld-developer-for-infringement-of-multiple-patents that article is on the response of PocketPair to this link, and all nintendo has said pretty much is: "Nintendo will continue to take necessary actions against any infringement of its intellectual property rights including the Nintendo brand itself," the company's statement today concludes, "to protect the intellectual properties it has worked hard to establish over the years." Pretty much they broadly have talked about intelectual property and multiple patent infringements.
Were this to happen with games with an actual aesthetic that actually tried to do their own thing (like, say, Casette Beasts), I'd be upset.
PocketPair though? If they die, they die. They clearly have a pattern of profitting off of other people's work, just look at their totally not Hollow Knight game
People are treating them like the underdog fighting for the little guy against the scumbag corporations. They're both scumbag corporations.
PS: Play Casette Beasts. And Monster Sanctuary.
PS: Play Casette Beasts. And Monster Sanctuary.
Yeah, fuck Pocket Pair they can kick rocks. Play Caseette Beasts which made a better pokemon with unique designs and are truly independent, not just some AI grift company locking for a quick buck.
I am typically anti-capitalist and usually root for the underdog. Palworld is a blatant ripoff of Pokemon and those denying it are delusional. Reverse the situation, where Nintendo releases Pokemon after Pocketpair releases Palworld and everyone would be calling it a ripoff.
Yeah, Nintendo's legal department does some shitty stuff, but their likeness was stolen. Also, they are suing for patents, not copyright. The fact that the monsters are caught in a sphere is damning Pocketpair, while other Pokemon copies like Digimon avoid this.
It's just my opinion. I'm often wrong.
Cant know if you are for real, most of those designs are barely the same despite being based on the same creatures, against how palworld straight up copied designs with a few changes? Seriously, fuck Nintendo and their shitty and buggy Pokemon games, but the Dragon Quest vs Pokemon designs are not even close to what Pocket Pair, masters of copying games did here.
Most of those are just based on the same real-world animal.
How DARE you also put a wolf in your game!
It was wrong for Nintendo to copy someone, but it's not wrong for Pocketpair to copy someone. That's what you are saying?
I don't disagree with that, but the line that is drawn between inspiration and imitation is blurred and the courts will probably rule in favor of those with the most money, unfortunately.
It's not wrong for either to draw inspiration from the other. It's the hypocrisy that's wrong.
You can either explain your position, or you can be a pretentious ass. Like I said before, I'm often wrong. I'm willing to hear your point, but you refuse to make it and act pompous.
It might be a ripoff, but my question to you is should that be illegal? The entirety of humanity is monkey see monkey do iteration on our previous ideas. It's a dubious thing to litigate.
To add to that, no fan of either is going to confuse one for the other, so where's the issue?
Again, this isn't a copyright lawsuit. Making a game with monsters that look similar to theirs is not what the lawsuit is about. It's about patents. Likely design patents like I mentioned before. If I made a country song with Eminem's lyrics, of course you wouldn't confuse it with Slim's music, but I would need his permission first.
Marshall has copyright on his lyrics, you just said yourself patents and copyright are different things.
Sufficiently different rip-offs that don't confuse consumers as being the original should be legal. They already are as far as copyright is concerned.
Many design patents should never have been registered, and should lose when defended in court. Design trademarks are a third similar issue.
Palworld is a rip off of Ark and BotW with Pokemon aesthetics. It opened early access the same year sword and shield came out. Before that Pokemon was not a big 3D open world type game. It also doesn’t include the survival/base building or FPS features in Pokemon. While palworld may be a derivative game, it is for sure different enough.
There is stuff like the palbox or the pokeball things that I could see them be dinged for though.
… have you played either game? Cuz… how would you not argue that? One is a turn based RPG the other is an FPS.
I just said that I would not argue that. That means that I think the game play is different.
