Palworld Dev Pocketpair Responds To Nintendo Lawsuit

There are an incredible amount of Pokemon clones out there. The ONLY one Nintendo intents to sue, happens to be the most successful.

I'm trying to think of the reasons here. Because it can't be money, they are swimming in it. Maybe it's just to please the outcries of the fans so they can say "look, we did something".

Nintendo never need a reason to resort to letigious behaviour - it is their default reaction to almost anything.
Its one of the many reasons I dont love them as a company, just many of their games.
I dont think they will have issues based on the game concept, but many of the earlier assetts looked like they were stripped directly from nintendos game and I think this is where they are likely to be in trouble.

Patents in videogames are lame. Copying other games mechanics was around since the second videogame came out. This is a terrible precedent by Nintendo. Other publishers will have their lawyers questioning what to leave out because of possible patents, they will apply their own new patents. It's really a move that only hurts consumers and smaller publishers.

If they just were a bit more creative with their character designs nothing would be wrong. If your response to that is: ‘then the game would not have been as successful’… it just shows that Nintendo is right. Now claiming that they have to use precious devtime is their own wrongdoing, they should have invest that time in creating their own aesthetic. This is a child…whining. (Ps: as a casual Pokemon player flipping through some screenshots I could swear this being a pokemon game)

@Lupaie79 the lawsuit is about the game mechanics, not about “copying Pokemon character designs”

They would be suing for copyright infringement if they thought the characters were too close to pokemon. That's probably the reasoning they want to sue them for but didn't have a case. They cannot claim ownership of animated nature like sheep, mice, etc unless it is an exact copy. As a sue them by any means necessary tactic, they probably found an obscure patent they have that is used by many other games including palworld. And are now using that as a basis for a lawsuit. Someone on Twitter was guessing that it is the patent Nintendo has on using a ball like device to capture a creature in a 3D space. Haven't played palworld so I am not aware of how close they are to that particular mechanic.

It's a big corporation using its might to bully an indie studio and scare any other small companies away from the pokemon clones.

What would the industry look like today if the original Doom locked itself behind patents and spent the next 20 years suing everyone who was inspired by doom to make their own game? Patents on game mechanics suck.

@Savage_Joe I just think they have a top 5 and that the mechanics part is the one which could be most successful. But ofcourse I can be wrong. Just saying clearly copying stuff (art, mechanics, sound, whatever) and then start whining about development time spend in a wrong way is clearly not the way to go.

@Savage_Joe a lot of misinformation has happened because a lot of people believe it is copyright and think Nintendo is monopolizing an entire genre. When that’s not the case (SMT, MH Stories and such exist).

And supposedly, this patent was filed in May of this year and approved in August or September this year IN THE US. It MIGHT be that this supposed patent was approved earlier in Japan around somewhere in 2021.And this case will most likely be using the Japanese patents.

We are not sure if this is the parent in question. Nintendo mentioned multiple patent infringements. I heard another theory that Palworld was using one of Nintendo’s patents that they patented for BOTW/TOTK.

I think more or less the way THEY CODED THIS might be the reason why Nintendo found them. If they coded the same mechanic, but used slightly different code then this lawsuit wouldn’t happen. If they used the exact same code, then it will be troublesome.

Oh and this will likely take 5 years to be resolved unless they settle it out of court.

This may be a stupid question, but how is a developer making a game supposed to know what is already patented and what isn't?

@Lup “ignorance of the law doesn’t exempt you from breaking it”. Sounds cruel, but every dev is responsible for not infringing on patents and copyrights

@Savage_Joe

But it wasn't a rhetorical question. 😂
How do they go about learning this stuff?

@Lup That's the fun part. You are just expected to know, and if you don't pore through every patent to make sure you're not infringing, well by gosh poor Nintendo has no other choice!

The rules/patent system sucks in a way I cannot describe in the comments as it would immediately get me jettisoned into the sun. But Japanese laws/systems are also different to other countries, so that adds in extra layers of complexity.

@anoyonmus You’d be correct, mechanics are not what’s at issue here, at least not as many people think or believe.

@Headpirate pointed out on NL that there’s a few patents TPC and Nintendo have regarding Pokémon, and most of it is the way those games handle databases - aka where and how info is stored on an individual level level for each and every Pokémon, moves, IVs, EVs, etc etc. To put in the utmost simple of terms, you could think of this lawsuit more like forging a signature. The way a database is coded, handled, accessed, and such is super unique.

In the way back times, TPC and Nintendo didn’t have the funds to license database stuff like SQL from Microsoft. It would have cost a fortune, and the royalties going forward in the future would have been insane. So they made their own database and techniques while also managing to not infringe upon MS’s SQL parents. Trust that this was an absolute monumental task. While Pokémon appears simple on the outside, it’s likely one of the most complex games at a databasing level.

It’s likely these patents that have been infringed upon. And as some one who’s coded and worked in DBA before, yes it’s definitely a thing worth patenting when you create your own from scratch.

This has nothing to do with holding a monopoly on the genre at hand…. If that were the case countless other monster tamers like MH stories, Coromon, Nexomon, etc would not exist, and more over Nintendo would NOT promote them hardcore in their directs and such.

@Dm9982 oh I know they’re not monopolizing the genre. It’s just that some comments here and in NL think that way despite most of us knowing it isn’t. So I just pointed that out here.

If Palworld is indeed using this patents, then they had it coming.

@Lup They hire an entire building full of lawyers to spend every day for decades pouring over every possible related patient and finding new ones to make for themselves so secure every area that the can own for themselves. Like Nintendo.

For everyone else, you don't, and pay your hundreds of millions when corporate comes knocking, or just let them absorb your company as collateral..

Nintendo lol.

Nintendo themselves, have "borrowed" game mechanics from other games as well.
Especially in the 80:s.

They're probably pissed off, that someone else, made a much more fun monster catching game, than their stale old Pokemon franchise.

I'm no Pokémon fan, but it seems that the obvious solution for Nintendo would be to... release a good Pokémon game. If such a game existed, and was available on more than one platform, people wouldn't be as interested in knockoffs. That being said, unless this game directly uses Pokémon characters without permission, I don't see what Nintendo's argument is. Inspiration is not infringement.

Nintendo love taking legal action against anyone and everything, Pokémon literally ripped off another game so it's funny to me some out of touch oldhead at Nintendo is angry they got a taste of their own medicine.