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.
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.
Yeah of course, they are only going to ripoff others indie devs out there for the players to enjoy.
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.
I still really hate Palworld.
It reminds me of that PETA parody I played a long time ago called Pokemon Black and Blue. It was pokemon but they were abused or some shit.
Thats what Palworld reminds me of, Its pokemon but I can abuse them if I want to and thats just kinda fucked up IMO… Not something id wanna play :/ It all reminds me of those fangames people would make where Mario has a gun or a car or some other wacky ass Item that’d only exist IRL. the fucking pink Meowth with an AK-47 makes me ponder why this even got as popular as it did. but whatever- this is all still my opinion.
This game also reminds me of that one Steam game thats basically Animal crossing (But you can kill people with guns) I think its called Virst Winter??? I cant remember… It just looks mega silly to me- I dont like having to look at a fake-Lucario with human hands holdin a glock. Its goofy- I cant take it seriously 😭😭😭
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?
I really recommend this set of posts from byofrog from the hellsite:
https://x.com/byofrog/status/1749198773295743156
https://x.com/byofrog/status/1748943929184035098
https://x.com/byofrog/status/1749188773127016772
https://x.com/byofrog/status/1749193341932020097
https://x.com/RoseBursyoji/status/1750585839913255386 (This one is not from byofrog, but rather his comment section)
I think they make the copying obvious
Ah, I remember this controversy when the game launched. That person later admitted to modifying the meshes to make them fit better because they hated Palworld for “glorifying animal abuse”.
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.
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 does not conflict with people being paid for doing something. If I’m a carpenter and I’m hired and paid to make a bench. No one is stealing me if, once the bench is done, I don’t have a said in who sits on that bench. Or if I don’t get paid every time a person sits on that bench.
Like any other job you should be paid for doing work. Not for owning a property.
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.
Palworld is just one of them Newgrounds games where its Mario but he’s got a Bazooka or some crazy shit.
Whenever I run into someone with a Palworld Oc and their telling me about it, I cant help but feel like their offering me some kinda fake/knockoff Balenciaga; for lack of a better comparison. Like it looks like Lugia, flaps like Lugia, but this “thing” aint Lugia. Its- I dunno its just weird as shit.
Its an uncanniness for me, that’s why I hate it and it feels wrong. My mind sees Jigglypuff with a pistol and I’m violently taken out of the scenario. Its just so- Fuckin weird man I cant describe it. It aint natural 😭😭
The best way I describe it is that Palworld is the Alternate Universe version of Pokemom, only it exists in this universe and in this timeline and it weirds me out.
