Anybody who’s played palworld knows the game is nothing like pokemon. What’s next, are they going to claim they are the only company who can make games with 4 legged animals?
They said patent violations, not copyright, so it is about some sort of mechanic or system and not the pals or any specific designs. I’m guessing the thrown ball capture system, since it seems no other developers have published anything using that specifically.
I played it and I felt like it borrowed a lot of elements from Pokemon. It wasn’t Pokemon, but you can’t deny it took like 90% of their inspiration from Pokemon and then added guns to it.
That’s like any FPS game ripping off any other FPS game.
Fight, capture, tame, train, breed animals.
Base building, research tree, enemy raids.
Exploration, resource gathering, survival.
I don’t think Nintendo has a monopoly on enslaving animals.
I know what you mean, tho. It’s always described as “Pokémon with guns and 3xE gameplay”.
But does Nintendo actually have a case that will hold up in courts?
Pocketpair seems confident they can defend against it. So either they have done their research and are up for a fight. Or they (think they) are calling Nintendo’s bluff.
But Nintendo has a whole pack of lawyers.
Unfortunately there are no details on what the patents being infringemed upon are, just that they relate to “Pocket Monster”.
I don’t believe Nintendo will hold up in court.
But it’s the combination of it all, aside from guns and concentration camp levels of slavery, that make it look like they straight up copied ideas from Pokemon.
It’s true Nintendo doesn’t hold the specific style or gameplay mechanics, and that’s where I think they’ll fail to win a case, but just saying it’s just so blatantly obvious where the inspiration comes from.
Which, incidentally, would probably past legal muster. You can get pretty close to the source material, and as long as it’s your own custom art, it’s not infringement.
That said, lawyers can send a C&D letter for anything. Doesn’t mean it will hold up in court, but they’re betting the target won’t want to pay that kind of money to fight it.
I don’t understand. Everyone, literally EVERYONE was calling this game pokemon with guns when it released, so why are people mad that the makers of pokemon are suing? We all saw it from the start
Just because it has a resemblance to pokemon doesn’t make it pokemon. The gameplay is completely different.
Lots of games are also called Roguelike. Based off a game called Rogue. The makers of Rogue do not get to sue the makers of Hades.
Pets that fight for you, including being able to store them for portable carry has been done by many other games, including Ark. In fact, playing Palworld made me compare it more to Ark than Pokemon: base building, automation, catching dinos/animals/monsters of different varieties for different uses. Some can fly, some run, some can be used as parachutes. Some help automate actions at base. There is a tech tree unlocked by leveling, starting with primitive weapons and moving on to guns and higher caliber guns. Blueprints are common in ark for higher quality crafts to build at, you guessed it, crafting benches.
Collecting wood, stone, metals, etc. Also the animal assistants can help there too, but only certain ones. Also, Ark has cryopods for storing your animals/dinosaurs. You even throw em to release.
If they had exactly Pikachu or something it’s one thing, but similar games are just part of the business.
But we’re not talking about a game type here. You can agree that this is a dumb lawsuit, but you have to be honest. Palworld was marketed online as pokemon with guns. It’s not just a similar style but almost identically copies the characters in Pokemon. You can make a stealth action political thriller video game, but if the main character looks just like solid Snake and is called “Viper”, you gonna get sued.
I think it’s understandable why they sue them (I doubt it holds up in court though), it’s just horrible business practice because Nintendo is too lazy to actually innovate and do something creative for a change, instead of sitting on franchises like that and do fuck all with it, only releasing repetitive piss-poor games based on the exact same concept they invented like 30+ years ago.
The problem is people will still buy Pokemon, even if they’re absolute garbage games. So Nintendo won’t change it either.
I think it’s an issue with Japanese game companies in general. I’ve been complaining about Capcom forever. Megaman 11 was a side scroller. I’m a massive mega man fan and I like the side scroll. But it’s 2024. Can we try something new? I would love a ratchet and Clank style, open world 3d mega man where you go to the different areas of the city and take down the bosses. Also games like monster hunter, are so janky and look 10 years out of date, and most Capcom games look outdated
Nintendo is making a case that the use of capsules to capture and carry creatures is their IP.
Dragon Ball was using capsules to store things long before Pokemon did. And Dragon Ball Z, which ended in Japan in '96 had already done storing 'creatures in capsules. Saibamen for one. And after the Saiyan saga Bulma puts her dead friends in coffin capsules.
So Akira Toriyama did it before Pokemon.
Also, Iron Bands of Bilarro in DnD 5e, but I’m not sure how far back the history of that item goes. DnD 3.5 had Iron Flask that works kinda the same, but Iron Bands is more similar to a Pokeball.
Yeah, they should absolutely argue that storing things, alive or not, in capsules has been used in numerous movies and shows and that the patent is invalid. Big corporations make tons of patents all the time just in case and then see if they hold up in court later, such as Nintendo with their pokeballs in this case. They still don’t know whether Palworld is an infringement or not
Took them a while. But like clockwork, Nintendo never misses a chance to be the villains.
They had to wait for PalWorld to sell a lot and make a lot of money so they can financially ruin these people instead of just telling them “don’t do that.”
Literal Comic-Book Villain behavior.
We should play a game of guessing which patent(s) they’re gonna try to nail Palworld for infringement with.
Half of those patents read like if they use vague enough language they can justify patenting how computers work.
How can they let companies file such broad, vague patents for mechanics that have existed since forever? For example, 20240286040, is just what flying mounts have done in WoW since 2007 or even the flying cap in Mario 64 ffs. There are probably other earlier examples, but it goes to show that it’s just noise to monopolize innovation and scare other devs.
Long story short, the claims get much longer and restrictive through the application process. The example you asked about is currently undergoing a non-final rejection, and the claims will get much more restrictive in further iterations (assuming that the application has actual merit somewhere in the original dependent claims)
You can check the application history here: Global Dossier
My guess is the “Pokemon Box Storage” system since palworld stores pals in a palbox.
Is that the wrong link? This seems totally unrelated to Pokemon in boxes, and is more about multi console character storage systems. This patent just sounds like someone described steam cloud saves in way too many big words.
I’m sorry who in their right mind signed off on this patent
NON-TRANSITORY COMPUTER-READABLE STORAGE MEDIUM HAVING STORED THEREIN GAME PROGRAM, GAME SYSTEM, INFORMATION PROCESSING APPARATUS, AND INFORMATION PROCESSING METHOD
Thats literally any online game server
Had to wait until no one gave a shit about Palworld anymore
Wait until they make all the money that was to be made on their game.
Then yoink all of that money.
