I have pretty ambivalent feelings now, on one side my most hated videogame corpo ever, on the other chuds that openly advertise their game as slavery and exploitation simulator.
It’s insane to me how often I see takes like this, where it’s clear that not only did they not play the game, they didn’t even watch a second of gameplay.
If the game didn’t HEAVILY penalize you for actually trying to exploit your pals, I’d agree, but mechanically a sweatshop will actually produce nothing at all in a short period of time. Bad working conditions lead to pals stopping work altogether until you let them rest, feed them, etc. to the point it’s obvious their marketing and actual game design aren’t in lockstep. You’re REQUIRED to treat pals well to make substantial progress.
If you advertise your game as a slaveowner simulator, people are going to conclude it’s a slaveowner simulator. That’s how marketing works.
The development team and the marketing team are not the same people. Extremely naïve to come to a complete conclusion with 0 exposure to gameplay. I don’t respect the opinion because it isn’t informed.
Devs themselves advertise their game like that. Reviews are full of chuds too. It’s not even changed after all those months leading me to conclusion it’s intended.
Ah yes, the storefront page. Definitely direct dev communication and not marketing.
Nerd got banned and took it to dms lmao. If you’re reading this, you can eat my ass, punk
I was interested in the concept at first but it’s the exact shit you mention that killed any enthusiasm I had.
“It’s not optimal to be cruel” and “you can fight the poachers” c’mon now, they clearly know what they’re implying and to assert otherwise is dishonest.
Maybe I’m “too sensitive” but them leaning into the vibe of cruelty and exploitation of deliberately cute, innocent sentient beings just made the whole thing feel gross to me. Personally I’d rather it not be an option at all but I’m clearly not the target demo, a not insignificant portion of which is irony poisoned chuds
Slavery playstyle is more of a meme. You’re more pushed into the playstyle of improving the Pals’s condition, upgrade path from better bed, better hotspring, better food, … so they can work and rest better. It’s a sandbox survival game, you can choose how to play it.
You can improve the pal’s life ingame, but you as the pal in real life is
I didn’t played it, my opinion is based on a description/advertisement put by devs on the game steam page, and its one of the worst things i ever read there, at best it can be described as “ironic chuddery” which is usually just a flimsy cover for real chuddery, and even gathering all the benefit of a doubt existing in galaxy for the devs, such description is sure bound to gather real chuds to the game. And it did, considering the reviews.
I watched the trailers first and the vibe from the trailers are very adventuring with your pals. Reading the description without context can give bad impressions if you assume the worst. It has solo mode and dedicated servers (rare feature in gaming now) so chuds or not, you won’t see them anyway.
The trailers in release order:
Is it just the advertising that you disagree with? Kinda seems like pokemon is also a slavery and exploitation simulator but all the slaves have happy faces instead of sad ones
I’m sorry but uh, for what? The concept of collectible battle monsters?
Nintendo about to start suing plumbing companies for stealing the concept of Mario
To be fair I saw one “Pal” that just straight up used Zoruas model.
Nintendo never cared about stuff like Digimon or Cassette Beasts, so I’m guessing the problem is actual models made by Nintendo were used. Buuuuut this is Nintendo and they sent people cease and desists over Pokemon fan games FFS, so who the hell knows.
I mean, Palwords developers are skeezy, but on the other hand so is Nintendo, also fuck copyright.
Digimon
i get that they’re commonly seen as rivals outside of japan (because saban localised the anime w/ the very intention of challenging pokemon, instead of leveraging the obvious differences), but like, if nintendo had gone after digimon, they’d be going after literally anything featuring monsters. the original 1997 iteration of digital monster was “tamagotchi for boys,” which is where battling & evolution comes in
obv the similar names might seem awfully sus, but as i understand, the abbreviating of names like that is fairly common in japan. like, if we knew the franchises as pocket monster & digital monster, there would still be a similarity there, but it would seem less egregious ig.
thank u for suffering my autism
Honestly Nintendo has had some big wins lately getting people to fold rather than fight in court even when the fight should be winnable. Maybe they’re just hoping that happens here too. Get these guys all tied up in court even if Nintendo knows they won’t win just to keep the Palworld devs occupied with the court fight rather than making their game
In another thread someone linked Nintendo’s patent on mounting a creature and being able to both fly through the air and run along the ground while riding said creature.
We don’t know what Nintendo is suing about yet, and it’s possible they have something real like they found out that the devs ripped an asset from a pokemon game and tweaked it with AI like a lot of people were speculating at one point, but right now I’m leaning towards this lawsuit is fucked and if Nintendo gets away with it they will be stifling every game with collectable creatures in the industry.
They didn’t specify which patents were being infringed upon. It’ll be interesting to see how this goes. It’s in Japan so I assume Nintendo’s got this in the bag
According to a Mastodon post, the speculation is it’s over “patents such as one for throwing and using Poké Balls in a 3D space (JP,2023-092953,A); and one for automatically switching between ride Pokémon as a player transitions between different terrain, such as between air and the ground (JP,2023-092954,A)."
IANAL, certainly not in Japanese patent law, but the first one sounds stronger to me, but still not bulletproof.
God patents for game mechanics are so fucking stupid and should be thrown out entirely
That latter one is interesting because I can think of multiple MMOs with mounts that worked that way long before Nintendo did it. But I guess Nintendo is the only company that bothered to patent it in Japan.
When Palworld came out, I was surprised that the ever-litigious Nintendo didn’t take some sort of legal action. So to all the people on here who thought that was a bad take and called me out, all I have to say now is: you’re lovely and I appreciate you
lol nice.
Fuck Nintendo, but this is funny to me because it’s just another cash grab early access game by a pop up game studio. they are about to spend all their profits on litigation and then abandon the game just like the rest of their projects.
I think that’s probably Nintendo’s main goal with this lawsuit tbh. They know that they don’t actually have a leg to stand on with game mechanics (unless they want to argue that cute cartoon creatures or throwing things are proprietary game mechanics) But a smaller studio spending millions to defend themselves in a massive lawsuit that will probably drag on for years? It means they can’t spend all their money developing other games and will probably end up bankrupt (and no longer a threat to Nintendo).
Watching pokemon knock-offs build assault rifles in a sweat shop in a trailer for this game was one of the most edgelord things I’ve ever fucking seen. Cringy ass game, cringy ass devs. Fuck them and fuck Nintendo, too.
Joke lawsuit. The only valid response is a to any lawyer or judge who decides to waste time arbitrating whether or not a soulless husk can own a concept.
