Palworld maker vows to fight Nintendo lawsuit on behalf of fans and indie developers

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.

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.

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

Eat shit, Nintendo. I hope you lose and experience the Streisand effect.

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.

Please hurt them.

Nintendo is straight up evil.

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.

"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.

Copyright only exists for the wealthy to own even more.

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.

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.

Seeing a lot of comments on here and it just reminds me of what I have been telling my friends since day one.

1. PalWorld is a threat to Pokemon. It has potential to crown Pokemon in a different way and really compete. Nintendo will 100% find a way. I told them and told them. I said the same thing on Reddit. Sure enough, downvoted.

2. I love Pokemon, I love Zelda, and Mario but I absolutely love competition. There is no way a billion dollar franchise, multi level marketing, insanept popular game series is going to let something come along and compete against it. If you haven't watched The Boys on Amazon you are missing out. One of the most redeeming characters, IMO, says it best in two sentences in the boys in one whole episode and it is the premise of everything. "You don't get it do you? You don't mess with the money.

3. I love seeing games come along and bring something new to the table because it should drive Nintendo to do better for GameFreak to do better. I liked PalWorld and welcomed it as someone who loves Pokemon. While PalWorld didn't maintain my interest its because Pokemon just does something for me PalWorld doesn't. However, that being said I have found my self turned away from Pokemon since Gen 7 and 8 semi redeemed 7 and 9 is just sad (performance wise). I have found my self playing the hell out of tjr classic Pokémon games. Point being I welcomed PalWorld in hopes that it would light a fire under Nintendo's ass to develop a really good next gen Pokemon game. It was wishful thinking though. Nintendo is a "don't mess with the money" company and that is all it is. Fuck Nintendo. PalWorld was good for the game industry. What Nintendo is going to try to set precedence on is that you can own an idea a simple concept.

I have been telling my friends for literal fucking years and for some reason they just swing the bat for Nintendo. Nintendo makes some great games but holy fuck they are a shit company. They just are. I told them over and over this was coming Nintendo would find something and now here we are.

I sent this too them and they all got silent. They genuinely believed Nintendo couldn't and wouldn't.

I'd support anything to see NIntendo get kicked in the nuts for shutting down yuzu, which could have easily continued legally by removing like 2 paragraphs and probably a few lines of code.

Also Citra which was 100% legal.

EDIT:

I also wanna mention that current Pokemon gameplay sucks, and would also kill to see GameFreak's billion dollar franchising burn. Maybe 15 20 years ago when hardware was "limited", a low asset turn based RPG focused around pocket monsters was a fun game. Ain't no way a PS1 graphics looking game with practically zero changes to the formula can be considered AAA title in 2024. And even then they've somehow made it into an A button press simulator by nuking the difficulty.

Being completely honest, the DS hardware was not that limited (had 2 generations on it with significant upgrades despite being the same console). BW2 was probably the golden era with very well done animated sprites, overworld, features, etc. The moment it hit the 3DS, it started showing its cracks with GF continuing to develop the game without expanding the team to meet development demand.

Palworld isn't even the first challenger. TemTem gained some popularity purely for showing how much of an upgrade it was from Pokemon only a few years ago.

Good. Kick Nintendo in the dick.

They're gonna fight it, but not for the fans. They're doing it for themselves. They're a company too.

Patenting vague game mechanics is egregious. This would be like Insomniac patenting "character runs around with a big gun" and subsequently filing a lawsuit against Nintendo for Splatoon, because both Ratchet and the Inklings run around with big guns.

Half of Pokémon are heavily inspired by artist's (who are not affiliated with Nintendo) illustrations of popular Yokai (Japanese mythological creatures). The rest are simply animals with very generic additions. "It's a cow but bipedal" "It's a kangaroo but with horns" "It's a pigeon but... actually yeah it's just a pigeon. No difference."

How can you copyright/patent that? It's hardly original.

I say this as someone who grew up loving Pokémon.

I don't play this game, but would love to donate to help the fight. Nintendo is out of control with their bullshit.

I stand by the indie studios. We have proof again and again that indies just want to reach their public.

Kick his ass Pocketpair

Oh shit here we go again with your rectangle looks too much like my rectangle.

Nintendo filled some vague ass patents after the game launched, they are a disgusting company that already did the same to white cat project because of some virtual analogue because they were releasing their own Dragalia Lost.

Poor Nintendo really need the win :( /s

Is Pocketpair Indie? Didn't they just make a new company with Sony Music and Aniplex?

For everyone's edification, Geigner's take on Techdirt. I suspect this won't be the last TD article on this trainwreck-in-the-making.

Patenting things like this that are obviously unpatentable ideas rather than actual inventions is unfortunately a necessity for defensive purposes in a world where companies will do anything in order to kill competition except risk competing with them since that isn't guaranteed by throwing money at it. Enforcing a bunch of patents against a company with fewer liquid assets is a guaranteed way to beat a competitor with money alone since winning the suit isn't the goal, only draining the assets of the competitor. Sucks that this is considered a valid business practice now.

Hope Nintendo lose. I don't understand why they are always the bad guy

They would prob do smth like this to tux kart

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.

>Open Thread
>People shitting on Nintendo, because fuck Nintendo
>Nobody actually looked at the 1:1 model comparisons
>Nobody actually looked into PocketPair as a company

Jeez. I thought we were better then Reddit. 

That being said, I don't like Nintendo & their Ninjas, but PocketPair is not innocent here.

This is not their only ripoff. For their next project, they choose to ripoff Hollow Knight. (At least they are consistent I guess?).

They also abandoned an unfinished early access game (This game is 4 years into Early Access).

Their CEO is also a crypto bro and said himself that he does not necessarily care about originality, if it means, that he can reach more people (and by extension earn more money).

Just to name a few.

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✌

As much as I don't like Nintendo's business practises to be fair in this case many of the pals are straight up copies of Pokémon with one thing changed

Definitely a good case for Nintendo here, not sure this is a winnable battle even without the overwhelming force of Nintendo's ninjas

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.

Rooting for Nintendo on this one. Palworld was dumb, you can’t just steal others’ IP without consequences. They could have made things just different enough… But they didn’t, they were dumb.

I mean, Nintendo isn't typically the bad guy though, right? And palworld is a pretty clear like 1:1 rip, so....

I mean, good to challenge the "big" guy generally, but wrong target here specifically and weak case, right?

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.

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