I stand by the indie studios. We have proof again and again that indies just want to reach their public.
They’re gonna fight it, but not for the fans. They’re doing it for themselves. They’re a company too.
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.
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.
I just don’t believe in copyright, IP 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’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 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.
because work should provide limited profit
Are you talking about some heist on Nintendo’s blueprint vaults?
Because IP infringement is never theft.
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.
Man… Reading is great when I decide to actually do that.
aight. Ima piss off, Apologies for my Prozax induced rantings.
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 😭😭😭
Absolutely. I’m looking at getting Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince soon. I doubt anyone calls it a Pokemon copycat, too.
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.
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.
Name a game you have enjoyed that isn’t a ripoff.
Tetris.
Granted
Tetris.
pentomino Would like a word…
Or jigsaw puzzle, the thing is there’s nothing 100% original and people always get inspired by others.
Things is starting to get strange when a company only makes games there have the same aesthetic of a more famous game.
This isn’t Genshin is Craftopia
This isn’t Hollow Knight is Never GraveMetroidvania and the Open World of Genshin is nothing new, Genshin share a lot of similarities with BOTW and have the combat animation similar to Nier:Automata but this company tried a lot to differentiate only in the mechanics of the game while coping the aesthetics.
Fuck Nintendo and miHoYo but come on don’t go and tried to emulate the aesthetic of a indie developer and than say “fight Nintendo lawsuit on behalf of fans and indie developers”.
Good call, the shape arranging mechanic existing in board game form before Tetris, and the “challenge approaching from the top of the screen” thing was a staple of many many Atari and arcade games.
If we allow this to continue, we will end up with more content for players to enjoy.
More slop that’s copy and pasted from other games?
No, I don’t think I want that, thanks though.
Of course. For the culture! Lol
That’s called a metroidvania
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”.
The article, which you provided does not make sense.
They quote the user in question, with text and link to their tweet and then have the link to the “confession” as just text, not clickable. Opening the link results in an error. Looking at the link though, you can see, that this was not even posted by the user in question.
You can see, who posted the post, which you are linking, in the url. This is a post from the user in question for example.
The provided evidence links to a (now apparently deleted) tweet from another user instead.
You are right about the user speaking out because of the animal abuse though. (source)
And they did scale the mashes (source), but only to make them comparable, because the different engines of these games work differently and have different scales. They did not edit them in other ways.
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.
Pokemon concept and ideas are heavily borrowed already. It is pretty idiotic to pretend they created anything. Instead they copied a bunch of Japanese culture and now want to prevent others from doing the same.
Have you played Pokémon and PalWorld? One is a pit-fighter-trainer where the other is a base-builder. Or does the capturing of creatures and the similar art style make them too much alike?
In a truly competitive capitalist market there should be room enough for both. But Nintendo wants their players to be obligated to own only Nintendo approved products.
Have you? The monster designs, some of them are straight up copycats and pallette swaps and such. Others are basically that “ok copy my homework, but don’t make it identical so we don’t get in trouble.”. It is absolutely pushing the limits. To say you do not see that is willful. It has to be.
So Nintendo is suing them over the monster design similarities? I thought it was a patent suit, not copyright.
Whatever. I can talk about whatever I want.
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
More like he wouldn’t be able to sell his solution to others, but yeah I think Patents on simple processes and mechanisms are dumb, especially certain software and firmware.
Imagine if you had a hammer and decided to use it to hit a nail and then someone came along and said “I see you’re using my method to build a house! Pay up!”
Well, you can’t patent something like that!
Imagine you open up a game engine, any engine, and decide you need to point to an objective so you decide to use an arrow. A game company says “You’re using our method to identify objectives! Pay up!” and that one is a unique mechanic?
How long has humanity been using arrows to point to things? How can you patent it just because it’s a digital arrow?
Jfc this guy
The ludicrousness is the point. “Capture a creature in a ball”… How close is that to Red Dead’s lasso? Could Nintendo patent capturing a creature with a rope? Does anyone hold that patent yet? No, it would be silly to try to patent something like that - yet at one point I’m certain it was someone’s “technique” while everyone else was jumping on the horses back like Breath of the Wild.
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This thread started with a general statement about patent laws with a glaring innacuracy that it applied to noncommercial applications and in perpetuity. That is what I argued against. I fully support PalWorld.
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If that were Nintendo’s justification they would lose instantly. You can patent and/or claim intellectual property for very specific named designs, but you cannot do so for vague narrative concepts. Example: PokeBalls in various colorschemes is a go, but “a ball that capture creatures” is not good enough to patent.
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He’s right.
No, the very premise of that user’s analogy is that he isn’t profiting from it. If somebody invented hammering nails literally this year and a company came in selling it as a product without permission, then it would be comparable. It reads as if he failed to read my comment entirely but still replied with multiple paragraphs.
The game development analogy is better, floating arrows about characters heads was actually patented, but it was widely criticized and it expired in 2019. Plus I already took offense to simple mechanisms and especially certain software and firmware solutions.
A patient on hitting a nail with hammer is ridiculous if it’s your framing or theirs.
Countless buildings would never be built if you didnt invent hammer and nails, being paid royalties for a few years by large businesses who make use of it seems pretty fair.
🪞
Hey man, I’m future you. I here to give past me a warning. You keep looking like a complete fool and when you look for evidence to support your false claims, it turns out you were wrong the whole time, so you built a time machine to stop yourself. Anyway, the warning is to only use 1.11 Jiggawatts, as you miss the return time to stop yourself from looking foolish by about a day. Good luck!
Hey, further future you, due to the nature of paradoxes your specific version doesn’t exist as a result of this timeline; and thank fuck for that because you’re a total loser.
Is this lawsuit deadass about the game mechanics???
I need to out my fucking reading glasses on.
idk, but the user above me made a general statement about patent laws and I responded in kind.
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.
Thats essentially what both an AI does and what ChatGBT does. Are you gonna defend that to?? Just dont take credit for shit someone else made, who cares if its Nintendo. I don’t want my game sprites altered and then sold as though whoever altered them made them by hand?!
I respect your taking action on your comments admitting you were mistaken.
Yea I dont wanna double down on some goofy shit if im wrong. Im a bit of a diagnosed spaz🥴 So being wrong about an opinion for me is a 50/50 and im not afraid to admit that
My cock is not inspired after reading this bad take.
John Carmack is human intelligence and therefore more valuable than artificially generated drivel.
-edit- I mistook inspecting for inspiring for your name. I’m leaving it.
Well I admit im wrong about everything so, may your cock be inspired by that(?)
I present semi-chub. Carry on fellow meme warrior.
John Carmack is human intelligence
[X] Doubt
John Carmack is many things, but I have my doubts about whether human is one of them. At minimum, he’s some kind of alien. Most days I lean more toward incognito archdevil of the plane of knowledge. I’ve heard someone accuse him of being God, or at least standing in for him on Wednesdays.
At least on Wednesdays.
I never said John is an AI. But there are steps Palworld coulda taken to avoid the inevitable. If anything its just sad they did nothing to prevent this. I can see why thousands of people like it a fuckton. But they did nothing to actually avoid this from happening.
The whole game was intended from the very beginning to thumb their nose at Nintendo, just so happens that it got really popular and sold a ton of copies because it isn’t difficult to make a better Pokémon game than The Pokémon Company does, even when the entire game in question is a shitpost.
Im not about to sit here and tout the game that gives Lugia a gun as a game better than Pokemon, fuck no 😭😭😭
I’ve changed my statements (see above) about the lawsuit but this game is DEADASS just a higher quality newgrounds game similar to “Mario with a gun/bazooka/truck”
A shitpost is a better way to describe this. I simply refuse to look past the quirky, cartoony, 3d monsters HOLDING WHOLE ASS GLOCKS n RIFLES, to suspend my disbelief just enough to enjoy whatever this game has to offer. It hits these levels of Uncanniness with me that I severely dont like and bothers me for whatever reason.
And that’s fine, different strokes and all. I personally find it highly goddamn hilarious and enjoy playing it with my gaming group. I just think it’s a little disingenuous to say “palworld devs did nothing to prevent this, sad” when the whole original concept was basically designed around parodying Pokémon. They knew what they were doing.
Dont steal my base model that I patented and made entirely by hand and then claim it as your model.
its that simple. As barbaric as the VRCHAT community can be sometimes, I can wholeheartedly agree that it is 100% a crime to take someone else’s hard work, tweak it, and then pretend that you own it. Pay people their fucking respects/royalties or take a different approach. Toby Fox did it, Every other Pocket Monster-like Series in Japan did it, and so on. if your gonna make a product similar to another, especially fucking Nintendo with how notorious they are for copyright striking, TAKE THE STEPS AVAILABLE TO MAKE IT DIFFERENT. Don’t churn out a “Pokemon with guns” and then get shocked with your copyright stricken. Thats fucking stupid to me. And its even stupider people are shocked it’d fuckin happen.
There’s deadass so many routes they could’ve went with, Art-styles they could’ve went with, fucking game mechanics they could’ve went with. And they chose something that 90% of people can agree “looks like Pokémon, smells like Pokémon, functions similar Pokémon”
I mean for GOD FUCKING SAKES, At least GO WITH DIFFERENT MONSTER IDEAS. We have an ENTIRE WORLD Filled with Cryptids and mystical beasts of all kind, and Palworld STILL CHOSE TO GO for Yokai/Japanese based creatures? Get the fuck outta here with that. Homeboy coulda did American mythos and got away with that, no ones holding a patent against the design of The Flatwoods monster?? Let alone is there a “pokemon” clone of Australian Mythos, so why the fuck are we still trying to do what’s already been done to death and then getting shocked with it falls flat or is criticized.
You are conflating copyright and patents. Copyright is protection for the expression of an idea, like the art design. This is a patent issue, which is a protection of how something works.
If somehow I patent a vague mechanic like “a method of selecting weapons with the directions of an analogue stick or mouse, presented as an 8 direction on screen circle.” Then I could sue Red Dead Redemption and Batman Arkham, despite there being no copyright infringement with whatever game I made with that feature.
Aren’t they suing because of the 3d models?? not the design of them but the fact they took Nintendo models and tweaked them???
If im deadass wrong I will 100% shut tf up and delete my rants.
according to first sentence of article, it was a patent infringement lawsuit, so you are deadass wrong.
i already admitted to being wrong. Name calling isnt needed anymore
Being called wrong is not the same as being called a name.
I once again am here to admit a loss.
I missread “Deadass” as “Dipshit”
In conclusion I AM WAY TOO FUCKING AUTISTIC FOR THIS POST RN. Reading comprehension got me at an all time low 😭😭😭
Aren’t they suing because of the 3d models??
No, they’re not. The word “patent” is used in every single article about this repeatedly. Patents are not the same as copyrights.
A copyright protects a creative work: A work of fiction, a movie, a character.
A patent protects the method in which the way a thing functions: A machine, a chip, an algorithm, or in Nintendo’s assertion certain vague gameplay concepts.
I said this many times before. I was assuming the PATENT they are suing was the base model. Not the design, the base model.
Read the article you fucking spanner
Also wtf is a Spanner???
I FUCKIN DIDDDDDD
I was wrong uwu
>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.
My opinion for what it’s worth is generally no one is going to not play hollow knight because they are playing the ripoff. You can’t own a style or game genre if someone has a similar look and feel there’s not much you can do about it than have a better game.
Didn’t the guy who originally posted the “1:1 model comparisons” later admit that he stretched and scaled the models to fit better?
It’s derivative, but not a ripoff.
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.
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.
Seeing a lot of comments on here and it just reminds me of what I have been telling my friends since day one.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Well arguably they can’t legally but… Bludgeoning people with lawyers regardless of legality is pretty standard big business behaviour
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Eat shit, Nintendo. I hope you lose and experience the Streisand effect.
Nintendo will be fine. lol
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 mean they successfully defended the motion of swiping up or down as distinctly different than left or right for the purpose of activating a device. Which seems insane to me.
That’s a patent, not a copywrite.
Software patents are also terrible, though.
It is all known as intellectual property. This covers copyright, trademarks, and patents all with the same concept of creating artificial scarcity to ensure profits.
And now you have to swipe up to activate the iPhone as well 🤭
It’s not a copyright suit, it’s a patent suit. So it’s indeed just like the Apple suit, though what patents were infringed upon is still unknown as of now.
Ah, I just assumed, thanks for the correction.
It’s not even copyright, they’re suing for using things they patented, but their patents are extremely general. I kid you not, they have a patent for MOUNTING CREATURES, something hundreds of games have done.
Abstract: In an example of a game program, a ground boarding target object or an air boarding target objects is selected by a selection operation, and a player character is caused to board the selected boarding target object. If the player character aboard the air boarding target object moves toward the ground player character automatically changed to the state where the player character is aboard the ground boarding target object, and brought into the state where the player character can move on the ground.
I’m no lawyer so I can’t tell you how well this would hold up in court but it’s ridiculous. See more: https://patents.justia.com/assignee/the-pokemon-company
It’s a little more specific, I think the patent is about:
- mounting either an air or ground mount
- when riding the air mount, going close to the ground transforms it into the ground mount and you keep riding it
But that’s still something multiple games have done in some way I think.
I think Joust did this first. Difference might be that the player is permanently mounted all the time.
They better sue Microsoft over WoW, then, their IP did that in 2007.
So, just like FFXIV?
Drakengard comes to mind
Holy shit I forgot about Drakengard. That’s the one with the giant sky babies right?
Ya!!! The prequel to nier ❤️
I am positive prior art could be claimed for most if not all of those. Square Enix could cry afoul of the “mounting creatures” one as well as I’m sure many, many other earlier games on a plethora of platforms.
You could mount and ride Chocobos in Final Fantasy 2, i.e. the real “2,” the JDM only one on Famicom, which was released in 1988. The aforementioned patent was only filed on Nintendo’s part in 2024.
They can, to use a technical legal term, get fucked.
Yes but it’s fucking expensive to invalidate a patent. Possibly in the millions of dollars. That’s how patent trolls succeed - it’s far cheaper to own a bad patent than to fight one.
Well it’s a good thing Palworld was a huge sales success.
And now more free advertising from the streisand effect
Blizzard should be paying attention to this, as it perfectly describes their flying mounts.
I really hope Nintendo just picked a fight with Blizzard/Microsoft lol
Bullies tend to pick victims who can’t fight back too effectively, so I doubt they’d go after Microsoft.
All the big tech companies have a bunch of vague patents than in a just world would never exist, and they seldom go after each other, because they know then they’ll be hit with a counter-suit alleging they violate multiple patents too, and in the end everyone except the lawyers will be worse off. It’s sort of like mutually assured destruction. They don’t generally preemptively invalidate each other’s patents, so if Microsoft is not a party to the suit, they’ll likely stay out of it entirely.
However, newer and smaller companies are less likely to be able to counter-sue as effectively, so if they pose a threat of taking revenue from the big companies (e.g. by launching on competitor platforms only), they are ripe targets for patent-based harassment.
While Microsoft is not a target right now, if that patent for ground-flying mounts is used (which I doubt it will, given it’s too recent and widely used by older games), Palworld can just point at World of Warcraft Burning Crusade as prior art and it suddenly becomes MS vs Nintendo.
Yep, and it would be hilarious to watch Nintendo get smacked down.
IANAL - but I’ve worked for Big Company and have gone through the patent process a few times. A patent isn’t what’s written in the supporting text and abstract. It’s only the exact thing written out in the claims.
First claim from the patent the abstract is from:
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A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having stored therein a game program causing a computer of an information processing apparatus to provide execution comprising:
controlling a player character in a virtual space based on a first operation input;
in association with selecting, based on a selection operation, a boarding object that the player character can board and providing a boarding instruction, causing the player character to board the boarding object and bringing the player character into a state where the player character can move, wherein the boarding object is selected among a plurality of types of objects that the player character owns;
in association with providing a second operation input when the player character is in the air, causing the player character to board an air boarding object and bringing the player character into a state where the player character can move in the air; and
while the player character is aboard the air boarding object, moving the player character, aboard the air boarding object, in the air based on a third operation input.
Exactly everything described above must be done in that exact same way for there to be an infringement.
Which sounds like mount selection based on if onland==True: landmountlist, else: airmountlist. ??? Can you really patent “I used an if statement to change what the mount button does based on a condition”
Boy, better fucking patent that fucking pure genius there’s no way anyone could program that without having copied us.
Like I fucking hope I misread that.
All of the statements in the claim need to be fulfilled - so while that if looks correct it’s only a very small part of the actions described. Example:
in association with selecting, based on a selection operation,[…], wherein the boarding object is selected among a plurality of types of objects that the player character owns;
That seems a bit more easy to get around. It is still crazy to think that you have to check your whole game design against that many patents 😅
it’s stupid. I’m convinced that people who oversee software patents don’t even know what’s a computer.
Of course they do! It’s those weird white boxes that nerdy nerds nerd about with numbers and shit
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They are being sued for patent infringement not copyright violations, which is extra weird.
What’s weird about it? AFAICT, Palworld doesn’t violate Nintendo copyright in any meaningful sense, though it might violate Nintendo’s patent claims.
That said, this lawsuit seems really late, and I wonder if that’ll factor into the decision at all (i.e. if it was close, the judge/jury might take the lack of action by Nintendo as evidence of them just looking for money).
Seems even more odd because to my eyes Nintendo probably had a better (but not super-good) chance of winning on copyright for some of the models used on the Pals than anything patent related. Stuff like riding/transforming mount animals and vehicles are basic exploration gaming functions. If they failed to defend the patent on other prior games that used those mechanics, they don’t really stand a chance here.
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.
Kick his ass Pocketpair
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.
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.
If I didn’t have friends who need so much financial help, I’d buy it too.
Thank you for reminding me about Enshrouded. I started playing that a few months ago, but a week into it my gamer friends wanted to start a new Valheim playthrough, and that was that. I should revisit it though
Palworld is a lot of fun you won’t regret it
Palworld has to be the most addicted I’ve ever been to a game in years, and that was back at launch in January. I’m not going to spoil anything, but they’ve added a ton of new things since!
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.
Well, they waited for Pocketpair to become big enough to give them money, and not too big to risk losing against them.
The really odd but is being unaware of which patents they’re allegedly infringing on
That should be part of the filing shouldn’t it?
Also are they going to sue Square Enix for Dragon Quest Monsters while they’re at it?
Maybe.
“I’m suing you!”
“What for?”
“It’s a surprise 🎉🥳🎊”
