Nintendo's lawsuit against Palworld isn't just bad for the industry, it's bad for Nintendo
Nintendo's lawsuit against Palworld isn't just bad for the industry, it's bad for Nintendo
Can the tension of "family friendly nice guys" and "we sue everyone and sent a disabled person to jail" really continue existing in perpetuity?
I love how this continues to crank out articles with 0 information and everyone speculating what it might be about.
Don't get me wrong, Nintendo are dickheads, but you can clearly see how everyone greedily clicks on these articles considering how often they get rehashed.
Yes, there are going to be opinion pieces like this one filling the space for a major news story like this one, but there's still room for proper journalism right now. I recommend folks check out PC Gamer's interview with an IP attorney that worked in Tokyo (which was also the second link in this posted article).
Software patents are a thorny topic, and it's worthwhile for enthusiasts of the industry or those interested in IP law to read up on the concept in general. There's risk for Nintendo here, and I found Sigmon's offhand comment about how Nintendo's ramped up legal hiring to be particularly interesting.
Even with more info these articles just devolve into
Mario man bad but we all still love Mario? New Zelda in the spring be sure to line up now.
I am just curious, do you have a take on how Nintendo's lawsuit could be legitimate? Even a high-level theory, surely if you are so concerned about speculation and "greedy clickbait", you have some logical ideas to back this up?
I think the thing that's the most confusing about this is why did they wait??
"The timing is particularly baffling: Nintendo did not strike when the iron was hot and everyone was talking about Palworld and Pokémon, and at this late date, why bother? The greatest heights of Palworld's success were clearly driven by the memetic catchiness of its Pokémon parody, now it's just another survival crafting game with a stable enough core community—see also Valheim or Sons of the Forest. Palword has faded into the background, a brief curiosity overshadowed by 2024's far more enduring megahit, Helldivers 2. Just in time for everyone to have largely forgotten about Palworld and moved on, Nintendo has swooped in to announce: "In case you've forgotten, they're the little guy, and we are huge, awful bullies."
Palworld has reportedly made nearly $500 million now (source - Simon Carless). Even if Nintendo win in some way won't it cost them so much more to take Pocket Pair down now?
They waited until they could file a few new patents, namely the catching and mounting mechanisms. Now they have a bit more legal standing it seems, although I'm not sure how this is all gonna shake out
I'm going to patent the crap out of everything.
Like if you push a button in the direction your character is facing you move in that direction. I'm going to patent that shit.
Then I'm going to patent that if you push button and the opposite direction of your character, if it's a 3D game you turn around. And then I have ab separate patent with having the character walk backwards.
I'll just take the absolute piss out of the most basic things and absolutely everything I can find. And then throw a bunch of frivolous patent lawsuits at Nintendo.
I know it's petty. But maybe Nintendo, like many other corporations in the gaming industry, have just been around maybe a little too long and have lost the vision and the purpose. Cuz at this point Nintendo's not even trying. But they are heavily relying on nostalgia for sales. They're more known for being a litigious company than a gaming company.
To maximize profits and costs they can go after, and to be a bit less on the radar of the public eye. Now that palworld is essentially done making money, Nintendo can go after that amount.
Say it is the throwing spheres that Nintendo is basing the suit off of. If Nintendo tried suing in the midst of its popularity, palworld could have just switched the capture system to like a special gun or cubes or something. Nintendo wanted to wait in order to financially crush them into dust.
I for one am a lifelong Nintendo customer that has finally decided to boycott them moving forward. Plenty of other companies to support.
They could have bought the game out and lumped it into their existing games. Alternate dimension Pokémon anyone?
And let another IP fall to a large corporation? No thanks.
They're going to get sued into oblivion, so that's one alternative path forward.
Meh. Even small corps often do something well once and then fall to the wayside.Nintendo has been pretty good at recreating their core IP, whether it's the 3D version of Metroid on GC or open-world Zelda on Switch.
If they'd actually bought out the Palworld IP (assuming that was an available option) that would have meant cash for the devs and a way to work with it in a way that was unique but inclusive to the Pokemon franchise. A lot of people are getting tired of the latter because it has become rather stagnant, but the new mechanics with the official Pokemon characters/stats/etc could have benefitted both
Nintendo doesn't do that though. They don't go "wow, this looks cool and there's real interest. Maybe we could work with the dev and make it an official product. They've done most of the work already!" It's lawsuits all the way
I don't understand. So if I make a video game and my main character is an Italian plumber who wears red and blue, jumps on mushroom people and grows when he eats a mushroom, and Nintendo sues me. Nintendo is wrong? Or are we pretending palworld isn't "Pokemon with guns" which was literally what people were pushing it as
the problem is, palworld isn't "pokemon with guns", they used that slogan originally sure, but palworld 100% shows more similar mechanics and concepts to ark then pokemon, it's a mix of pokemon style mechanics and Arks RPG mechanics. I would say they had a stronger suite against trademark than they did mechanics side.
The only game mechanic similarity between the two is the ball capture system and the fact that it's called a trainer/leader when you battle the NPC's anything else is already present in other games.
By this logic, any game that features the ability to tame or capture monsters would be a pokemon clone. That's far too broad of a category to allow as a patent if challenged. I personally believe it will result in them losing the patent as a whole if it is that patent they are fighting with.
"Catch creatures to use to fight" is a broad enough theme that it should be fair use, and has other precedent. For example, it was done in Bomberman Generation. Why didn't Nintendo sue Konami?
In the US, Atari tried to sue someone who made an Asteroids clone back in 1981 and lost because Meteors, the clone had made some improvements on the idea of Asteroids (color, among other things). This cemented US legal precedent that you can't sue people for "ripping off" games so long as they make some meaningful change to it and aren't just making a direct knock-off.
This current case is in Japan, however, where the legal landscape is very different and companies need to be legally aggressive to maintain any rights to their IP from what I understand. I have no idea how that's going to go down.
The problem is that the fans of Palworld are actually fans of Pokemon and they will defend it like a Pokemon game.