Palworld Developer Reveals The Pokémon Patents Nintendo Claims It's Violating
Palworld Developer Reveals The Pokémon Patents Nintendo Claims It's Violating
The studio also names the weirdly small damages Nintendo is seeking
Looking up those patents, the first alludes to a system where a player aims and fires an “item” toward a character in a field, and in doing so triggers combat, and then dives into extraordinary intricacies about switching between modes within this. The second is very similar, but seems more directly focused on tweaking previous patents to including being able to capture Pokémon in the wild, rather than only during battle. The third, rather wildly, seems to be trying to claim a modification to the invention of riding creatures in an open world and being able to transition between them easily.
People need to stop supporting Nintendo at all. They're lawsuit happy assholes who have been doing everything they can to piss away any good will they might have had. They're the only game company out there who refuses to make enough of many of their products, like their mini NES and SNES, to meet demand because then its "exclusive", they are the only company trying to destroy all type of emulation for Nintendo consoles, and they're the only company who seems to actually want their older games to disappear into the ether. Edit: Oh and they fucking refuse to put their games on sale or lower their prices years afterwards. BoTW is still 60 bucks even though it's 7 and a half years old. Fucking insane.
Fuck Nintendo.
184trying to destroy all type of emulation for Nintendo consoles
Only emulation used by others. They're happy to kang all' the ROMs and emulators off' a site before destroying it for everyone else, then not even sell most of the damn things. Absurd. There's nothing good about that, not even for Nintendo themselves.
53Then not even sell the damn things
Sorta true. Nintendo has been monetizing emulation for years, ever since they started releasing "virtual console" games on the Wii web shop.
The Switch now offers NES/SNES games as a benefit of their online service, and has released a handful of games as standalone releases which are literally just nicely-packaged emulators (Mario Sunshine and Galaxy 1/2 bundle for example)
If emulation and "piracy" of old consoles is allowed, then Nintendo fears it won't be able to charge as much to repackage identical technology as full-price game releases.
1
If this kind of thing bothers you, you need to stop gaming altogether. All consoles and developers.
-77Absolutely not true. All the console creators, sure, but not all developers. There are so many good developers, especially indie.
There's issues with purchasing anything in capitalism. We have to deal with that as long as that's the case though. It doesn't mean Nestlé isn't significantly worse than other campanies though, for example. There are different degrees of bad, and Nintendo is basically the top for gaming.
11
Software patents shouldn't exist!
143Patents shouldn't exist! Mostly.
43Patents are not the problem, they serve as a way to share the knowledge of a creation with everyone while protecting your company for a REASONABLE TIME to compensate for the RnD costs.
The problem is the distortion of the concept to fit late stage capitalism delights.
4
I concur. I hope this goes to court and the judge throws those patents out.
1that's the only hope, because Nintendo knows that as long as it goes to court, they can bleed out the palworld developers with endless legal attrition. I'm sure they know that these patents aren't concrete; they're just an easy way to drag people to court who can't afford to fight back
1
Fuck Nintendo. They get a pass so often from people when they really shouldn’t.
85Part of the reason is because most people don't notice the lawsuits or think this is boilerplate legal stuff that happens in the background all the time. They're too distracted by the entertainment side of things.
9
Ok that third one, come the fuck on.
Like don't even pretend. You could never ride nearly the number of Pokemon you can compared to Pals in Palworld.
That's basically patenting riding a fucking horse
73I hope they sue Ubisoft for Assassin's Creed 1 after that /s
7
People who don't like Palworld, maybe give a real reason? The AI stuff was made up by a salty troll who admitted later he made it up. It being "legally distinct from pokémon" isn't a good enough reason. It having the ability to
Spoiler
butcher your Pals for resources
may be a reason to be upset about the gameplay, but then again, many, many, many RPGs have you culling the local wildlife and depopulating a nation for quests too. Neither is the Genshin Impact art style a reason to hate it. That's just JRPG asthetics.
55The butchering thing always bugged me. Where tf do you think your chicken nuggies come from? The only difference is that we don't let real animals have friends before we kill em
25Its a very lazy mediocre game that only got recognition because it was ”Pokémon with guns”
I don’t like what Nintendo is doing, but I also thing palworld is a crap game
11It definitely only got popular because of the hype re: "Pokemon with guns," but it's legitimately better than the game it actually copied, which is Ark. You know what's cool about Palworld? Me and my coplayer were able to stop playing without losing everything we've built
Anyone who thinks Palworld is actually a Pokemon ripoff either hasn't played Palworld or hasn't played Pokemon
16
Butchering your pals is less of a problem than enslaving other human beings.
More to the point it's just bad. It's incredibly grindy, has an incongruous tech tree, and the A.I. (both enemy and ally) is trash. It's also mostly a copy of their previous game, Craftopia, which was also bad and has been in Early Access for 4 years now with no signs of ever leaving it.
I don't hate Palworld because it's a low effort Pokemon knockoff, I hate Palworld because it's a low effort Ark knockoff following the same business plan of not finishing their previous game before abandoning it for their new game. At least with Ark you got to ride dinosaurs rather than store-brand Rapidash.
11To be fair, Genshin Impact art style could be a reason to hate it if you hate JRPG aesthetics.
6Really buggy at launch (not sure if it still is). "Pokemon with guns" is the least creative direction to take the concept. Devs reportedly don't know how to use any sort of SCM, a basic development tool
0People say "Pokemon with guns" as if that was some kind of core gameplay. You can play through the game without ever using them. It's a small feature, that absolutely is there, but reducing the game to that is missing the forest for the trees.
It's an open world crafting base building game to enjoy with co-op, that has catchable creatures like Pokemon. There is no Pokemon game that fits this niche. The guns are not important to what the game is.
2
Pretty sure 1 and 3 could be applied to many modern actions games. Software patents shouldn't exist! Same with apple's patents for specific menu animations. It's fucking evil!
36Any game with ranged weapons is literally this. If I'm playing Fallout 4 and shoot a raider in the head then combat is initiated. That's literally his combat works. Fuck Nintendo and fuck bullshit patents.
11
So greed. Like everyone predicted.
28Obviously this depends on the exact details of the patents, which are all in Japanese, as well as the specifics of Japanese patent laws.
However, patents only last for 20 years, and they are undermined by public disclosure before filing. The first Pokemon game came out more than 20 years ago. However^2 not all of the features in the patents were present in the original games. All 3 patents were first filed in 2021, well after many of these features were established.
The first patent is about aiming something and entering into a fight mode. This wasn't in the original game. Aiming at enemies and entering a fight mode almost certainly existed before Pokemon (Final Fantasy perhaps). Furthermore, Palworld doesn't really have a fight mode - it isn't a turn based game but real time. Throwing a sphere is just one way to start a "battle" but there is no mode change between "explore" and "battle" modes because they are functionally the same in Palworld. Pokemon Go and Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee, which were all around in 2018, would seem to amount to public disclosure that undermines this patent.
The second patent has more detail about catching Pokemon outside of battles. This might have some elements of Palworld gameplay in it. However, again we have prior art that predates the patent.
The third patent is about riding characters. This has certainly existed in other games before Pokemon and before this patent. Off the top of my head, World of Warcraft had you riding mounts, Final Fantasy had you riding Chocobos, and Mega Man let you ride Rush.
However the big issue with all of these is that these challenges are always better off done before the patent is granted. With the patents established it is a massive uphill struggle trying to get them withdrawn. Given that each charge is only for $33,000, so about $100,000 total, I expect a settlement will be reached instead of going on this fight.
24Given that each charge is only for $33,000, so about $100,000 total, I expect a settlement will be reached instead of going on this fight.
Unfortunately that would be the worst outcome for everyone else.
The patents need to be contested and invalidated or smaller devs will feel they can't use these mechanics.
21If I recall correctly weren’t all the patients filed for and approved after PAL World released?
12Looking it up, Palworld was announced in 2021, but not released (under early access) until 2024. However they were apparently designing the game back in 2020, if not earlier.
1
The third one, wouldn't it hit Rockstar with Red Dead Redemption? After all, you do ride a animal(horse) and can easily swap in and our of 'em
5I thought of elden ring more so of the patent. Palworld wasnt as smooth as summoning torrent, but it felt very similar.
7
Software parents, specifically game mechanic parents, are fucking insane. You should see the stuff Square Enix has patented following death stranding.
I get the whole "they just reskinned my game mechanics!!!" but also: I don't. It's like saying Go, Draughts, Chess, etc. are copies or "infringing" on one another for being a board game set on a grid with black/white pieces.
Even the idea of intellectual property is shaky for me but at least it's more clear cut whether you've directly copied or deceived someone with a similar design of a character.
20They left it small so that it wouldn't be worth it to fight in court and they'd either just settle for a license fee or pay the fine. But sounds like the best way would be to get the patents revoked, but that's probably more expensive than just paying the fine due to the legal fees.
8Still better than Disney!
-4Its like seeing the 2 worst people fighting, I dont know who I want to to win.
-10Sorry I'm out of loop. Why is Palworld bad? If I'm reading your comment right when you say 2 worst.
21
I don't want palword to win.
I just need Nintendo to loose.-14Why do you need Nintendo to loose? You wouldn't rather Nintendo to tight?
0