3mo ago

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

www.eurogamer.net /palworld-developer-vows-to-fight-nintendo-lawsuit-on-behalf-of-fans-and-indie-developers

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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.
- 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.
  
  About as special as an arrow on the screen that points towards your destination (Sega, Crazy Taxi ). Not saying that's particularly special either. The US Patent Office has allowed for some pretty broad-reaching patents, which fuels our patent-troll problem, as well as giving large companies legal grounds to interfere with each other's innovation.
  IP law has become so far removed from serving its original intent (according to the Constitution of the United States) we'd be bette4 off with no IP protections rather than the licensing system we have. Not that anyone is near doing something to fix it, or unfuck the courts that are unable to rule consistently about it.
  
  It's a gift.
- They are also making a copycat game "inspired" by hollow knight, obviously doing for the indie devs out there.
  
  Of course. For the culture! Lol
  
  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.
  
  Tetris.
  pentomino Would like a word.....
  
  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.
  
  Nothing is ever completely new and that should not stop people making things.
  
  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 Grave
  Metroidvania 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".
  
  Nintendo are not suing over the aesthetic but the mechanics of Palworld. You are really bending over back wards to prove a point that is not being argued.
  
  I never said anything about the lawsuit, Nintendo shouldn't win that one.
  My commentary was always mocking the "behalf of fans and indie developers" angle of them. My original comment itself was never about Palworld, was about the copycat of hollow knight.
  
  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.
  
  That's called a metroidvania
- 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.
  
  Absolutely. I'm looking at getting Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince soon. I doubt anyone calls it a Pokemon copycat, too.
  
  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 😭😭😭
- 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".
  https://www.dsogaming.com/news/modder-who-accussed-palworld-of-using-3d-models-from-pokemon-games-admits-that-he-has-faked-everything/
  
  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.
  
  Okay. You don't like the word "similar" I guess. What word would you use?
  It is certainly not the same.
  
  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.
  
  Yes, but I'm curious what Nintendo is talking to the courts about, or if this is merely a weaponization of litigation.
- I just don't believe in copyright, IP patents 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 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 does not conflict with people being paid for doing something. If I'm a carpenter and I'm hired and paid to make a bench. No one is stealing me if, once the bench is done, I don't have a said in who sits on that bench. Or if I don't get paid every time a person sits on that bench.
  Like any other job you should be paid for doing work. Not for owning a property.
  
  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?
- 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.

359 comments