Palworld ditches Pokéball-style summoning mechanic amid Nintendo legal battle
Palworld ditches Pokéball-style summoning mechanic amid Nintendo legal battle
Palworld developer Pocket Pair has released an update for the creature-catching survival game removing the ability to s…
Lame. Thanks, Nintendo. Got forbid you actually try to outcompete.
"Don't innovate, litigate!"
-Nintendo
These primarily cover throwing an object in a specific direction to either summon a battle character or to capture a creature in the field - mechanics Palworld shared with Pokémon at launch.
sounds like a mechanic found in a number of video games.
Like what? I can't think of one off the top of my head.
You could argue against anything involving throwing a net to capture something, like monster hunter for the small fauna. Ark has “cryo pods” that function basically like pokeballs.
in minecraft you throw eggs to hatch chickens
ghostbusters, throwing trap to catch ghosts
Bulma keeps machinery in tiny capsules
They should go after Rockstar for the mechanic of throwing a rope at an animal to catch it, if this is the criteria. Ridiculous.
The VG made by pocketpair before the patent was issued for one.
Ratchet and Clank's glove of doom fits the bill
Does Ghostbusters count?
Helldivers has this, I believe. if a teammate dies then you have to throw an object to summon down a drop pod at a specific location
Uh, nets IRL for starters, but there are shitloads of games with capture and summon mechanics ranging from Ghost Busters to ARK to Ratchet and Clank to fucking Skyrim.
Edit: Downvote all you want, but don't ask the question if you don't want the answer.
Interesting, every example people have given you in response is pretty weak. (I'm not saying I agree with Nintendo have any exclusive claim here.)
That's the weird thing. It doesn't seem to matter. The patent was filed after PalWorld was released. I'm guessing this is some quirk of Japan's patent system I'm unfamiliar with.
That's because it is, Pokemon didn't come up with it, they just made it popular.
What a sad sad outcome. Patenting game mechanics should not be legal.
It isn't in the US but is in Japan where the companies are based.
*Patenting
Oh, thanks. Corrected it
Make it so you launch the ball thing from a sling shot, that's not throwing the object and it fits the universe
It’s a shame the Wii U didn’t bankrupt Nintendo.
I do wonder if the steam deck exists in this alternate timeline you propose
It probably does with detachable controllers.
No, but we do have a proper Nvidia Shield Portable 2.
We got Tears of the Kingdom, but at what cost?
Poor frame rate
So fucking stupid. I remember a time when Nintendo was constantly losing legal battles like this one.
They probably just learned to pay judges, not lawyers.
make it so you shoot them out with a gun
You already do that eventually anyway.
If Palworld devs were as petty as I am they'd probably make a Pal that looks like an obese and hostile Pikachu with a Mario hat.
- Name: Renjiyu / レンヂユ; after a really shitty Mandarin joke with Nintendo's name (basically calling it hell's company).
- It would make a noise that sounds a lot like uttaeru / 訴える "to sue, to complain" with an incredibly whiny voice
- Drop: meat and sulphur (the in-game sulphur looks a lot like fool's gold)
- "Utility": when it's running around your base, Renjiyu makes your pals drop whatever they are doing to listen to its ramblings. As in, negative utility.
Bonus points if the logo in the hat resembles a pokeball from a distance.
This game is still in early access so I hope this is only temporary and they will retool this to not be similar to Pokemon. There's no way this will be final right...?? No summon animation at all??!
How do Japanese patents differ from USA/CAN? My general understanding of patents is that they expire after 20 years - Pokemon is older than that. Do Japanese patents have a longer duration? Did Nintendo patent a game later than the originals?
These patents were granted to Nintendo this year.
You wouldn't patent the "game" you'd patent the various forms of utility or designs within that game. So throwing a sphere at a life form to then capture it could be one patent, but maybe then you'd also file another patent to cover keeping it alive and caring for it inside the ball habitat. You might file the second off of what is called a continuation filling and in combination, as you need both actions to get the full effect, you might get a bit of extended coverage in practice.
But the bigger thing here would probably be trademark law, which is a whole different beast.
Sure, I hadn't implied that the game was patented, but the mechanics were present in a game that is over 30 years old.
Worried what this means for Nexomon 3
I am not usually in favour of big companies bullying smaller companies with the law, but it's pretty egregious how much they were ripping off Pokémon.
Edited to add, apparently this was a really hot take. I am not saying that the gameplay between the games was similar, but I saw a comparison of several of the designs of the creatures for the first time when this whole kinda started kicking off a bit ago and it was the first time I realized how blatant the designs were lifted right from popular Pokémon. Combined specifically with the pokeball-alikes and like... I don't know how people can defend it. There's homage and then there's IP theft.
The game itself isn't ripping off anything. Pokémon is such a direct "rip off" of digimon, too, then. Except it doesn't matter, cause that's what stuff is. Stuff is made up of other stuff and oftentimes there will be similarities!
Pokemon is a rip off of Dragon Quest and Shin Megami Tensei.
You mean like Pokémon “ripping off” Dragon Quest?
You can’t patent an art style.
I'd be more willing to agree if Nintendo was going after them for similar art styles. They went after them for fucking throwing balls of all things. This is going to set a horrible precedent for the game industry.
So either Nintendo didn't believe the monster designs were rip offs, or they didn't feel it was a proper violation because they've shown themselves as willing to litigate.
I disagree with your premise but even if I agreed that any IP theft has occurred, why do you care? surely you're aware that nintendo aggressively invests in IP lawyers and lawsuits?
They're both based on the same source material - various mythological creatures and real animals with a twist
I used to think Pokemon was super original - but a lot of it just seems they way because we don't learn much about Japanese or asian folklore overseas.
Like take Magikarp. There's a Chinese proverb about a carp leaping through the dragons gate (an actual waterfall) turning into a dragon (meant to describe how with diligence a common person could become powerful through the civil official exams)... The weak magic carp, if diligently leveled, can become a Chinese dragon that looks exactly like the ones they use in parades.
Meouth - a wealth giving cat, many asian shops have a cat figure with a gold coin for luck. And Persian is just a lioness (a bigger cat) with the same design.
Vulpix/Ninetails - nine tailed fox
Ekans - snakE. Arbok - kobrA. Pidgey - pigeon. Pigiotto, pigeot? Reminds me of fire, fira, firaga, firaja naming scheme from final fantasy
Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan - Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan
Noticably, most of these puns and references to actual people are not copied, instead it is things like wolves and mythological creatures
If anything, it's the style of the art that makes them so similar - but copying aesthetics is how art grows and develops. It's not like they were the first or only ones to copy the style either