-12 points
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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.

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4 points
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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.

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2 points

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?

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6 points

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.

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2 points

Absolutely. I don’t get how someone can say stealing the work of others is morally correct.

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1 point
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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.

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5 points

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?

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-2 points

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.

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5 points
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Okay. You don’t like the word “similar” I guess. What word would you use?

It is certainly not the same.

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2 points

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.

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1 point
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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

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1 point
*

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/

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-1 points
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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.

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-2 points
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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.

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6 points

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.

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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 😭😭😭

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Man… Reading is great when I decide to actually do that.

aight. Ima piss off, Apologies for my Prozax induced rantings.

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2 points

Absolutely. I’m looking at getting Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince soon. I doubt anyone calls it a Pokemon copycat, too.

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26 points

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.

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9 points

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.

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1 point

It’s a gift.

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8 points

They are also making a copycat game “inspired” by hollow knight, obviously doing for the indie devs out there.

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2 points

If we allow this to continue, we will end up with more content for players to enjoy.

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2 points

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.

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3 points

Yeah of course, they are only going to ripoff others indie devs out there for the players to enjoy.

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1 point

That’s called a metroidvania

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6 points

Of course. For the culture! Lol

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51 points

Copyright only exists for the wealthy to own even more.

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24 points

No, Copyright exists to protect creators. It’s just been perverted and abused by the wealthy so that they can indefinitely retain IP. Disney holding on to an IP for 70 years after an author dies is messed up, but Disney taking your art and selling it to a mass audience without giving you a dime is worse.

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-11 points

What creator has been protected by copyright?

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8 points

Holy fuck I see some stupid takes posted here but this might be the stupidest.

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20 points

Anyone who creates anything? If not for copyright Steam would be a sea of games named Undertale Stardew Valley Elsa Spider-Man

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6 points

Literally everyone who’s ever written a book, recorded a song, painted a painting, or created any other artwork.

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1 point
Deleted by creator
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2 points

Copyright cannot protect 99% of creators because enforcing it takes enormous amounts of time and money. This isn’t really a big deal though because 99% of people who create don’t need these supposed protections.

That’s right, the amount of writing, art, and music that is created for non-commercial purposes dwarfs what is created for profit.

Your last tidbit is highly accurate. Big business almost exclusively uses copyright to control others work to the detriment of society.

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2 points
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Right, but as I said to someone else in this thread, the fact thar copyright can’t protect 99% of creators is a problem with capitalism, not copyright. The fact that our courts favor the wealthy isn’t the fault of copyright law itself.

Also, you’re correct that most art is created for pleasure, not profit, but that doesn’t mean the need to protect artists’ rights to their creations isn’t necessary, even beyond capitalistic reasons. Bill Waterson, the creator of Calvin & Hobbes, refused to merchandise his art simply because he didn’t want to ruin the image of his characters for a licensing deal. Without copyright law, any company could have slapped his characters on t-shirts and coffee mugs to make a quick buck off of his labor. But because of copyright law, he was able to refuse his publisher’s attempts to franchise his characters (reportedly, he even turned down Spielberg and Lucas’ pitch for an animated series based on the strip).

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16 points

Idk about that, maybe indefinite copyrights would be but limited term is entirely fair. Like imagine you spend 5 years and $50M to develop something (random numbers here), then the next day someone just copies it and sells it cheaper since they had no overhead in copying your product. There’s no incentive to create if all it does is put you in debt, so we do need copyrights if we want things. However Pokemon came out in 96, that’s 28 years. There’s been very little innovation in their games since. And seeing as Digimon wasn’t sued it’s not about the monsters, it’s about the balls. But those balls haven’t changed in almost three decades so I don’t think the really have a case to complain

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-1 points

However Pokemon came out in 96, that’s 28 years. There’s been very little innovation in their games since.

First, not really, there’s been a LOT of innovation in Pokémon, as much as people want to deny it.

And second, 28 years is really not that much. We’re not in the Disney realm of copyright-hogging, I think 50 years is a fair amount of time. The issue is that it’s often way too broad: it should protect only extremely blatant copies (i.e. the guy who literally rereleased Pokémon Yellow as a mobile game), not concepts or general mechanics. Palworld has a completely different gameplay from any Pokémon game so far, and (most of) the creatures are distinct enough. That should suffice to make it rightfully exist (maybe removing the 4/5 Pals that are absolute ripoffs, sure).

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5 points

50 years… 5 maybe. If you have not earned back your investment by then you are just squatting on it.

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5 points

50 years is already excessive, dude or dudette. The north american law originally gave 14 years, plus another 14 years if the creators actively sought after and were approved (most did not even ask, and approval was not guaranteed). This is comparable time to patents, which serve the exact same function, but without the absurd time scales (Imagine if Computers were still a private tech of IBM … those sweet mainframes the size of a room). 28 years, or lets put 30 years fixed at once, is more than sufficient time for making profit for the quasi totality of IPs that would make a profit (and creators can invest the money received to gain more, or have 30 years to think of something else). 30 years ago was 1994, think of everything the Star Wars prequels have sold, now remeber the 1st film was from 1999, would star wars prequels ventures really suffer if they started losing the IP from 2029 onwards ?

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2 points

I agree with you almost entirely, but if we’re being honest, there really hasn’t been a lot of innovation in their games since Gen 4, and that was almost 20 years ago. Once they figured out the physical/special split, nothing really changed in the major mechanics. They have a new gimmick mechanic every game, like Z-Moves or Dynamax, but they’re always dropped by the next game. I guess camping/picnics are evolving into a new feature, but that’s about it.

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3 points

I think 50 is generally too much, but I think it should depend on categories, so that it is based upon the efforts put into an idea to create and how much it value (like in expected ROI).

I fear, that is hard to define

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-7 points

How about no. Let people create if your only incentive is money fuck you. If someone spent $50 million to develop something the labor has been paid. You will be first to the market and you can make money if your invention isn’t that unique oh well.

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7 points

Thats a great way to make companies spend 0 on r&d that has longterm benefits and instead focus on squeezing out every penny from current assets.

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0 points

The people spending 5 years to develop something arent the ones that own the rights to the end product. Like I said, copyright exists so rich people can own more. The people that own the rights to pokemon are not game developers, artists, writers, anyone that put actual work into creating the games and other media. Its people that had a lot of money, shareholders and executives. And then they receive the biggest share of the profits off others work and the feedback loop continues.

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Pokemon: The innovative RPG where you couldn’t even walk diagonally until generation 6…

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1 point

I can see the opposite argument made for copyright that if someone can coast off the success of their first work that in and of itself can de-incentivize them from making anything new, this is why movie companies just remake the same movies and stories every few years, it’s to coast on the success of the old one, and this is even a problem with shorter term copyrights. Their limiting factor is with the technology of the time making the old ones look dated, not so much the copyright expiring. If it didn’t look dated, they would just re-release the same ones over and over and over again.

Copyright was made for Joe, or a small business, but applying that to a big business doesn’t work, and is in fact a bad-faith argument, trying to tug at our heart-strings to make us feel bad for someone that we shouldn’t feel bad for. If Disney couldn’t sue people for copyright infringement they’d still find a way to go after them, they have more than enough money to hire a PI to ruin the person’s life, or you know just hire a hitman. It doesn’t do anyone any favors to Compare Disney, Paramount, Amazon, Facebook, or Google to a small business who needs our help to not be screwed over.

Ironically in this day and age it doesn’t do as much for those small businesses anymore because they don’t have the money needed to fight those claims, you know who does though, the big ones, the ones who don’t need protection at all. They’re free to predate on these smaller people if they choose, and those smaller people will be otherwise powerless to fight back, and even if by some stroke of luck they do, it’ll likely bankrupt them because of it.

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7 points

The problem is that IP laws eventually are lobbied by the big copyright holders into being excessively long. How long did Steamboat Willie really have to be copyrighted for, and has their release into the public domain really affected Disney?

Eventually after you get back the money you invested, it’s just free money, and people like free money so much they pay lawyers and lobbyists that free money so that they can keep it coming.

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0 points

Even when it doesn’t, it becomes its eventual outcome.

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20 points

This isn’t about copyright. Is there anybody here that has actually read the article? It’s absolutely insane how everyone just opens their mouths without understanding anything.

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-5 points

Consider it a catch all term for “copying intellectual property”. Patents, copyrights, trademarks, its different words for the same idea.

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30 points

This is a patent lawsuit, not copyright

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23 points

even worse. software patents are just more idiotic copyrights.

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1 point

Dunno, I think I prefer patents. Unlike copyright, patents usually last a flat twenty years. Copyright expires either after 95 years or 70 years after the death of the author, which is ludicrous. Both are constantly abused, but at least patents expire in a reasonable amount of time.

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3 points

Might be about a design patent

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-64 points
*

Normally I’d say fuck Nintendo but palworld obviously stole the designs and artistic direction for many of their characters.

Most of the pals I saw at first were modified versions of an already existant pokemon with little to seperate it from fan art of that pokemon. This is particularly agregoous as they clashed against the rest of this games aesthetic. Nothing that was original fit with the design of the pokemon rip offs.

Many other games have a pokemon esque aesthetic without direct copying. It looking similar is not my issue. My issue is that while playing I could easily name most pals to a pokemon. Seriously, look up comparisons. It’s blatant.

They’ve moved away from thisbrecently but fuck man if it ain’t obvious. If they did the same to some small project I’d assume people would be much more up in arms, rightfully so.

Still though, I won’t cry if Nintendo loses. I hope they pay an insane amount in lawyers fees either way and never see a dime out of the case

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-8 points
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Were this to happen with games with an actual aesthetic that actually tried to do their own thing (like, say, Casette Beasts), I’d be upset.

PocketPair though? If they die, they die. They clearly have a pattern of profitting off of other people’s work, just look at their totally not Hollow Knight game

People are treating them like the underdog fighting for the little guy against the scumbag corporations. They’re both scumbag corporations.

PS: Play Casette Beasts. And Monster Sanctuary.

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1 point

Upvoted for Monster Sanctuary. Outstanding game that deserves so much more recognition!

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4 points

PS: Play Casette Beasts. And Monster Sanctuary.

Yeah, fuck Pocket Pair they can kick rocks. Play Caseette Beasts which made a better pokemon with unique designs and are truly independent, not just some AI grift company locking for a quick buck.

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-16 points

For real, its fun to see people shitting on Nintendo on this one, i dislike them as the most, but its absurd here. Pocket Pair just releases copies of other games, they also released a Hollow Knight copy just before Palworld, and on Palworld they almost copied the design 1 to 1 in some creatures. There is a reason you dont see Nintendo suing the other million pokemon clones, which is because they dont went of and almost even used the same geometry for some models. They straight up copied Pokemon like Lucario, Luxray, Cinderace, Cobalion and a bunch of others to the point where people showed their triangles and it was pretty certain they used ripped assets as the base for them.

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15 points
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Copied characters is not what the lawsuit is about. It’s like nobody ‘defending’ the lawsuit has read anything about it.

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-6 points

Im not defending the lawsuit, im talking about what most people is talking about here without knowing shit about the case, the companies or the games. PocketPair whole schtick has been copying other games, from visual aesthethics to mechanics, you can look at their steam. Also, btw. that article doesnt even talk about what Nintendo is suing for or not, https://www.eurogamer.net/nintendo-sues-palworld-developer-for-infringement-of-multiple-patents that article is on the response of PocketPair to this link, and all nintendo has said pretty much is: “Nintendo will continue to take necessary actions against any infringement of its intellectual property rights including the Nintendo brand itself,” the company’s statement today concludes, “to protect the intellectual properties it has worked hard to establish over the years.” Pretty much they broadly have talked about intelectual property and multiple patent infringements.

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-5 points
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Deleted by creator
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-24 points
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I am typically anti-capitalist and usually root for the underdog. Palworld is a blatant ripoff of Pokemon and those denying it are delusional. Reverse the situation, where Nintendo releases Pokemon after Pocketpair releases Palworld and everyone would be calling it a ripoff.

Yeah, Nintendo’s legal department does some shitty stuff, but their likeness was stolen. Also, they are suing for patents, not copyright. The fact that the monsters are caught in a sphere is damning Pocketpair, while other Pokemon copies like Digimon avoid this.

It’s just my opinion. I’m often wrong.

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41 points
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Just going to share this for all the palworld blatantly ripped off pokemon people

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-8 points

Cant know if you are for real, most of those designs are barely the same despite being based on the same creatures, against how palworld straight up copied designs with a few changes? Seriously, fuck Nintendo and their shitty and buggy Pokemon games, but the Dragon Quest vs Pokemon designs are not even close to what Pocket Pair, masters of copying games did here.


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-18 points

So it was wrong for Nintendo to do that?

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10 points

Palworld is a rip off of Ark and BotW with Pokemon aesthetics. It opened early access the same year sword and shield came out. Before that Pokemon was not a big 3D open world type game. It also doesn’t include the survival/base building or FPS features in Pokemon. While palworld may be a derivative game, it is for sure different enough.

There is stuff like the palbox or the pokeball things that I could see them be dinged for though.

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-5 points

I wouldn’t argue that the game play is different.

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23 points

It might be a ripoff, but my question to you is should that be illegal? The entirety of humanity is monkey see monkey do iteration on our previous ideas. It’s a dubious thing to litigate.

To add to that, no fan of either is going to confuse one for the other, so where’s the issue?

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-11 points

Again, this isn’t a copyright lawsuit. Making a game with monsters that look similar to theirs is not what the lawsuit is about. It’s about patents. Likely design patents like I mentioned before. If I made a country song with Eminem’s lyrics, of course you wouldn’t confuse it with Slim’s music, but I would need his permission first.

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44 points

sharing aesthetic shouldn’t be enough to prosecute, especially in the case of patents.

My biggest defense against any claim like that is that they’re identifiably distinct. You put two of them side by side and not a single fan of either will be confused which is which.

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2 points

any fan could tell the difference, but i can see parents being confused, and they’re the ones footing the bill for the vast majority of pokemon fans. pair that with the guns and back in the day if my parents caught wind of it, Pokémon would be banned in my household no matter how hard i tried to explain Palworld was different

for the record i am very anti-copyright and think Pokémon should be in the public domain by now, and generally hate Nintendo’s over-ligitous practices. i also don’t understand the patent angle of this action. but i ln this one specific case i can see where they’re coming from, as opposed to if they were going after good-faith tributes like Coromon or Cassette Beasts or a ROM hack

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11 points

This is very fair, but then again, my parents would get confused over the difference between an Xbox and a PlayStation, so take that for what you will.

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15 points

Except they didn’t steal designs and I’m pretty sure art direction can’t be protected. Even if it could, it would be morally questionable at best. The whole lawsuit also isn’t about that but about some really fringe patents on Nintendo’s part. Patents that Nintendo certainly didn’t come up with, shouldn’t have and last but not least threaten smaller studios in the game industry. Since Pocketpal teamed up with Sony, I don’t consider them indie anymore but it’s true that they have to win this lawsuit for indie devs regardless. If Nintendo gets away with this you can say farewell to smaller game studios in Japan.

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18 points

The fact that Nintendo are going for a patent claim rather than a copyright claim makes me think that they don’t think a copyright claim would be successful.

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3 points

Nor should it be. The standard for copyright violation is pretty high, things don’t have to just look similar, they need to actually match, so there’s no copyright over the idea of cute, Japanese-themed monsters, especially with other Japanese-themed monster games/shows like Digimon. Even if they matched the art style, you can’t copyright art style, you can only copyright the art itself.

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308 points

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.

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166 points

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

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91 points
*

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.

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18 points

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

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49 points

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.

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36 points

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.

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11 points

Drakengard comes to mind

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20 points
*

I think Joust did this first. Difference might be that the player is permanently mounted all the time.

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32 points
*

They better sue Microsoft over WoW, then, their IP did that in 2007.

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6 points

So, just like FFXIV?

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13 points

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:

  1. 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.

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7 points

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 😅

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2 points

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.

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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.

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7 points

That’s a patent, not a copywrite.

Software patents are also terrible, though.

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3 points

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.

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5 points

And now you have to swipe up to activate the iPhone as well 🤭

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41 points

They are being sued for patent infringement not copyright violations, which is extra weird.

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17 points

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).

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8 points

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.

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18 points

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.

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8 points

Ah, I just assumed, thanks for the correction.

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-65 points
*

Decided to finally go watch gameplay of this game.

It’s definitely a fan ripoff mashing up Breath of the Wild with the newer open world pokemon games.

I’m not saying nobody else is allowed to make these kinds of games. But this absolutely is just trying to rip those off. Looks as unimaginative, boring, and empty as all of Nintendo’s adventure games.

They’ve stolen Nintendos IP of providing half-assed garbage and watching people eat it up.

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4 points

I wonder if people actually played Palworld here.

It’s an obvious mash-up of existing games, ripping straight from games like Breath of the World, Pokemon and Fortnite, even up to the music chimes.

I don’t think Nintendo should be suing, but people here defending how original the game is should really take a closer look at it.

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5 points

The original part is the specific formulation. Pretty much all games are mashups of other games anyway. Palworld found a formula among popular games that really struck a chord with people, and they executed on it pretty well.

And yeah, I’ve seen extensive portions of Palworld since my SO is really into it. My SO doesn’t care much at all about Pokemon, Breath of the Wild, or Fortnite, though they really like Palworld. That alone is a pretty good argument for Palworld being distinct.

Nintendo is mad that Palworld did a great job with some of their ideas, and I think they want a piece of the action. I don’t think they’re concerned that anyone would mistake Palworld for any of their IPs, they just want some cash. I’m interested to know which patents they claim Palworld violated, because it’s honestly really rare in video games for patents to actually be enforceable because there’s so much prior art and a lot of variations in how mechanics can be used.

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0 points

They’ve stolen Nintendos IP

U wot

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-1 points
*

More like a (much more polished) ripoff of a game that came out a couple years before Breath of the Wild.

Ark with pokemon and fortnite graphics.

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38 points

I mean, it also has very distinct gameplay from Pokemon? The newer open world games but like sword and shield released the same year pal world opened it’s early access (2019). Legends, which is the closest, was 3 years later.

Also, definitely adds FPS gameplay, survival gameplay with base building, and etc.

While it’s still not a great game, it’s definitely A: still early access and B: not just a Pokemon game.

Definitely took more than BotW and Ark than it did from anything else.

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