I’d support anything to see NIntendo get kicked in the nuts for shutting down yuzu, which could have easily continued legally by removing like 2 paragraphs and probably a few lines of code.
Also Citra which was 100% legal.
EDIT:
I also wanna mention that current Pokemon gameplay sucks, and would also kill to see GameFreak’s billion dollar franchising burn. Maybe
1520 years ago when hardware was “limited”, a low asset turn based RPG focused around pocket monsters was a fun game. Ain’t no way a PS1 graphics looking game with practically zero changes to the formula can be considered AAA title in 2024. And even then they’ve somehow made it into an A button press simulator by nuking the difficulty.Being completely honest, the DS hardware was not that limited (had 2 generations on it with significant upgrades despite being the same console). BW2 was probably the golden era with very well done animated sprites, overworld, features, etc. The moment it hit the 3DS, it started showing its cracks with GF continuing to develop the game without expanding the team to meet development demand.
Palworld isn’t even the first challenger. TemTem gained some popularity purely for showing how much of an upgrade it was from Pokemon only a few years ago.
I stand by the indie studios. We have proof again and again that indies just want to reach their public.
They’re gonna fight it, but not for the fans. They’re doing it for themselves. They’re a company too.
All the same, I’m glad someone is standing up to those litigious fuckwagons.
They would prob do smth like this to tux kart
I don’t play this game, but would love to donate to help the fight. Nintendo is out of control with their bullshit.
Buy the game.
Half of Pokémon are heavily inspired by artist’s (who are not affiliated with Nintendo) illustrations of popular Yokai (Japanese mythological creatures). The rest are simply animals with very generic additions. “It’s a cow but bipedal” “It’s a kangaroo but with horns” “It’s a pigeon but… actually yeah it’s just a pigeon. No difference.”
How can you copyright/patent that? It’s hardly original.
I say this as someone who grew up loving Pokémon.
It’s not for copyright infringement, it’s for patent infringement. Apparently when they made Legends Arceus, Nintendo patented the idea of pointing the camera at a monster and throwing stuff at it.
That’d be pretty funny if that was the case, because Craftopia (Pocketpair’s first game, released before Legends Arceus was announced) also did the monster collection mechanic in the exact same way as Palworld.
It’s a patent case. It has nothing to do with the creative design of the games.
But yes. Every pokemon is copyrighted. Every pal is copyrighted. (In the US) All creative work is automatically copyrighted to the creator.
You can’t copyright “a standing lizard with a small flame on its tail” but you can copyright Charmander. If you copy enough elements that a lay person can’t distinguish the original and the copy then it opens it up for a copyright claim.
None of that is relevant in this case.
A patent is to protect a specific invention from being copied. In this case, there is an innovative game mechanic that Nintendo patented has that Palworld copied. The speculation is with throwing an item that captures a character that fights other characters in a 3d space.
The patent is dumb. Personally I don’t think it is innovative or special enough to be patented. Patenting software or game mechanic are dumb anyway.
And hopefully something that they’ll be able to find reams of prior art that precede the patent
Not sure how it works in Japan, but in many nations you have to file for a patent before or pretty soon after you release your product / service. In the US I think there’s a 1 year grace period. It’s a pretty common sense thing that stops whole businesses springing up and then being shut down by patent creation just like we are seeing here.
There are many games out there now that involve catching monsters and making them fight for you, Nintendo would be shutting down 100s, if not 1000s of developers if they wanted to go ahead with this and have it be taken seriously.
Anyone that has played Palworld will tell you that it much more resembles ARK than it does any Pokémon game or experience anyway.
Once again. Patents have nothing to do with art. And even if they had proof they worked on those mechanics before Nintendo patented them doesn’t mean they have the right to use it. Yes, it’s kinda a dumb system. But there is a lot of effort to get a patent, and once you have one you have a lot of protection because of it.Disregard. :) see comment below
(Not sure if I’m being whoosh’d, but just in case: “Prior art” is the legal term for a precedent that something was in use prior to being patented, and is the primary means of fighting software patent troll shit like nintendo is trying to pull here)
Nope, my bad. Im far from an expert but know enough to differential between copyright and parent. I didn’t know that prior art had that meaning.
Rooting for Nintendo on this one. Palworld was dumb, you can’t just steal others’ IP without consequences. They could have made things just different enough… But they didn’t, they were dumb.
it’s not a copyright/dmca claim, they are claiming they are violating a patent of some kind, so it’s not visuals or names, I’m curious if it will be a ball object that captures them, cause like if so that’s so broad that it shouldn’t be able to be patented
It’s weird to root for a multi billion dollar corporation, especially Nintendo, even if you think Palworld is in the wrong.
I can agree that IP theft can be dumb in some cases, and Palworld is cutting it pretty close there. Nintendo sues everyone, though, even for the pettiest of reasons, and this kind of behavior shouldn’t be encouraged.
Palworld isn’t actually putting a dent in Nintendo’s bottom line. Nintendo is just litigious against everybody, including their own fans, so of course they are going to sue a competitor.
Hope Nintendo lose. I don’t understand why they are always the bad guy
The answer is money and eliminating competition for money
Nintendo filled some vague ass patents after the game launched, they are a disgusting company that already did the same to white cat project because of some virtual analogue because they were releasing their own Dragalia Lost.
Patents and video games huh? We can’t ignore what John Carmack had to say about this:
The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.
–John Carmack
More like he wouldn’t be able to sell his solution to others, but yeah I think Patents on simple processes and mechanisms are dumb, especially certain software and firmware.
Imagine if you had a hammer and decided to use it to hit a nail and then someone came along and said “I see you’re using my method to build a house! Pay up!”
Well, you can’t patent something like that!
Imagine you open up a game engine, any engine, and decide you need to point to an objective so you decide to use an arrow. A game company says “You’re using our method to identify objectives! Pay up!” and that one is a unique mechanic?
How long has humanity been using arrows to point to things? How can you patent it just because it’s a digital arrow?
Jfc this guy
🪞
The ludicrousness is the point. “Capture a creature in a ball”… How close is that to Red Dead’s lasso? Could Nintendo patent capturing a creature with a rope? Does anyone hold that patent yet? No, it would be silly to try to patent something like that - yet at one point I’m certain it was someone’s “technique” while everyone else was jumping on the horses back like Breath of the Wild.
-
This thread started with a general statement about patent laws with a glaring innacuracy that it applied to noncommercial applications and in perpetuity. That is what I argued against. I fully support PalWorld.
-
If that were Nintendo’s justification they would lose instantly. You can patent and/or claim intellectual property for very specific named designs, but you cannot do so for vague narrative concepts. Example: PokeBalls in various colorschemes is a go, but “a ball that capture creatures” is not good enough to patent.
-
Hey man, I’m future you. I here to give past me a warning. You keep looking like a complete fool and when you look for evidence to support your false claims, it turns out you were wrong the whole time, so you built a time machine to stop yourself. Anyway, the warning is to only use 1.11 Jiggawatts, as you miss the return time to stop yourself from looking foolish by about a day. Good luck!
Hey, further future you, due to the nature of paradoxes your specific version doesn’t exist as a result of this timeline; and thank fuck for that because you’re a total loser.
He’s right.
No, the very premise of that user’s analogy is that he isn’t profiting from it. If somebody invented hammering nails literally this year and a company came in selling it as a product without permission, then it would be comparable. It reads as if he failed to read my comment entirely but still replied with multiple paragraphs.
The game development analogy is better, floating arrows about characters heads was actually patented, but it was widely criticized and it expired in 2019. Plus I already took offense to simple mechanisms and especially certain software and firmware solutions.
A patient on hitting a nail with hammer is ridiculous if it’s your framing or theirs.
Countless buildings would never be built if you didnt invent hammer and nails, being paid royalties for a few years by large businesses who make use of it seems pretty fair.
Is this lawsuit deadass about the game mechanics???
I need to out my fucking reading glasses on.
idk, but the user above me made a general statement about patent laws and I responded in kind.
> The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.Thats essentially what both an AI does and what ChatGBT does. Are you gonna defend that to?? Just dont take credit for shit someone else made, who cares if its Nintendo. I don’t want my game sprites altered and then sold as though whoever altered them made them by handI was mislead about what the lawsuit was about and Im retracting all my statements thank you :’ )
I respect your taking action on your comments admitting you were mistaken.
My cock is not inspired after reading this bad take.
John Carmack is human intelligence and therefore more valuable than artificially generated drivel.
-edit- I mistook inspecting for inspiring for your name. I’m leaving it.
Well I admit im wrong about everything so, may your cock be inspired by that(?)
I present semi-chub. Carry on fellow meme warrior.
John Carmack is human intelligence
[X] Doubt
John Carmack is many things, but I have my doubts about whether human is one of them. At minimum, he’s some kind of alien. Most days I lean more toward incognito archdevil of the plane of knowledge. I’ve heard someone accuse him of being God, or at least standing in for him on Wednesdays.
At least on Wednesdays.
I never said John is an AI. But there are steps Palworld coulda taken to avoid the inevitable. If anything its just sad they did nothing to prevent this. I can see why thousands of people like it a fuckton. But they did nothing to actually avoid this from happening.
The whole game was intended from the very beginning to thumb their nose at Nintendo, just so happens that it got really popular and sold a ton of copies because it isn’t difficult to make a better Pokémon game than The Pokémon Company does, even when the entire game in question is a shitpost.
Im not about to sit here and tout the game that gives Lugia a gun as a game better than Pokemon, fuck no 😭😭😭
I’ve changed my statements (see above) about the lawsuit but this game is DEADASS just a higher quality newgrounds game similar to “Mario with a gun/bazooka/truck”
A shitpost is a better way to describe this. I simply refuse to look past the quirky, cartoony, 3d monsters HOLDING WHOLE ASS GLOCKS n RIFLES, to suspend my disbelief just enough to enjoy whatever this game has to offer. It hits these levels of Uncanniness with me that I severely dont like and bothers me for whatever reason.
And that’s fine, different strokes and all. I personally find it highly goddamn hilarious and enjoy playing it with my gaming group. I just think it’s a little disingenuous to say “palworld devs did nothing to prevent this, sad” when the whole original concept was basically designed around parodying Pokémon. They knew what they were doing.
deleted by creator
You are conflating copyright and patents. Copyright is protection for the expression of an idea, like the art design. This is a patent issue, which is a protection of how something works.
If somehow I patent a vague mechanic like “a method of selecting weapons with the directions of an analogue stick or mouse, presented as an 8 direction on screen circle.” Then I could sue Red Dead Redemption and Batman Arkham, despite there being no copyright infringement with whatever game I made with that feature.
Aren’t they suing because of the 3d models?? not the design of them but the fact they took Nintendo models and tweaked them???
If im deadass wrong I will 100% shut tf up and delete my rants.
Aren’t they suing because of the 3d models??
No, they’re not. The word “patent” is used in every single article about this repeatedly. Patents are not the same as copyrights.
A copyright protects a creative work: A work of fiction, a movie, a character.
A patent protects the method in which the way a thing functions: A machine, a chip, an algorithm, or in Nintendo’s assertion certain vague gameplay concepts.
I said this many times before. I was assuming the PATENT they are suing was the base model. Not the design, the base model.
Read the article you fucking spanner
according to first sentence of article, it was a patent infringement lawsuit, so you are deadass wrong.
i already admitted to being wrong. Name calling isnt needed anymore
Being called wrong is not the same as being called a name.
But respect for admitting being wrong.
I was wrong uwu
Seeing a lot of comments on here and it just reminds me of what I have been telling my friends since day one.
-
PalWorld is a threat to Pokemon. It has potential to crown Pokemon in a different way and really compete. Nintendo will 100% find a way. I told them and told them. I said the same thing on Reddit. Sure enough, downvoted.
-
I love Pokemon, I love Zelda, and Mario but I absolutely love competition. There is no way a billion dollar franchise, multi level marketing, insanept popular game series is going to let something come along and compete against it. If you haven’t watched The Boys on Amazon you are missing out. One of the most redeeming characters, IMO, says it best in two sentences in the boys in one whole episode and it is the premise of everything. "You don’t get it do you? You don’t mess with the money.
-
I love seeing games come along and bring something new to the table because it should drive Nintendo to do better for GameFreak to do better. I liked PalWorld and welcomed it as someone who loves Pokemon. While PalWorld didn’t maintain my interest its because Pokemon just does something for me PalWorld doesn’t. However, that being said I have found my self turned away from Pokemon since Gen 7 and 8 semi redeemed 7 and 9 is just sad (performance wise). I have found my self playing the hell out of tjr classic Pokémon games. Point being I welcomed PalWorld in hopes that it would light a fire under Nintendo’s ass to develop a really good next gen Pokemon game. It was wishful thinking though. Nintendo is a “don’t mess with the money” company and that is all it is. Fuck Nintendo. PalWorld was good for the game industry. What Nintendo is going to try to set precedence on is that you can own an idea a simple concept.
I have been telling my friends for literal fucking years and for some reason they just swing the bat for Nintendo. Nintendo makes some great games but holy fuck they are a shit company. They just are. I told them over and over this was coming Nintendo would find something and now here we are.
I sent this too them and they all got silent. They genuinely believed Nintendo couldn’t and wouldn’t.
Well arguably they can’t legally but… Bludgeoning people with lawyers regardless of legality is pretty standard big business behaviour
-
Kick his ass Pocketpair
For everyone’s edification, Geigner’s take on Techdirt. I suspect this won’t be the last TD article on this trainwreck-in-the-making.
Oh wow, this suit is shaping up to be silly. I didn’t realize it was filed in Japan, too. That makes the patent aspect even shakier. Japan has no discovery process like in the US, which is generally very necessary for many software-related patents as, assuming they have a strong likelihood of surviving challenge, they are typically drawn to processes that are completely obfuscated from the user and outside observes.
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.
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
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.
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.
Well it’s a good thing Palworld was a huge sales success.
And now more free advertising from the streisand effect
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
Bullies tend to pick victims who can’t fight back too effectively, so I doubt they’d go after Microsoft.
All the big tech companies have a bunch of vague patents than in a just world would never exist, and they seldom go after each other, because they know then they’ll be hit with a counter-suit alleging they violate multiple patents too, and in the end everyone except the lawyers will be worse off. It’s sort of like mutually assured destruction. They don’t generally preemptively invalidate each other’s patents, so if Microsoft is not a party to the suit, they’ll likely stay out of it entirely.
However, newer and smaller companies are less likely to be able to counter-sue as effectively, so if they pose a threat of taking revenue from the big companies (e.g. by launching on competitor platforms only), they are ripe targets for patent-based harassment.
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.
They better sue Microsoft over WoW, then, their IP did that in 2007.
I think Joust did this first. Difference might be that the player is permanently mounted all the time.
So, just like FFXIV?
Drakengard comes to mind
Holy shit I forgot about Drakengard. That’s the one with the giant sky babies right?
Ya!!! The prequel to nier ❤️
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:
-
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.
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 😅
it’s stupid. I’m convinced that people who oversee software patents don’t even know what’s a computer.
More than likely.
And then you have people like Albert Einstein that worked in the patent office.
(Obviously not software)
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.
All of the statements in the claim need to be fulfilled - so while that if looks correct it’s only a very small part of the actions described. Example:
in association with selecting, based on a selection operation,[…], wherein the boarding object is selected among a plurality of types of objects that the player character owns;
-
They are being sued for patent infringement not copyright violations, which is extra weird.
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).
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.
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.
That’s a patent, not a copywrite.
Software patents are also terrible, though.
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.
And now you have to swipe up to activate the iPhone as well 🤭
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.
Ah, I just assumed, thanks for the correction.
Pocketpair is a Japanese company too right? That doesn’t bode well, Japan has some shit laws for defending these sorts of lawsuits. I really like palworld, and don’t want it to go away. Fuck Nintendo.
