Palworld maker vows to fight Nintendo lawsuit on behalf of fans and indie developers
https://www.eurogamer.net/palworld-developer-vows-to-fight-nintendo-lawsuit-on-behalf-of-fans-and-indie-developersOpen linkView original on feddit.nl930
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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.
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
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.
While Microsoft is not a target right now, if that patent for ground-flying mounts is used (which I doubt it will, given it's too recent and widely used by older games), Palworld can just point at World of Warcraft Burning Crusade as prior art and it suddenly becomes MS vs Nintendo.
It's a little more specific, I think the patent is about:
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.
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 ❤️
So, just like FFXIV?
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:
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.
Of course they do! It's those weird white boxes that nerdy nerds nerd about with numbers and shit
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:
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.
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.
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 🤭
I've never been interested in Palworld, and I certainly don't intend to play it, but I'll probably buy it today.
Because fuck Nintendo.
It's clunky and the novelty wears off quickly, but it was worth a play.
Referring to all Nintendo games.
Dunno man, it is possible to accept they make good games while still condemning their corporate bs...
Yeah, games like Mario Odyssey, Mario Kart, Luigi's Mansion, etc. are fun as hell and very polished. I can't think of a single first-party Nintendo game that's released riddled with bugs in recent memory, whereas the rest of the industry can't say the same, excepting Sony's first-party games.
Literally Pokémon. SwSh, SV and BDSP are all a bug-ridden mess. You will probably find more bugs playing SV for an hour than in all gen 3-6 games together.
Although yeah, it’s a (huge) anomaly and the rest of the first-party games are extremely polished. It just sucks to be a Pokémon fan in the 2020s.
I don't think Pokemon is first-party since that IP and the dev studios fall under The Pokemon Company, whereas games like Mario and Zelda are developed by studios within Nintendo itself. I could be wrong.
Edit: I just looked it up, and yep, Nintendo only owns 33% of The Pokemon Company.
If they ain't first party, they're certainly close enough that you couldn't tell the difference.
They make some good games. They also sling out a bunch of crap and repeatedly rerelease games at full price.
Basically my stance. Do I like all the anti-competitive crap they pull? Absolutely not. But they do still make and/or publish most of my favorite franchises. This isn't like, say, Microsoft or Google who bake their evil directly into their products.
But.... they don't. Their games are old the minute they're released. Sure they have enough bare minimum charm to wow the masses, but when you truly take a skeptical and honest eye to them compared to many other games, you realize how lazy they are with the copy/paste approach most of the time, inability to add basic common niceties of modern gaming, and generally lacking worlds that feel unfinished.
If it weren't for the IP name recognition, most of their games would be panned as meh.
I maintain a stance that the only reason they're still around is because of brand recognition. Literally the only reason I could think of anyone liking their slop.
It’s possible to acknowledge that yes but no they don’t make good games, just half-assed rehashed entries in the same 4 tired series they’ve been pumping games out of for decades
Hard disagree. I really enjoy a lot of Nintendo's games, and will be buying Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom right around release. Some favorites:
My kids like Pokemon and my SO like Ring Fit, but I think that series is pretty boring. And here are some I haven't played, but probably will:
That said, I very much don't like Nintendo as a company, especially its opposition to emulation. But I do like their first party titles, and they're very polished at launch, unlike many other big studios.
Yeah, I was gonna say, Gen IX Pokémon looks like some of the clunkiest, most repetitive shit imaginable.
God, I wish Nintendo made the Pokemon games, because then they might actually not be ugly, terribly optimized garbage. Nintendo owns a minority share of The Pokemon Company, which is also owned by Game Freak and a company called Creatures. Each company takes care of different aspects of the franchise. Game Freak still does all the game development, and I wish they wouldn’t because they obviously don’t care about the franchise anymore and haven’t for quite a while.
The fact they put ILCA on BDSP (and how abysmally that turned out) was the nail in the coffin for me for trusting Pokémon games to be of any quality. SwSh was close, but that told me The Pokémon Company will pump out literally any dogshit they want and people will still buy it.
ILCA?
Developers put in charge of BDSP. Before Pokémon, their work was all extremely minor support for much bigger studios. So for example, if you're a big AAA studio and you want to save on precious development time, you might contract out a dozen studios to do busywork, and one of those studios might be ILCA. For example, two people from ILCA are credited in Yakuza 0, but this is as "Casting Cooperation". Their most major game they'd actually worked on themselves before this was Pokémon Home.
So essentially, you're taking a small company where 95% of their existing work is as a supporting role to do relatively easy work for other major studios, and the other 5% is Pokémon Home, and you're telling them "Okay, now remake Diamond and Pearl."
It’s the studio Nintendo chose as lead developer for BDSP.
Yeah, waiting for them to put out a few more updates and maybe I’ll try again: they’ve fixed a good chunk of some stuff recently. It’s still not there as a completed game for what it wants to be, but it’s okay as a cooperative PvE survival/monster collector.
Haven’t played since they added the island as more levels, so this may be an old opinion: Theres just no real end game past get a cool base. Dungeons are pretty moot at that point, the raid boss just blows up the whole base for some rewards which isn’t worth it unless you have an empty base to summon shit, and the tower bosses and lvl 50 bosses weren’t a bad challenge but that was about it. After you’ve killed those once there’s not much to do. I guess farm them for very specific drops… to be stronger so you can… idk do nothing else….
But again, I haven’t played since they added the island and higher levels so maybe it’s a bit better in that regard now?
It's pretty much the same thing, but with a longer grind towards the final levels. Legendary bosses (jetragon, frostallion, centaur knights) were bumped to lvl 55, there's a couple of "alien" pals from semi random, timed events (meteorites), and a "final" dungeon as an offshore oil rig, which is filled with max level syndicate goons that can kill you really fast, but there are many places you can stay where their AI will effectively break. The game crashing while you're there is a much, much worse enemy
It's just like every other 'sandbox' game out there.
About the only substance is in the early game. Then there isnt much to do but grind out a checklist to collect everything.
It gets repetitive too fast.
The core game loop is better than any of the pokemon games though.
I am curious as to why they took so long though. Were they waiting until the hype died down so it didn't look malicious?
Same wasn't even thinking about this game. But now I got to have it. Fuck Nintendo. Never buying a new game from them every again. They should be sued into bankruptcy.
Same. Does any Steamdecker know how well it works?
Works well, but you'll have to tinker with the graphics settings.
Low-medium settings with 45fps/90hz cap works well enough for me on the oled. Smooth except for in crowded bases
Same.
Patents and video games huh? We can't ignore what John Carmack had to say about this:
--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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Also wtf is a Spanner???
I FUCKIN DIDDDDDD
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 anymoreedit: I LOVE HAVING READING COMPREHENSION ISSUES!!!🩷🩵🩷🩵
Being called wrong is not the same as being called a name.
But respect for admitting being wrong.
I once again am here to admit a loss.
I missread "Deadass" as "Dipshit"
In conclusion I AM WAY TOO FUCKING AUTISTIC FOR THIS POST RN. Reading comprehension got me at an all time low 😭😭😭
I was wrong uwu
> 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 :' )
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.
[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.
Well I admit im wrong about everything so, may your cock be inspired by that(?)
I present semi-chub. Carry on fellow meme warrior.
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.
Why didnt they just file under Parody law then??
I respect your taking action on your comments admitting you were mistaken.
Yea I dont wanna double down on some goofy shit if im wrong. Im a bit of a diagnosed spaz🥴 So being wrong about an opinion for me is a 50/50 and im not afraid to admit that
Eat shit, Nintendo. I hope you lose and experience the Streisand effect.
Welp, I had no plans of buying Palworld. I've been playing Enshrouded instead. But I'll be picking it up now. Screw you Nintendo and your anticompetitive ways.
If I didn't have friends who need so much financial help, I'd buy it too.
Palworld is a lot of fun you won't regret it
Thank you for reminding me about Enshrouded. I started playing that a few months ago, but a week into it my gamer friends wanted to start a new Valheim playthrough, and that was that. I should revisit it though
Palworld has to be the most addicted I've ever been to a game in years, and that was back at launch in January. I'm not going to spoil anything, but they've added a ton of new things since!
Please hurt them.
Nintendo is straight up evil.
Fuck Nintendo. I think Palworld is a stupid game that I wouldn't ever bother to play but Nintendo is pure evil and they NEED to lose. They do not deserve a monopoly on whatever type of genre that is.
While I think it is a great spin on the genre of collecting monsters to enslave them so they craft bullets for you, I agree with you on Nintendo.
Oh that sounds cool actually
Off to a great start, I see. I know that actual game mechanics cannot be patented or copyrighted (the same principle applies to non digital games), so I'm really curious to what these patents are.
Someone linked a list of all the patents Pokemon Company specifically holds and the very first one was "creature breeding based on good sleep habits."
Game mechanics can be patented. It's stupid, but things such as "loading screen mini games" and "overhead arrows pointing to your objective" have been patented. The second I believe even got enforced once.
I think these kind of things have been getting approved less and less, but I wouldn't be surprised if "balls that contain monsters" was patented back in the early days too.
Copyright only exists for the wealthy to own even more.
This is a patent lawsuit, not copyright
even worse. software patents are just more idiotic copyrights.
Might be about a design patent
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.
patents and copyright are pretty different though. IMO both are bad but you can at least make a case for protecting intelectual work from copying. Patents protect replication of ideas and ideas don't have to be unique at all. If I say it was my idea to call variables a,b,c,d,e in that order that means anyone who wants to do that in their creations needs my permission which is fucking bonkers.
I'm convinced that software patents exist purely for regulatory capture.
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.
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.
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).
I think you have bought into the lie about copyright that has been fed to us. It is really hard to look at something objectively when you have been propagandized about it your entire life.
Currently copyright and the bigger category of intellectual property only exist to benefit commercial interests, this is self-evident. It is not a natural right by any means and is a perversion of the way art and science has existed for all of human history.
We have to face the reality that in a world of billions of people nothing is really unique. If you are anything like me you would have had many great thoughts, ideas, and projects and seen many other people throughout your life with similar or sometimes identical concepts.
Who should get to rent seek for these? If I create a very similar painting or song without ever seeing or hearing of another similar one who is the first? Well the current system is first come first serve, but is that really right?
What about teachers. Should not your teacher get a portion of your creation since they inspired you? What about exposure to other art, should you pay a portion of your earnings if you were inspired by other artist?
Even when looking at case law with derivative works, what is or is not okay is hardly settled and constantly changes based on the whims of ill-informed judges.
These questions only begin to scratch the complexity of the situation because of the artificial constraints put on us by intellectual property. I don't pretend to have the answers except to say there really is no need for any of this.
Even when looking at something you may think is relatively simple like putting a characters likeness on merchandise it is never cut and dry. I have often wondered if Tigger inspired Hobbes. The likeness including even behavior is rather startling.
Who has the rights is sometimes not even the person that created it originally. This is especially evident in productions that require lots of people like movies. This leads to interesting facts like most major recording artist don't even own their own songs.
Commercial interests love to have it both ways as well. Microsoft used piracy to its advantage to spread its OS across the globe and only cracked down on it after becoming a monopoly.
I am not trying to muddy the waters here but I want to make it clear that intellectual property, including copyright was created by and for monied interests. It was ill-conceived from the start, based on false premises, and has been pushed to the breaking point from years of coordinated legal tactics.
It's literally the opposite. The first copyright law was passed in 1709 in England to give authors rights to their works instead of publishing companies. The Stationers' Company, a guild of publishers, had a monopoly over the printing industry, and they we're deciding amongst themselves who would get to reproduce and publish books. They took the labor of authors, changed it however they saw fit, and reproduced them for profit. Authors never saw a dime, and instead had to find wealthy patrons to subsidize their work.
Yes, for the majority of human history, people used to create art with no expectation of ownership, but for the majority of human history, there weren't methods to mass reproduce art. Owning the rights to your books didn't matter when the only way a second could get made is if a monk decided to hand copy it and bind it himself. When the only way to reproduce your painting was to have someone create a forgery, ownership of the physical copy was all that really mattered. If the only way you could get paid for a song was to sing it at the local tavern, it didn't really matter if you got writing credits.
We've already seen a world where the cooperations that control media production can use any work they want. They carved up artists' works like mobsters dividing up a town and kept all the profits for themselves. Maybe if we lived in a post need, post currency society, you could make an argument for abolishing copyright, but in the system we have, copyright is the only protection artists have against cooperations.
The commoner could not read or write in 1709. Even back then the law was meant for the upper class hence monied interests. So not the opposite at all. Wealthy using the law to protect their profits seems to be what has always happened. Hard to look at this as a some sort of positive for people like you and me.
What you describe is exactly what is happening in the majority of commercial writing nowadays. The corporations still have complete control. Strange how the law didn't change the status quo rather just carved out an exception for wealthy writers to be rent seekers. Once again, anyone without the means would have their work copied with no recourse.
Copying is not a bad thing as it is the foundation of all human culture. Trying to create a artificial system of scarcity perhaps made some sense to commercial interests when publishing cost so much. With the Internet though and our fast past culture it really is a ridiculous concept nowadays.
Once again owning the rights to your work doesn't matter unless a corporation wants to reprint, distribute your material, or in modern times allow you on their platform. Copyright would never stop this.
Even to this day the majority of those who create art don't expect compensation. Most do it for fun as a creative outlet. This obsession with trying to conflate art with profit has always been a lie. Only an extreme minority of people will ever make money from their art. So we are all to bow down to them copying our culture?
They did not create anything in a vacuum and they refuse to recognize this. This is what I mean when I say it is a flawed premise. We don't need to commercialize art to promote it.
We don't need to concentrate wealth for rent seekers and lawyers by creating a system of artificial scarcity. This does not promote the arts or protect them in any meaningful way.
Copyright does not protect the vast majority of artists because they don't need it and if they did would not have the resources or time to access our dubious legal frameworks in a court of law. It is a broken idea turned into a broken system.
First of all, literacy rates were about 70% in 1710, so the average commoner could absolutely read (at least among men, but copyright law isn't to blame for patriarchy). This is about 300 years after the printing press, literacy had gone up.
Second...I just don't know what to say to this anymore. You've created a strawman artist who believes their work is entirely original, even though no artist would claim they had no influences. You're pretending that copyright is an edict that says ideas can never be shared, as though the Public Domain, Creative Commons, and fair use didn't exist, or Substantial Similarity didn't have to be proved (which, by the way, is the reason that Hobbes isn't infringing on Tigger). And worst of all, you're acting like artists who want to be paid for their art are greedy capitalists, not artists that live under capitalism. How is an artist who wants make a living by creating art all day, every day, somehow less worthy than an artist who works 9 to 5 at a crappy job and then does art when they have free time?
You seem to think abolishing copyright will lead to some sort of artists' uptopia, but it's pretty much the opposite. Let's say copyright disappeared tomorrow. First, anyone making a living on Patreon will basically be done. If their videos or podcasts are now public property, there's nothing to stop anyone from uploading their Premium Content to YouTube within minutes of publishing, so no one's going to subscribe. Some of them will keep producing things, but since they'll need a new source of income, they'll definitely produce less.
Then there's the cooperations. They'll gobble up everything they can. Sure, you'll be able to make your own Spider-Man comics, but if any publisher likes them, they'll just sell them, along with any original IP you have. Of course you'll be able to sell them too, but since they can afford more advertising, higher quality printing, and merchandising, they'll out-sell you easily. You'll be lucky it anyone's even seen or heard of your version, even though you're the author. It'd be like trying to compete with Coca-Cola by opening a lemonade stand, and Coke is allowed to use your lemonade recipe.
I'm not saying copyright is being done well now; cooperations have an outsized ability to enforce copyright claims, they've manipulated the law to retain IP for an insane amount of time, and they have far more power in negotiations over licensing and rights than artists do. But your solution to that is, "What if artists had no rights? That would be better!" and I've just...I've run out of ways to react to that. It's truly insane to me.
What creator has been protected by copyright?
Anyone who creates anything? If not for copyright Steam would be a sea of games named Undertale Stardew Valley Elsa Spider-Man
Youre thinking of the google play store
lmao
You would deprive everyone of the joy of playing this game mashup!?
I know you are joking, but honestly we would have a lot better games if we were allowed to openly borrow and build off of other concepts including characters and storylines.
Simply put commercial interests don't produce the best games. Instead of innovative gameplay we get loot boxes and micro transactions.
A great example of this is Pokemon. You know damn well that fans could make a better Pokemon game than Nintendo ever could.
Holy fuck I see some stupid takes posted here but this might be the stupidest.
Literally everyone who's ever written a book, recorded a song, painted a painting, or created any other artwork.
Books and song rights go to the publisher. Graphic artists generally dont own their art they make money from, I.E. illustrations or concept art for various things like shows, movies, games.
First of all, no, publishers don't necessarily own the copyright. Most authors do a licensing deal with a publisher, but they retain the copyright to their work. My understanding is that music industry contracts vary a lot more, since music is usually more collaborative, but lots of artists still own the rights to their songs. But even if that were true, artists being forced to sell their rights to cooperations isn't an issue with copyright, it's an issue with capitalism. It's like blaming America's shitty healthcare on doctors instead of a for-profit system controlled by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
A licensing deal for rights to make money off an intellectual property. I.E. a way to use their wealth to profit even more off something they didnt make. Music industry has fun examples of musicians having to rerecord songs because an ex-record label still owned rights to the original. So there's situations where a musician entirely created and recorded a song and isnt allowed to sell that recording. And authors and musicians are the closest to owning their work they make a living off of. Any kind of industry visual artist has no ownership of anything.
Copyright is an issue with capitalism. It only exists for wealthy to profit off of.
I've run out of ways to tell you that's not correct. The explicit purpose of the copyright law in the constitution is to allow creators to profit from their work. If you're arguing that we should live in a pure communist society, where the products of all labor, including intellectual property, belong to community, fine, but we don't live in a communist utopia. We live in a capitalist hellscape, and you're looking at one of the only protections artists have, seeing how it's been exploited by capitalism, and claiming the protection is the problem. It's like looking at the minimum wage, seeing how cooperations have lobbied Congress to keep it so low it's now starvation wage, and coming to the conclusion that the minimum wage needs to be abolished.
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.
Consider it a catch all term for "copying intellectual property". Patents, copyrights, trademarks, its different words for the same idea.
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
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.
Pokemon: The innovative RPG where you couldn't even walk diagonally until generation 6...
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.
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.
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).
50 years.. 5 maybe. If you have not earned back your investment by then you are just squatting on it.
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 ?
I still think if copyright laws weren’t so oppressive, 50 years would be fair (And still a huge improvement from the current situation).
Maybe have it in tiers or something? First 10 years: full copyright - until 30: similar products allowed, but no blatant reproduction - until 50: reproduction allowed as long as it’s not for-profit - post 50: public domain?
Humm..., i don't think this scheme would work out in practice. The definitions of several concepts are fuzzy, and therefore can be circumvented or challenged or abused by all sides of the equation. What is a 'similar product' that is allowed after 30 years (and therefore what is a 'dissimilar product' that would be forbidden before), how would a non-profit that just pays high salaries to its managers fare between the marks of 30 and 50 years (and just gives some little money to research or charity). And again, why give artists and creative companies so much more time of IP protection than we give STEM inventors and companies time in patents (this random site claims patents last 15 to 20 years only) ?
They are, but it’s not like they’re very definite nowadays either.
I’d say “similar product” is anything that doesn’t try to pass off as the original one, and is mechanically different enough. Palworld for example, or all the other Pokéclones that popped up in recent years.
They wouldn’t, in that period I’d allow stuff like piracy or free cultural events, stuff like that. Obviously the copyright holder would still be able to profit off of their own products, but everyone else would have to ask them to do so.
Because those are things that humanity needs to progress. I do think they could be longer in a different way, like “they can be used by anyone without consent from the inventor, but they need to pay a small percentage in royalties” or something like that, just to ensure they have a permanent source of income that’s enough to live off. I’m not knowledgeable enough about that to talk though, so I can’t really answer that question without going into baseless speculations.
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
As an artist 20-50 depending on context is where I'm hovering. It is very hard to define.
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.
If we’re talking PvP, battling has constantly evolved through new abilities, even without gimmicks the way the game is played changed a lot through the years.
In single player they also changed a lot of stuff since gen 4, although the positive changes were mostly in gen 5/6 and the later ones like wild areas and the switch to “””open world””” were… not as well received.
Well, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree. To me, most of the updates have been set dressing, not significant changes to the formula or gameplay. But I guess that's a matter of opinion, not fact.
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.
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.
Want to make something, the people eho want it pay to make it happen, once it's done and paid for, it belongs to everyone. I rather live in the star citizen dystopia than the Disney vampire dystopia.
Making an unlimited reproducible resource artificially scarce for 160 years is really fucking evil parasiticism.
I dont think anyone here thinks that the ridiculous terms on current IP laws make sense (at least I havent seen anyone defending them), but there is a big difference between a short term of 5-10 years for you to get the earned benefits of an innovation you created and zero protection where a larger more well funded company can swoop in copy your invention and bury you in marketing so they get the reward.
Intellectual property has been abused beyond recovery, we need an entirely new paradigm. Duration of right is just a tiny part of it. Any system that turns the infinite resource into an artificial scarcity is fundamentally evil.
So you tax the fuck out of them and fund invention though schools and unis. But the fact companies won't is not a sure thing.. it just means they will be more pickey.
Even when it doesn't, it becomes its eventual outcome.
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.
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.
You know Nintendo is just weird.
They file a patent lawsuit against an indie game, just because someone finally got popular. But why don't thay sue digimon or blue dragon, and while their at it, howtotrain a dragon while their at it.
This whole thing is just weird.
The really odd but is being unaware of which patents they're allegedly infringing on
That should be part of the filing shouldn't it?
Also are they going to sue Square Enix for Dragon Quest Monsters while they're at it?
"I'm suing you!"
"What for?"
"It's a surprise 🎉🥳🎊"
Maybe.
😂👌🏻
Those are too old, I guess. The lots of Pokemon patents started about 2020.
Well, they waited for Pocketpair to become big enough to give them money, and not too big to risk losing against them.
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.
Good. Kick Nintendo in the dick.
They're gonna fight it, but not for the fans. They're doing it for themselves. They're a company too.
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.
Patenting vague game mechanics is egregious. This would be like Insomniac patenting "character runs around with a big gun" and subsequently filing a lawsuit against Nintendo for Splatoon, because both Ratchet and the Inklings run around with big guns.
I don't play this game, but would love to donate to help the fight. Nintendo is out of control with their bullshit.
I stand by the indie studios. We have proof again and again that indies just want to reach their public.
Kick his ass Pocketpair
Oh shit here we go again with your rectangle looks too much like my rectangle.
Poor Nintendo really need the win :( /s
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.
Is Pocketpair Indie? Didn't they just make a new company with Sony Music and Aniplex?
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.
Patenting things like this that are obviously unpatentable ideas rather than actual inventions is unfortunately a necessity for defensive purposes in a world where companies will do anything in order to kill competition except risk competing with them since that isn't guaranteed by throwing money at it. Enforcing a bunch of patents against a company with fewer liquid assets is a guaranteed way to beat a competitor with money alone since winning the suit isn't the goal, only draining the assets of the competitor. Sucks that this is considered a valid business practice now.
They would prob do smth like this to tux kart
That being said, I don't like Nintendo & their Ninjas, but PocketPair is not innocent here.
This is not their only ripoff. For their next project, they choose to ripoff Hollow Knight. (At least they are consistent I guess?).
They also abandoned an unfinished early access game (This game is 4 years into Early Access).
Their CEO is also a crypto bro and said himself that he does not necessarily care about originality, if it means, that he can reach more people (and by extension earn more money).
Just to name a few.
It shocks me just the amount of people rallying behind Palworld SOLEY just to "stick it to the big corp"At worse its blind rage and ignoranceedit: watch me get pelted with downvotes.I was wrong and I will take my L for it✌
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
IDGAF about Palworld as a game, personally. I've never played it and I don't plan to. But that doesn't make Nintendo's behavior not bullshit, and I still hope the Palworld developers win this battle.
Yeah, you did not read any of the articles about this or understand the suit.
Nintendo is putting this forth as a patent issue, not a copyright issue. I presume this is because even they are smart enough to realize that they would probably lose a copyright challenge. However, the patents they are attempting to claim are clearly bullshit. They're just doing this as a bludgeon to bully a company they don't like, most likely in the hopes that the sheer cost of litigation will break them.
If they were going to propose that some of the monster models from Palworld originated as Pokemon model rips, they could arguably have a leg to stand on. But that's not what they're saying. The outcome of this case is not going to have any impact on copyright issues. Rather, the potential result is much more dangerous -- it would confirm that a big company can just come in late and retroactively lay claim to large swathes of mechanical concepts that have already widely in use in a particular industry for decades.
Wait.
so this whole situation isnt about Model rips???
I will respectfully shit the fuck up then and delete my comments. Im compulsive, and judging by what everyone else was saying read all if this as
A. Fuck nintendo cus they bad
B. The patent is that they ripped their models.
It is not about model rips. Check your inbox to my other reply to another of your comments.
I did, I deleted/edited my comments (◍•ᴗ•◍)👍🏾
im a stinky dumb dumb who didnt read the lawsuit. Forgive me im impulsive (u-u)✌
Good, then. Fuck IP laws.
Why tf would you even say that, everybody deserve the right to own some shit bruh. I fuck with fangames n all that but stealing assets and profiting from them with no consent is fucked.
How much is Nintendo paying you to be their mouth piece?
Have you seen the kind of patents Nintendo are trying to get?
Here is an example :
You can check them out for yourself
patents assigned to the pokemon company
So calm the fuck down with your chatGPT which is a whole different situation.
Bitch I pirate all my nintendo games wtf are you on 😭😭😭
Their sueing in Patents. Not how similar it looks.I dont see this as any different than ChatGBT generating me an essay similar to one that already exists, the only difference is it changed some of it. Thats plagiarism(if not then its just wrong).Theres even proof of them using THEIR MODELS and altering them. You cant do that shit without being transparent about it. How hard is that to graspIgnore this and read the edited post. thank you.
What do you think I linked dipshit?
With ridiculous patent like that, Nintendo could sue pretty much any companies.
ChatGPT is scraping copyrighted material, not patents.
Nintendo is suing for patent infringement.
Read the edited post 😭 I was mislead.
Your wall of text doesn't make sense, contradicts itself and mixes up cases. PocketPair was sued for patent infringement, not intelectual property. If they did commit intelectual property / copyright infringement, you bet they'd be sued before even releasing the game.
That being said, this angry wall of text implies that you might need help with mental health. I'm sure there is a beautiful human being underneath all that, so please, consider talking to therapist.
Did I not already just say that I admitted to being wrong beforehand???
And of course I got mental health issues you dipstick IM AUTISTIC lmfao. I'm not finna hide that fact either. I'll admit when I'm wrong and be done with it! Id appreciate you not bringing my mental health into this shit thanks✌ I cant always control what I do but owning up to my mistakes is the best I can do. You playing me off like I need therapy is a shit move.
As much as I don't like Nintendo's business practises to be fair in this case many of the pals are straight up copies of Pokémon with one thing changed
Definitely a good case for Nintendo here, not sure this is a winnable battle even without the overwhelming force of Nintendo's ninjas
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
I mean, Nintendo isn't typically the bad guy though, right? And palworld is a pretty clear like 1:1 rip, so....
I mean, good to challenge the "big" guy generally, but wrong target here specifically and weak case, right?
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Right. I just feel like they'll find it even harder to successfully sue over patents, especially if the patents are fairly generic. The defendants just need to find prior art that predates Nintendo's patents. It's weird that Nintendo aren't saying which patents are being violated.
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.
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.
Upvoted for Monster Sanctuary. Outstanding game that deserves so much more recognition!
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.
Copied characters is not what the lawsuit is about. It's like nobody 'defending' the lawsuit has read anything about it.
First paragraph of the article, dude. Patent infringement is not IP.
girl, I'm not a lawyer, i don't know the intricacies of IP vs patent law and whether you can patent a character model/design.
Then why are you trying to say what's going on?
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.
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.
Just going to share this for all the palworld blatantly ripped off pokemon people
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.
Most of those are just based on the same real-world animal.
How DARE you also put a wolf in your game!
So it was wrong for Nintendo to do that?
It was wrong for Nintendo to copy someone, but it's not wrong for Pocketpair to copy someone. That's what you are saying?
More like "it's not wrong to take inspiration from something else".
I don't disagree with that, but the line that is drawn between inspiration and imitation is blurred and the courts will probably rule in favor of those with the most money, unfortunately.
It's not wrong for either to draw inspiration from the other. It's the hypocrisy that's wrong.
You're so close and yet: Whoosh
You can either explain your position, or you can be a pretentious ass. Like I said before, I'm often wrong. I'm willing to hear your point, but you refuse to make it and act pompous.
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?
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.
Marshall has copyright on his lyrics, you just said yourself patents and copyright are different things.
Sufficiently different rip-offs that don't confuse consumers as being the original should be legal. They already are as far as copyright is concerned.
Many design patents should never have been registered, and should lose when defended in court. Design trademarks are a third similar issue.
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.
I wouldn't argue that the game play is different.
… have you played either game? Cuz… how would you not argue that? One is a turn based RPG the other is an FPS.
I just said that I would not argue that. That means that I think the game play is different.
Ah, misunderstood thanks.
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.
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.
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.
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.
U wot
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.