Are the SMT games not on Nintendo’s radar? Like, does Id get to sue anyone who makes a FPS?
Its hard to sue shin megami tensei when megami tensei came out first. Also Nintendo is apparently sueing for patent infringment and im curious which patent they are suing for cause most of the og patents should be expired by now. The best guess I’ve seen is maybe patent related to either legends game.
That’s some Tauros-shit (sue me). I hope the Japanese legal system can see that.
It’ll be hard to see that when their vision will be blocked by stacks of yen.
Bad move by Nintendo. This game was on track to be forgotten. Pocketpair forgot about it months ago, but the players were starting to catch on to that. Now there will be a resurgence of interest.
This game was on track to be forgotten
Game is just outside the top 50 on steam and had a major content release at the end of June. This ‘game is dying’-because-it-didn’t-indefinitely-sustain-player-counts-in-the-top-10 meme is dumb as hell.
Well statistically speaking like only 1% of their peak player count at launch was still playing the game.
It doesn’t do bad on the top ranking out of all games on Steam, but it didn’t do great anymore either.
It’s a pocketpair thing though as far as “abandoning” a game. As a craftopia player I know all too well how they start off and then drag their feet with minimal input after a certain time. It’s one thing I was worried about with palworld before it even came out. :/
They are not going to abandon a success this big
Nah all that gamer malice will be dropped at the tip of a hat with a Switch 2 announcement sadly. Pocketpair will be bled of money into bankruptcy and Nintendo will win.
It is morally right to pirate Nintendo games.
Sony is a shareholder and Microsoft has also supportted PocketPair, it will be interesting to see how that works out with Nintendo.
The steam deck didn’t exist when the switch came out, it innovated and filled a niche that turned out to be a severely underserved segment of the gaming market.
Nintendo struck gold with the switch, and a ‘switch 2’ likely isn’t going to cut it.
It’s not like Nintendo is infallible, remember the console before the switch was the Wii u.
Fuck nintendo. I really hope this blows up in their face like their stupid fucking “King Kong is dk” lawsuit. Fucking bullies. The irony that they blatantly stole the designs of pokemon from dragon quest but are butthurt at palworld for pAtEnT vIoLaTiOn is gross. So glad I just pirate their shit.
Wasn’t universal the plaintiff in the king kong case?
Yup, my bad. Still, fuck nintendo
Yep.
Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo Co., Ltd.
Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo Co., Ltd. was a 1983 legal case heard by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York by Judge Robert W. Sweet. In their complaint, Universal Studios alleged that Nintendo’s video game Donkey Kong was a trademark infringement of King Kong, the plot and characters of which Universal claimed as their own. Nintendo argued that Universal had themselves proven that King Kong’s plot and characters were in the public domain in Universal City Studios, Inc. v. RKO General, Inc.
Haven’t seen this meme for a while.
It took a while to catch up
Stop buying Nintendo. They can’t create quality new IP’s, just rehashes over and over, at this point she ain’t got a peach, bowser mashed it into a pie, and Mario’s eating it for breakfast, lunch, an after dinner snack.
You lost me in the second half.
The problem is they’re such a large and recognizable company that they could probably switch to making and selling malware and everyone would still buy it without thinking twice. Humanity is full of idiots.
I will continue to never give Nintendo any of my money on account of their litigiousness.
why is Nintendo going after pokemon with guns and not that one game that popped up on the steam home page (I disabled NSFW tags) that’s literally just 2d Pokemon but if you beat the trainer you fuck them.
Because, like many, you can’t remember the name of that game, but just about everyone knows about Palworld.
Only surprise here is “Why did it take so long?”
It’s kinda surprising they didn’t sue over the much less legally grey IP infringements.
Gotta wait until palworld has made a bucket of money for Nintendo to point at, claim damages, then try to take.
Fuck you Nintendo.
Had to wait until no one gave a shit about Palworld anymore
Wait until they make all the money that was to be made on their game.
Then yoink all of that money.
That and it also would have been a lot more bad press for Nintendo had they taken action when the game was first popular
Not that Nintendo’s legal team has ever had an issue with bad press
Congrats Nintendo, I’m done with you. SNES, Gameboy, N64, GameCube, Wii, Switch, and now done for good. Cantankerous old dinosaur of a company that has lost touch with the world.
Yeah. I love their games and liked their hardware, but I just can’t morally justify sending money into Nintendo anymore.
adieu
Unsurprising. Flew a little too close to the sun there fellas.
Patent infringement is a curious angle. Do we know what specific patent(s) they’re claiming here?
Anybody who’s played palworld knows the game is nothing like pokemon. What’s next, are they going to claim they are the only company who can make games with 4 legged animals?
I’m sorry, it’s mostly humanoid furries now with the starter Pokémon…
Nintendo is making a case that the use of capsules to capture and carry creatures is their IP.
Does patent mean something else there?
Dragon Ball was using capsules to store things long before Pokemon did. And Dragon Ball Z, which ended in Japan in '96 had already done storing 'creatures in capsules. Saibamen for one. And after the Saiyan saga Bulma puts her dead friends in coffin capsules.
So Akira Toriyama did it before Pokemon.
Yeah, they should absolutely argue that storing things, alive or not, in capsules has been used in numerous movies and shows and that the patent is invalid. Big corporations make tons of patents all the time just in case and then see if they hold up in court later, such as Nintendo with their pokeballs in this case. They still don’t know whether Palworld is an infringement or not
Also, Iron Bands of Bilarro in DnD 5e, but I’m not sure how far back the history of that item goes. DnD 3.5 had Iron Flask that works kinda the same, but Iron Bands is more similar to a Pokeball.
I played it and I felt like it borrowed a lot of elements from Pokemon. It wasn’t Pokemon, but you can’t deny it took like 90% of their inspiration from Pokemon and then added guns to it.
Which, incidentally, would probably past legal muster. You can get pretty close to the source material, and as long as it’s your own custom art, it’s not infringement.
That said, lawyers can send a C&D letter for anything. Doesn’t mean it will hold up in court, but they’re betting the target won’t want to pay that kind of money to fight it.
That’s like any FPS game ripping off any other FPS game.
Fight, capture, tame, train, breed animals.
Base building, research tree, enemy raids.
Exploration, resource gathering, survival.I don’t think Nintendo has a monopoly on enslaving animals.
I know what you mean, tho. It’s always described as “Pokémon with guns and 3xE gameplay”.
But does Nintendo actually have a case that will hold up in courts?
Pocketpair seems confident they can defend against it. So either they have done their research and are up for a fight. Or they (think they) are calling Nintendo’s bluff.
But Nintendo has a whole pack of lawyers.Unfortunately there are no details on what the patents being infringemed upon are, just that they relate to “Pocket Monster”.
I don’t believe Nintendo will hold up in court.
But it’s the combination of it all, aside from guns and concentration camp levels of slavery, that make it look like they straight up copied ideas from Pokemon.
It’s true Nintendo doesn’t hold the specific style or gameplay mechanics, and that’s where I think they’ll fail to win a case, but just saying it’s just so blatantly obvious where the inspiration comes from.
I don’t understand. Everyone, literally EVERYONE was calling this game pokemon with guns when it released, so why are people mad that the makers of pokemon are suing? We all saw it from the start
The comparison is valid, but doesn’t mean it infringes on any patent.
Otherwise, FromSoftware would sue the shit out of every soulslike out there.
Lots of games are also called Roguelike. Based off a game called Rogue. The makers of Rogue do not get to sue the makers of Hades.
Pets that fight for you, including being able to store them for portable carry has been done by many other games, including Ark. In fact, playing Palworld made me compare it more to Ark than Pokemon: base building, automation, catching dinos/animals/monsters of different varieties for different uses. Some can fly, some run, some can be used as parachutes. Some help automate actions at base. There is a tech tree unlocked by leveling, starting with primitive weapons and moving on to guns and higher caliber guns. Blueprints are common in ark for higher quality crafts to build at, you guessed it, crafting benches.
Collecting wood, stone, metals, etc. Also the animal assistants can help there too, but only certain ones. Also, Ark has cryopods for storing your animals/dinosaurs. You even throw em to release.
If they had exactly Pikachu or something it’s one thing, but similar games are just part of the business.
But we’re not talking about a game type here. You can agree that this is a dumb lawsuit, but you have to be honest. Palworld was marketed online as pokemon with guns. It’s not just a similar style but almost identically copies the characters in Pokemon. You can make a stealth action political thriller video game, but if the main character looks just like solid Snake and is called “Viper”, you gonna get sued.
Really? Why does Deathstroke and Deadpool both exist? One is DC, one is Marvel, and Deadpool pretty much started as an expy. Slade Wilson and Wade Wilson. You’re arguing from a place of what feels like it should be wrong, yet your fake example has been done in the real world and they got away with it.
This happens so many times in industries they can often just argue parody. In fact, changing a name slightly is classic parody to avoid being sued. Japan in particular often just bleeps out a syllable or forgets a character in the name.
I guess you must know more than lawyers huh.
I think it’s understandable why they sue them (I doubt it holds up in court though), it’s just horrible business practice because Nintendo is too lazy to actually innovate and do something creative for a change, instead of sitting on franchises like that and do fuck all with it, only releasing repetitive piss-poor games based on the exact same concept they invented like 30+ years ago.
The problem is people will still buy Pokemon, even if they’re absolute garbage games. So Nintendo won’t change it either.
I think it’s an issue with Japanese game companies in general. I’ve been complaining about Capcom forever. Megaman 11 was a side scroller. I’m a massive mega man fan and I like the side scroll. But it’s 2024. Can we try something new? I would love a ratchet and Clank style, open world 3d mega man where you go to the different areas of the city and take down the bosses. Also games like monster hunter, are so janky and look 10 years out of date, and most Capcom games look outdated
Just because it has a resemblance to pokemon doesn’t make it pokemon. The gameplay is completely different.
So you don’t catch “pals” by weakening them and throwing a ball at them?
Palworld is an open world survival crafting factory/base building game, that happens to borrow the catching mechanic from Pokemon (who borrowed it from Shin Megami Tensei).
Where is the line drawn between borrowing and copying?
If you can’t draw inspiration from other games, then the gaming industry as a whole is in trouble.
It’s one thing to draw inspiration, and another to directly copy the art style and mechanics of an established franchise to piggyback on their brand recognition.
Copying would imply a one to one duplication. The catching system in Palworld differs in multiple ways from the Pokemon system. I think that’s enough to call it borrowing and not copying.
They said patent violations, not copyright, so it is about some sort of mechanic or system and not the pals or any specific designs. I’m guessing the thrown ball capture system, since it seems no other developers have published anything using that specifically.
They shouldnt be able to sue for that cause a patent only lasts for 20 years in Japan. I saw some guesses that there might be a patent for one of their legends games that they are suing for.
Actually ARK does this with cryopods.
World of Warcraft’s pet capture system was actually very similar to Pokemon, including better traps with better chances of success.
World of Final Fantasy is as close to a Pokemon rip off as you can get, and they didn’t get sued.
Edit. And now I think about it, the mobile game of Rick and Morty was very much a reskin of Pokemon.
