That was my point.

I take it you were never aware of The Sims and its “stuff” expansions?

DLC existed in some form long before digital-only releases existed. We just used to call them expansions, and people used to buy them in droves.

Edit: All those downvoting me clearly weren’t alive during the shareware boom, or during EA’s early attempts to extort players for the pleasure of having a potted plant in The Sims. This outrage over DLC is just an echo chamber of angry gamers who aren’t the target audience anyway.

This isn’t a team shooter. It’s a multiplayer Pokemon-style open-world RPG.

My son is also named Bort.

Horace Goes Skiing

I too like going fishing in my underwear.

I just need you to say the word woke now, and I’ll have completed my incel bingo card.

What you mean is making games how you want them to be, not the overwhelming majority of gamers. Stop thinking everything is an agenda designed to limit your freedom.

Cosy games are meant to be relaxing, almost stress-free experiences that revolve around repetition and reward playing them in small doses each day. I can understand why hardcore gamers don’t like them, but at the same time they’re not made for them.

We don’t know which patent they’re being sued over, as that information hasn’t been made public yet. We can only guess at this point, but it’s obviously a patent that’s intrinsic to the Pokemon franchise and a reasonable guess would be the capture mechanic. The fact is that Nintendo believe they have a case.

If you think “throwing a ball” is a patentable (or even copyrightable) mechanic, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

Again, the mechanic is capturing a creature by weakening them and throwing a ball at them. Not just throwing a ball. I’m not suggesting that The Pokemon Company can or has patented throwing a ball. You’re being deliberately disingenuous with your replies, implying that I’m saying something I’m not.

Some pals are similar to Pokemon, sure, but a lot are quite distinct.

Again, they have taken recognisable parts of Pokemon and mixed them together. None of the creatures I’ve seen are entirely new designs, but rather hybrids of existing, well known Pokemon.

Of course it was intentional to make a game in the same genre as Pokemon, with similar mechanics.

They didn’t make a game in the same genre as Pokemon. They made a clone of Ark, replacing the dinosaurs with Pokemon and copying the capture mechanic.

I understand fans of the game defending them, but outright lying to defend them and ignoring obvious facts does nothing to forward the conversation. It’s fine to admit that a thing you like has flaws, and admit that those flaws need addressing.

That would require giving the developers money, which I’m not going to do. I’ve watched over an hour of gameplay, which I feel gives a pretty good idea of the mechanics. You still haven’t told me what I said that was incorrect, which makes me think there isn’t anything.

So enlighten me, as you’re obviously the expert in the room. What have I said that’s incorrect?

I’ve seen enough gameplay to be able to draw informed conclusions, and I’d rather not reward the developers financially for their sketchy practices anyway. There are much better survival crafting games out there which have their own unique art style and mechanics.

It seems like you’re just willfully ignoring my actual meaning to defend the game.

Yes, creature capturing existed prior to Pokemon, but not capturing by weakening the creature and throwing a ball at them.

Yes, cell-shaded graphics existed before Pokemon, but Palworld explicitly copies the style of creature design from Pokemon, mixing and matching parts to make something that is different enough to not be a direct copy of any one design, but similar enough that a casual observer would be hard pressed to tell them apart. There’s a good reason that pretty much every review of the game refers to it as “Pokemon with guns.”

The developers knew exactly what they were doing, so to claim it wasn’t intentional is disingenuous at best.

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.

Where is the line drawn between borrowing and copying?

So you don’t catch “pals” by weakening them and throwing a ball at them?