The outrage was just a very vocal minority known as rabid Nintendo fanboys. Most of that outrage was centered on them “using the same models” and the guy who released the comparisons admitted the models aren’t even close, he fabricated the comparisons and no one ever bothered to fact check him. This outcome is a win for them, because all hail Nintendo.
The best part is: All these “fuck Nintendo” memes are rewarding Nintendo.
One of the requirements for filing a patent lawsuit is that you have to prove that the patent infringement caused you to suffer damages. Go ahead. Tell the judge Palworld caused Nintendo zero damage. Its not like Palworld made half a billion dollars from a mechanic they removed AND made provocative public statements AFTER the lawsuit was filed.
Except Palworld didn’t harm Nintendo at all. It’s a competitor, not a replacement. All the damages suffered by Nintendo were inflicted by them themselves. If they had just taken Palworld as a lesson and actually improved their next game, rather than fabricating “patents” after the fact and suing the living hell out of Pocketpair, everyone would have applauded them for it.
And they removed the mechanic because they were forced to, after Nintendo filed the patent for it after the fact. (Something which I think should be illegal, by the way.)
Really? Nintendo has been going around making memes about “Pikachu with a gun” for the past year? And Nintendo forced Palworld to sign a deal with Sony to create and air an anime? And Nintendo is at fault for not disregarding patent law?
Your response is exactly why this lawsuit is happening in the first place.
It’s not even a competitor. Nobody decided not to play Pokemon because Palworld. But personally, I have decided not to play Pokemon anymore because Pokemon. Seriously how many times must I engage with the selfie stick before I crack?
OK, IANAL, but something needs to be clarified here. Being a competitor and earning half a billion dollars is not a legal definition for causing somebody damage. If it were, competitors could not exist, they’d simply be sued out of existence, so even as an amateur I’m exceedingly confident in that statement. The only situation in which you can claim something caused you damage under a patent infringement is if somebody provably infringed on a patent. These qualifications are inseperable and must be proven together, you can’t just use one to prove the other. The same goes for provocative statements,… Read more »
No, I did not. Patent infringement requires that actual damage be shown as a consequence of illegitimately using the patent. You can’t use income loss from legitimate competition in order to prove patent infringement. Slander is not free speech, so where’s the court case and verdict that Palworld slandered Nintendo? Source please. You don’t get to just call things slander if you “find them provocative” so kindly prove slander before you expect anyone to accept it. This specific situation isn’t a US court case yet, but you are talking about patent infringement. Patent infringement is part of US Patent law.… Read more »
Go back any further and we’re talking about the Epic of Gilgamesh having the prior art claim because Ishtar stomped her feet and had Daddy summon the Bull of Heaven to ruin Gilgamesh’s home city
Nintendo’s patent lawyers must have balls bigger than the moon to claim prior art over the Sumerians
Why I don’t disagree with the general opinion wrt Nintendo’s legal practices, the hearsay on this one has gotten a bit out of control. I recommend reading it for yourself, but the gist is that the new patent seeks to claim Pokemon Legends-style gameplay. Summons, that move on their out on the overworld, that enter battle by touching enemies, with battles that the player controls. Most creature summoner games wouldn’t be subject to the patent.
It still sucks tho, ’cause I’d like to see more games with Legends-style gameplay.
Lily
23 days ago
There is no way this will actually fly. I am assuming they will use to hassle and threaten a couple of companies for some concessions, maybe scare some people off, and then it is going to end up in court and thrown out.
sadly it would be tried under japan law, which, if I remember everything, is guilty until proven innocent. I’ve heard (not bothered to google too deep) its so complex its got its own language.
Agreed. Such a patent is likely a lawsuit away from vapor, given all the prior art for at least a century for kids games, much longer for things like poker.
Patent law feels like one of the most easily broken things out there.
I 3D print a lot and apparently a company claimed a patent on brick-layer stacking for 3D prints which would’ve allowed them to become significantly stronger. The patent somehow go through despite providing no prior art and citing incorrect documents and prior patents. There’s a big lawsuit going on to get it overturned because it should’ve expired by now.
The patent office doesn’t really test patents, it doesn’t have the capacity. It tends to grant them and lets people fight out these issues in court only if they arise.
That’s why people get away with patenting frivolous things all the time, remember years back somebody patented playing with your cat using a laserpointer as “methods to exercise your cat”?
I know one guy who actually read the patent. It’s his claim that the patent isn’t what all the articles claim it is. It’s much more specific. It’s about a specific method of getting on a summoned mount (ala specifically the bird in Pokemon Legends Arceus).
That as such it’ll probably fly, but partially because there are workarounds that seem less like what they did in Legends Arceus.
Only if the summoning mechanic involves throwing a ball which was also part of the claimed mechanic that the reporting conveniently leaves out.
ALWAYS read the actual filings.
BakaGrappler
23 days ago
Okay, hear me out. Nintendo and Hasbro, going all out in crazy court BS over D&D Wizard Familiars. Nobody wins except the people who bought tickets and popcorn.
Can it be rendered like a summoning battle where they throw lawbooks at each other and yell out the number or title of the law they’re invoking, and when the book lands a page appears wielding a quill and attacks the opposite guy’s quill-wielding lawpage in an epic quill-fight?
Darkhorse
23 days ago
I love the source has been added I hate how that site is chewing up my data with commercial movies, every few words is another ad, it took a long time explaining it was a curious case while not going into details, and when it finally got to the point, I got a “do you want to subscribe to our newsletter” full screen. I’m sure Nintendo’s claim on summoning companions was horrid, but right in front of me is an affront of the internet where they keep trying to ram more adds down my throat. Why isn’t there more pushback… Read more »
I know you are smarter than that. I used to buy PCGamer magazine. In the 90’s, or early aughts. Haven’t bought one literally in years. No magazine sales, no ads. PC Magazine was completely ad generated. The only difference is that now, pop up ads are constantly being re-programmed to be as obtrusive and non-skippable as possible. Why? How else is pcgamer.com supposed to stay in business. Are you willing to ‘subscribe’ to the web site for your gamer news? Neither am I. So they pay their salaries with ads, just like they’ve always done. If all online ads were… Read more »
If a site needs to use so many ads to stay in business I would say that it has no business at all. Try another way to get money or stop doing what you’re doing. I’m not saying to ban ads, I’m saying this amount is not user friendly and I’m surprised it still gets business. Why wouldn’t people leave after the first paragraph like I normally do? Paragraph after paragraph of barely extra information with mote ads and videos than I care to count.
The sad truth is that this works. Even if you don’t actively look at the ad, while displayed, your brain will subconsciously register it and affect future decisions.
Only thing you can do is block these things. That may mean you won’t be able to properly read some websites anymore, which is fair enough IMHO. Usually if I find a site too dysfunctional due to my browser and privacy security, I also find that I didn’t really care enough anyway so that it doesn’t bother me not to see the site.
There’s plenty of pushback against these practices. It’s called using an ad blocker. Alternatively, do what you said you usually do, leave the site if the ads make the article impossible to read. They can talk all day about needing ads to make money to make the site keep running, but if their site is so miserable because of so many ads that people don’t want to visit anyway, their site is dead regardless.
I find an ad blocker to be a strange way to go about it. Ads are still a legitimate business. How do you think this comic stays afloat? It barely does if Tim’s comments on it are any indication. If many people then use an ad blocker to get his creative content for free that’s piracy. Tim has experimented with more ads and once the site became unreadable. Instead of pushing through, he’s been looking at alternatives. The site might go behind a paywall. If everyone would donate the cost of a beer he wouldn’t need to run ads, but… Read more »
I know you can, but how many people do so? They need to want it, and then whitelist it. People can also pay a small amount per year via Patreon or similar to support. If you see the pushback it got when it was suggested that the whole of CAD moves behind a paywall I wonder how many actually do so. People want their content free of money and free of ads, which severely undercuts the viability of many websites. Having the option to turn it off is by no means a solution. How many websites do people frequent and… Read more »
Those are all fair questions. I frequently find myself seeing reminders about whitelisting a site, or a request for support. If I find the site important I’ll actually respond to it and undertake action to support it. Frequently I don’t. Some people will rear on their hind legs at that, claiming that I’m freeloading off somebody’s hard work… but I’m fine if my kind of choices cause sites to vanish. People have developed this idea that ad-based free content is normal, the only way it could ever be. I’m fine going back to a world of paid subscriptions. I find… Read more »
Michael Delaney
23 days ago
Applying for a 20 year patent on a 30 year old game, is ridiculous.
Nintendo is pretty much patent trolling at this point… the silliest thing is it just reminds me of Apple and Samsung who were patent trolling each other for a decade with “UI patents” until they both lost and only the lawyers made money.
Rufusstan
23 days ago
It wouldn’t happen in the first place here in the UK for 2 main reasons.
1). Its very difficult to get a patent for software except in unusual circumstances.
2). More importantly the research into the validity of a patent is done in house. Before the patent is granted.
Apparently in the US, a patent can be granted after minimal research (like does a similar patent already exist). After that its down to the courts
The US Patent Office granted about 375,000 patents last year. They rejected more than 2,000,000. They have a backlog of over a million pending review. The courts have found that it is unconstitutional to take too long to grant a patent. This all means that some stupid patents slip though.
But the UK isn’t exactly better – In 2018, they granted a patent on collaboration software allowing developers in different locations to work together. If this sounds like 40 year old technology, it’s because it is.
Acheron
22 days ago
Allowing this sort of patent to be issued is mind-blowing. Yeah, Nintendo absolute came up with the idea of gladiatorial combat, cockfighting, and a zillion other similar situations. This is complete garbage.
What’s worse is that yes, a large company can fight them on it, but the expense and effort in doing so will blow away any small dev that even thinks about it.
Alcor
22 days ago
Nintendo has been evil since they started shutting down fan projects. Y’all should’ve known it would lead to this.
Phire
22 days ago
Yeah. Nintendo can Eff off for this crap.
This is what happens when money can buy your way through court.
Eodyne
22 days ago
You’ve gotta read the actual documents any time the media reports anything legal. Because they will ALWAYS leave out important context to generate outrage and therefore traffic.
In this case it’s that the patent ALSO includes “throwing a ball” to summon as part of the claimed mechanic.
So it’s not a patent on “summoning monsters to fight for the player” it’s “summoning monsters, by throwing a ball, to fight for the player”
Which is still overly broad. Spherical objects, such as flash or smoke pellets or even eggs, have been used to display “summoning” or “teleporting” in fiction for as long as I can remember. If they specified the type of ball so that it is explicitly recognizable in form or function as a pokeball, that could be narrow enough but ANY ball? Nope.
J.M.
22 days ago
Reminds me of Games workshop trying to sue people who used the term ‘space marine’ or ‘Warhammer’. To include books written before 40K and Battletech Warhammer mechs.
Eh these type of patent abusion is not really new thing. I’m more surprised that someone in patent office approved this one. Software patenting is something to despise for, even Sony and Microsoft practices such thing. Sony seems to be a least passive using them now but if you actually followed their past, it’s all about corporations imago tactics and they play it well. After all they did hinder playstation 1 emulator community, by getting their hands on Bleem source code and Virtual Game Station (VGS) assets, after they bleed out their money by suing them. Sony lost the fight… Read more »
Phaet
22 days ago
I actually never played any pokemon games. I only know pokemons from memes. Never got curious engough.
Phil B.
22 days ago
Well guess they gotta add Dragon Warrior: Monsters, Digimon, Monster Rancher, and about 3 dozen other video game and intellectual IPs to the lawsuit then, absolutely ridiculous.
Kasaix
22 days ago
It’s embarrassing how butthurt Nintendo is over Palworld’s success.
Gamer
22 days ago
The more I learn about patents on video game mechanics, the less I wonder why more good games dont come out. These companies literally will buy a good idea, then sit on it to boost Whale Hunting style Ideas instead in games, or sell suboptimal versions of their own idea because there is no competition in the space to make them better. Oh, you made a better Pokemon game? We’ll sue you instead of one upping you.
DJWg
22 days ago
The complaints over this are 90% ragebait as the patent is pretty darn specific detailing not just the summoning but the UI, how the summoning occurs, autobattling, and even the buttons used. There’s a lot of very specific hoops to be jumped through for it to be infringement.
But this is 100% because of Palworld and them doing a derrivitive game and Pokemon & Nintendo getting wary. They made a flagrant knock-off and the community made it a huge hit and Nintendo has to respond or we’ll get a bunch of other “Pokemon with guns” low effort games.
Kevin Greenbaum
22 days ago
I really wanna see a different company patent turn based combat, just because it would shut them up.
Sedowa
22 days ago
Hey, you remember when that guy copyrighted the word “Edge” so Soul Edge had to change its name to Soul Calibur? This is a lot like that. They just need some other big names to tell them to fuck off when they challenge it and it’ll all go away in a few years.
Shona-SoF
21 days ago
This all reminds me of when the Fine Brothers tried to patent the word ‘React’.
Drakin
21 days ago
Nintendo has become the Disney of video games.
Anybody else immagining Mickey in Emperor Palpatine’s robes with Nintendo bowing before them?
24
Guess all that rage about Palworld had some positive effects for Nintendo huh?
I can’t recall any other company capturing a millennia old concept like summoning creatures and making it technically illegal for anyone else to use
At least the Witch of Endor is probably too dead by now to claim prior art?
The outrage was just a very vocal minority known as rabid Nintendo fanboys. Most of that outrage was centered on them “using the same models” and the guy who released the comparisons admitted the models aren’t even close, he fabricated the comparisons and no one ever bothered to fact check him. This outcome is a win for them, because all hail Nintendo.
The best part is: All these “fuck Nintendo” memes are rewarding Nintendo.
One of the requirements for filing a patent lawsuit is that you have to prove that the patent infringement caused you to suffer damages. Go ahead. Tell the judge Palworld caused Nintendo zero damage. Its not like Palworld made half a billion dollars from a mechanic they removed AND made provocative public statements AFTER the lawsuit was filed.
Except Palworld didn’t harm Nintendo at all. It’s a competitor, not a replacement. All the damages suffered by Nintendo were inflicted by them themselves. If they had just taken Palworld as a lesson and actually improved their next game, rather than fabricating “patents” after the fact and suing the living hell out of Pocketpair, everyone would have applauded them for it.
And they removed the mechanic because they were forced to, after Nintendo filed the patent for it after the fact. (Something which I think should be illegal, by the way.)
Really? Nintendo has been going around making memes about “Pikachu with a gun” for the past year? And Nintendo forced Palworld to sign a deal with Sony to create and air an anime? And Nintendo is at fault for not disregarding patent law?
Your response is exactly why this lawsuit is happening in the first place.
It’s not even a competitor. Nobody decided not to play Pokemon because Palworld. But personally, I have decided not to play Pokemon anymore because Pokemon. Seriously how many times must I engage with the selfie stick before I crack?
OK, IANAL, but something needs to be clarified here. Being a competitor and earning half a billion dollars is not a legal definition for causing somebody damage. If it were, competitors could not exist, they’d simply be sued out of existence, so even as an amateur I’m exceedingly confident in that statement. The only situation in which you can claim something caused you damage under a patent infringement is if somebody provably infringed on a patent. These qualifications are inseperable and must be proven together, you can’t just use one to prove the other. The same goes for provocative statements,… Read more »
Patent infringement is a legal definition for causing somebody damage, this isn’t a US court case and slander is not free speech.
You just proved Nintendo’s entire case.
No, I did not. Patent infringement requires that actual damage be shown as a consequence of illegitimately using the patent. You can’t use income loss from legitimate competition in order to prove patent infringement. Slander is not free speech, so where’s the court case and verdict that Palworld slandered Nintendo? Source please. You don’t get to just call things slander if you “find them provocative” so kindly prove slander before you expect anyone to accept it. This specific situation isn’t a US court case yet, but you are talking about patent infringement. Patent infringement is part of US Patent law.… Read more »
Nice pull on the Witch of Endor. Samuel would be proud. Or irritated? Maybe we can find someone to ask him. LOL
Go back any further and we’re talking about the Epic of Gilgamesh having the prior art claim because Ishtar stomped her feet and had Daddy summon the Bull of Heaven to ruin Gilgamesh’s home city
Nintendo’s patent lawyers must have balls bigger than the moon to claim prior art over the Sumerians
Why I don’t disagree with the general opinion wrt Nintendo’s legal practices, the hearsay on this one has gotten a bit out of control. I recommend reading it for yourself, but the gist is that the new patent seeks to claim Pokemon Legends-style gameplay. Summons, that move on their out on the overworld, that enter battle by touching enemies, with battles that the player controls. Most creature summoner games wouldn’t be subject to the patent.
It still sucks tho, ’cause I’d like to see more games with Legends-style gameplay.
There is no way this will actually fly. I am assuming they will use to hassle and threaten a couple of companies for some concessions, maybe scare some people off, and then it is going to end up in court and thrown out.
In a sane world with functional law that should be true, but I don’t think current America qualifies as such.
sadly it would be tried under japan law, which, if I remember everything, is guilty until proven innocent. I’ve heard (not bothered to google too deep) its so complex its got its own language.
In a sane world, this patent never would have been granted in the first place.
Agreed. Such a patent is likely a lawsuit away from vapor, given all the prior art for at least a century for kids games, much longer for things like poker.
Patent law feels like one of the most easily broken things out there.
I 3D print a lot and apparently a company claimed a patent on brick-layer stacking for 3D prints which would’ve allowed them to become significantly stronger. The patent somehow go through despite providing no prior art and citing incorrect documents and prior patents. There’s a big lawsuit going on to get it overturned because it should’ve expired by now.
The patent office doesn’t really test patents, it doesn’t have the capacity. It tends to grant them and lets people fight out these issues in court only if they arise.
That’s why people get away with patenting frivolous things all the time, remember years back somebody patented playing with your cat using a laserpointer as “methods to exercise your cat”?
I’m kind of in shock that nobody in the industry challenged the patent.
I guess that assumes that other game companies actually monitor what’s going on in gaming patents and such ….
They do. That’s how they farm ideas. 🙂
I know one guy who actually read the patent. It’s his claim that the patent isn’t what all the articles claim it is. It’s much more specific. It’s about a specific method of getting on a summoned mount (ala specifically the bird in Pokemon Legends Arceus).
That as such it’ll probably fly, but partially because there are workarounds that seem less like what they did in Legends Arceus.
I think that’s the whole point: scare the competition from even trying to arise, with the threat of spending millions in lawyers
Okay. Who said “at least it can’t get worse”? I’m 127% sure Nintendo going mask off evil is a direct result of one of you all saying it.
I swear their legal department is better staffed than their development department.
Bet the Pokémon dev team is outsourced between open ai and the Japanese version of Fiverr at this point.
I think that must be the case, since most of their notoriety is based on a couple of IPs reiterated over and over again
No more playing as a Warlock or Wizzard in fantasy RPGs I guess…
Only if the summoning mechanic involves throwing a ball which was also part of the claimed mechanic that the reporting conveniently leaves out.
ALWAYS read the actual filings.
Okay, hear me out. Nintendo and Hasbro, going all out in crazy court BS over D&D Wizard Familiars. Nobody wins except the people who bought tickets and popcorn.
And the lawyers with billable hours.
And here comes Harmony Gold out of the crowd with a folding chair!
Can it be rendered like a summoning battle where they throw lawbooks at each other and yell out the number or title of the law they’re invoking, and when the book lands a page appears wielding a quill and attacks the opposite guy’s quill-wielding lawpage in an epic quill-fight?
I love the source has been added I hate how that site is chewing up my data with commercial movies, every few words is another ad, it took a long time explaining it was a curious case while not going into details, and when it finally got to the point, I got a “do you want to subscribe to our newsletter” full screen. I’m sure Nintendo’s claim on summoning companions was horrid, but right in front of me is an affront of the internet where they keep trying to ram more adds down my throat. Why isn’t there more pushback… Read more »
I know you are smarter than that. I used to buy PCGamer magazine. In the 90’s, or early aughts. Haven’t bought one literally in years. No magazine sales, no ads. PC Magazine was completely ad generated. The only difference is that now, pop up ads are constantly being re-programmed to be as obtrusive and non-skippable as possible. Why? How else is pcgamer.com supposed to stay in business. Are you willing to ‘subscribe’ to the web site for your gamer news? Neither am I. So they pay their salaries with ads, just like they’ve always done. If all online ads were… Read more »
If a site needs to use so many ads to stay in business I would say that it has no business at all. Try another way to get money or stop doing what you’re doing. I’m not saying to ban ads, I’m saying this amount is not user friendly and I’m surprised it still gets business. Why wouldn’t people leave after the first paragraph like I normally do? Paragraph after paragraph of barely extra information with mote ads and videos than I care to count.
The sad truth is that this works. Even if you don’t actively look at the ad, while displayed, your brain will subconsciously register it and affect future decisions.
Only thing you can do is block these things. That may mean you won’t be able to properly read some websites anymore, which is fair enough IMHO. Usually if I find a site too dysfunctional due to my browser and privacy security, I also find that I didn’t really care enough anyway so that it doesn’t bother me not to see the site.
There’s plenty of pushback against these practices. It’s called using an ad blocker. Alternatively, do what you said you usually do, leave the site if the ads make the article impossible to read. They can talk all day about needing ads to make money to make the site keep running, but if their site is so miserable because of so many ads that people don’t want to visit anyway, their site is dead regardless.
I find an ad blocker to be a strange way to go about it. Ads are still a legitimate business. How do you think this comic stays afloat? It barely does if Tim’s comments on it are any indication. If many people then use an ad blocker to get his creative content for free that’s piracy. Tim has experimented with more ads and once the site became unreadable. Instead of pushing through, he’s been looking at alternatives. The site might go behind a paywall. If everyone would donate the cost of a beer he wouldn’t need to run ads, but… Read more »
If you want to support certain sites like Cad-comic with their ad revenue, you can whitelist it in your adblocker.
I know you can, but how many people do so? They need to want it, and then whitelist it. People can also pay a small amount per year via Patreon or similar to support. If you see the pushback it got when it was suggested that the whole of CAD moves behind a paywall I wonder how many actually do so. People want their content free of money and free of ads, which severely undercuts the viability of many websites. Having the option to turn it off is by no means a solution. How many websites do people frequent and… Read more »
Those are all fair questions. I frequently find myself seeing reminders about whitelisting a site, or a request for support. If I find the site important I’ll actually respond to it and undertake action to support it. Frequently I don’t. Some people will rear on their hind legs at that, claiming that I’m freeloading off somebody’s hard work… but I’m fine if my kind of choices cause sites to vanish. People have developed this idea that ad-based free content is normal, the only way it could ever be. I’m fine going back to a world of paid subscriptions. I find… Read more »
Applying for a 20 year patent on a 30 year old game, is ridiculous.
Nintendo is pretty much patent trolling at this point… the silliest thing is it just reminds me of Apple and Samsung who were patent trolling each other for a decade with “UI patents” until they both lost and only the lawyers made money.
It wouldn’t happen in the first place here in the UK for 2 main reasons.
1). Its very difficult to get a patent for software except in unusual circumstances.
2). More importantly the research into the validity of a patent is done in house. Before the patent is granted.
Apparently in the US, a patent can be granted after minimal research (like does a similar patent already exist). After that its down to the courts
The US Patent Office granted about 375,000 patents last year. They rejected more than 2,000,000. They have a backlog of over a million pending review. The courts have found that it is unconstitutional to take too long to grant a patent. This all means that some stupid patents slip though.
But the UK isn’t exactly better – In 2018, they granted a patent on collaboration software allowing developers in different locations to work together. If this sounds like 40 year old technology, it’s because it is.
Allowing this sort of patent to be issued is mind-blowing. Yeah, Nintendo absolute came up with the idea of gladiatorial combat, cockfighting, and a zillion other similar situations. This is complete garbage.
What’s worse is that yes, a large company can fight them on it, but the expense and effort in doing so will blow away any small dev that even thinks about it.
Nintendo has been evil since they started shutting down fan projects. Y’all should’ve known it would lead to this.
Yeah. Nintendo can Eff off for this crap.
This is what happens when money can buy your way through court.
You’ve gotta read the actual documents any time the media reports anything legal. Because they will ALWAYS leave out important context to generate outrage and therefore traffic.
In this case it’s that the patent ALSO includes “throwing a ball” to summon as part of the claimed mechanic.
So it’s not a patent on “summoning monsters to fight for the player” it’s “summoning monsters, by throwing a ball, to fight for the player”
Which is still overly broad. Spherical objects, such as flash or smoke pellets or even eggs, have been used to display “summoning” or “teleporting” in fiction for as long as I can remember. If they specified the type of ball so that it is explicitly recognizable in form or function as a pokeball, that could be narrow enough but ANY ball? Nope.
Reminds me of Games workshop trying to sue people who used the term ‘space marine’ or ‘Warhammer’. To include books written before 40K and Battletech Warhammer mechs.
Shocked – Ctrl+Alt+Del Comic Ctrl+Alt+Del
Eh these type of patent abusion is not really new thing. I’m more surprised that someone in patent office approved this one. Software patenting is something to despise for, even Sony and Microsoft practices such thing. Sony seems to be a least passive using them now but if you actually followed their past, it’s all about corporations imago tactics and they play it well. After all they did hinder playstation 1 emulator community, by getting their hands on Bleem source code and Virtual Game Station (VGS) assets, after they bleed out their money by suing them. Sony lost the fight… Read more »
I actually never played any pokemon games. I only know pokemons from memes. Never got curious engough.
Well guess they gotta add Dragon Warrior: Monsters, Digimon, Monster Rancher, and about 3 dozen other video game and intellectual IPs to the lawsuit then, absolutely ridiculous.
It’s embarrassing how butthurt Nintendo is over Palworld’s success.
The more I learn about patents on video game mechanics, the less I wonder why more good games dont come out. These companies literally will buy a good idea, then sit on it to boost Whale Hunting style Ideas instead in games, or sell suboptimal versions of their own idea because there is no competition in the space to make them better. Oh, you made a better Pokemon game? We’ll sue you instead of one upping you.
The complaints over this are 90% ragebait as the patent is pretty darn specific detailing not just the summoning but the UI, how the summoning occurs, autobattling, and even the buttons used. There’s a lot of very specific hoops to be jumped through for it to be infringement.
But this is 100% because of Palworld and them doing a derrivitive game and Pokemon & Nintendo getting wary. They made a flagrant knock-off and the community made it a huge hit and Nintendo has to respond or we’ll get a bunch of other “Pokemon with guns” low effort games.
I really wanna see a different company patent turn based combat, just because it would shut them up.
Hey, you remember when that guy copyrighted the word “Edge” so Soul Edge had to change its name to Soul Calibur? This is a lot like that. They just need some other big names to tell them to fuck off when they challenge it and it’ll all go away in a few years.
This all reminds me of when the Fine Brothers tried to patent the word ‘React’.
Nintendo has become the Disney of video games.
Anybody else immagining Mickey in Emperor Palpatine’s robes with Nintendo bowing before them?