Japan games industry analyst explains why Nintendo is going after Palworld, and why it’s probably going to win.

So you don’t think these patents are going after any aspect of Palworld that players would recognize as a defining feature of a Pokémon game?

I mean, there’s like a mechanic where you throw the spheres, right? And this is a very obvious, in your face system [that’s very much like Pokémon]. But I think that it will be a lot more technical than this. Nintendo would have dug through every single action inside the game, they would have probably reverse engineered it, and just find ways to sue these guys.

You can bet your life that Nintendo hates this company, and they couldn’t find an angle with the character designs. This is why they are not mentioned in their press release. So they come with these technical peculiarities. So I personally believe, if you act like this, you can sue like 90 percent of the game developers in the world. I’m sure there’s like thousands of games that have a confirmation screen when you go from sleep mode to resuming the game right, but if you basically trigger the wrath of Nintendo, they will come after you.

  • OpenPassageways@lemmy.zipEnglish
    3·
    3 hours ago

    Yeah, the “chilling effect” is a big problem. I’m sure the creators of TemTem and other alternatives are getting nervous.

    I guess we’ll never know whether Palworld could have avoided this with a different art style or varying the catching mechanics more.

    • ASDraptor@lemmy.autism.placeEnglish
      31·
      3 hours ago

      Nintendo even owns a patent for “riding a creature” in a game. That is such a broad concept that a normal parent system shouldn’t allow because of how broad it is. It’s just dumb. And Nintendo is taking advantage of it.

      Edit: temtem is not Japanese, and any other patent office in the world will laugh at Nintendo if they tried to make a claim in their countries, but since Palworld is Japanese as Nintendo, they can make the claim there.