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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
Nothing is ever completely new and that should not stop people making things.
More slop that’s copy and pasted from other games?
No, I don’t think I want that, thanks though.
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.
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.
Are you talking about some heist on Nintendo’s blueprint vaults?
Because IP infringement is never theft.
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?
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.
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 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.