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If Palworld devs were as petty as I am they’d probably make a Pal that looks like an obese and hostile Pikachu with a Mario hat.
- Name: Renjiyu / レンヂユ; after a really shitty Mandarin joke with Nintendo’s name (basically calling it hell’s company).
- It would make a noise that sounds a lot like uttaeru / 訴える “to sue, to complain” with an incredibly whiny voice
- Drop: meat and sulphur (the in-game sulphur looks a lot like fool’s gold)
- “Utility”: when it’s running around your base, Renjiyu makes your pals drop whatever they are doing to listen to its ramblings. As in, negative utility.
Bonus points if the logo in the hat resembles a pokeball from a distance.
What a sad sad outcome. Patenting game mechanics should not be legal.
It isn’t in the US but is in Japan where the companies are based.
It’s still somewhat protected in the US. The big one in table top gaming was tap mechanics from Magic. That expired in 2014 though. In video games the Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor/war is also patented.
Loading screen mini games are also patented. That’s why loading screens never have mini games. Less of an issue now that game devs have begun avoiding loading screens, but they were extremely common in older generations and they never had mini games to pass the time.
That patent exired almost a decade ago: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/loading-screen-game-patent-finally-expires
I remember how impressive that was as a kid, when i played ridge racer on psx the first time.
Erm, acktchually! I think Nintendo is pretty cringe here, not based!
(Sorry, I couldn’t resist)
Take this vote and leave before I change my mind
Ok, I’m outta here.
All jokes aside, I would like to weigh in and say that I find the whole patenting of game mechanics to be absolutely appalling. I genuinely don’t get how this is legal, even in Japan. They filed this patent way too late for it to even make sense.
You could’ve made an argument if they patented it back in 1996, but even so… Fuck this. Imagine patenting a screen transition or something?
*Patenting
Oh, thanks. Corrected it
Lame. Thanks, Nintendo. Got forbid you actually try to outcompete.
“Don’t innovate, litigate!”
-Nintendo
These primarily cover throwing an object in a specific direction to either summon a battle character or to capture a creature in the field - mechanics Palworld shared with Pokémon at launch.
sounds like a mechanic found in a number of video games.
That’s the weird thing. It doesn’t seem to matter. The patent was filed after PalWorld was released. I’m guessing this is some quirk of Japan’s patent system I’m unfamiliar with.
Like what? I can’t think of one off the top of my head.
Helldivers has this, I believe. if a teammate dies then you have to throw an object to summon down a drop pod at a specific location
Uh, nets IRL for starters, but there are shitloads of games with capture and summon mechanics ranging from Ghost Busters to ARK to Ratchet and Clank to fucking Skyrim.
Edit: Downvote all you want, but don’t ask the question if you don’t want the answer.
in minecraft you throw eggs to hatch chickens
ghostbusters, throwing trap to catch ghosts
You could argue against anything involving throwing a net to capture something, like monster hunter for the small fauna. Ark has “cryo pods” that function basically like pokeballs.
Bulma keeps machinery in tiny capsules
They should go after Rockstar for the mechanic of throwing a rope at an animal to catch it, if this is the criteria. Ridiculous.
Ratchet and Clank’s glove of doom fits the bill
The VG made by pocketpair before the patent was issued for one.
Summoning a dedra in skyrim?
You don’t throw an object for that, you cast a spell, and I don’t remember being able to target it, but then I never really used those spells.
It is a spell but iirc the animation is a little ball that goes where you point it.
Does Ghostbusters count?
Interesting, every example people have given you in response is pretty weak. (I’m not saying I agree with Nintendo have any exclusive claim here.)
That’s because it is, Pokemon didn’t come up with it, they just made it popular.
This game is still in early access so I hope this is only temporary and they will retool this to not be similar to Pokemon. There’s no way this will be final right…?? No summon animation at all??!
So fucking stupid. I remember a time when Nintendo was constantly losing legal battles like this one.
They probably just learned to pay judges, not lawyers.
Make it so you launch the ball thing from a sling shot, that’s not throwing the object and it fits the universe
This is the answer right here. There’s even a few late game items for this. The just need to readjust the costs for those launchers. Make them available early mid game.
Literally just change the throw animation to use a weaker looking slingshot than whatever the current weakest one is.
The current weakest one is a bazooka.
Awesome, should be easy enough to make a little hand sling shot your character pulls out of a pocket.
It’s a shame the Wii U didn’t bankrupt Nintendo.
Nintendo could afford to release 10 failed consoles in a row and still keep going, that was the case back when the Wii U released as well
A shame they didn’t
This constantly gets repeated, but I’ve yet to see proof of it.
Proof of what? Nintendo having a shit-ton of money? I don’t understand why you would even need a source of that, but sure, here’s one
as of March 2024 Nintendo has $14.87 Billion in cash on hand.
in comparison in March of 2024 Apple had $162 Billion.
They’re publically traded, their finances are public, the Wii and Switch secured the company for decades
I do wonder if the steam deck exists in this alternate timeline you propose
It probably does with detachable controllers.
No, but we do have a proper Nvidia Shield Portable 2.
We got Tears of the Kingdom, but at what cost?
Poor frame rate
make it so you shoot them out with a gun
You already do that eventually anyway.
How do Japanese patents differ from USA/CAN? My general understanding of patents is that they expire after 20 years - Pokemon is older than that. Do Japanese patents have a longer duration? Did Nintendo patent a game later than the originals?
These patents were granted to Nintendo this year.
I’m not patent savvy - of they are only granted this year (as a point of origin for the patents’ eventually expiry), wouldn’t the years of previous Pokemon games invalidate these patents due to prior art?
If they were related to the original games, yes it would. The patents were about 3d worlds though. I believe the palworld beta was before these patents were filed, so there would be a strong case to invalidate them. It probably won’t happen, because Nintendo’s proposed damages was basically pocket change compared to a legal battle.
You wouldn’t patent the “game” you’d patent the various forms of utility or designs within that game. So throwing a sphere at a life form to then capture it could be one patent, but maybe then you’d also file another patent to cover keeping it alive and caring for it inside the ball habitat. You might file the second off of what is called a continuation filling and in combination, as you need both actions to get the full effect, you might get a bit of extended coverage in practice.
But the bigger thing here would probably be trademark law, which is a whole different beast.
Sure, I hadn’t implied that the game was patented, but the mechanics were present in a game that is over 30 years old.
Worried what this means for Nexomon 3
I am not usually in favour of big companies bullying smaller companies with the law, but it’s pretty egregious how much they were ripping off Pokémon.
Edited to add, apparently this was a really hot take. I am not saying that the gameplay between the games was similar, but I saw a comparison of several of the designs of the creatures for the first time when this whole kinda started kicking off a bit ago and it was the first time I realized how blatant the designs were lifted right from popular Pokémon. Combined specifically with the pokeball-alikes and like… I don’t know how people can defend it. There’s homage and then there’s IP theft.
They’re both based on the same source material - various mythological creatures and real animals with a twist
I used to think Pokemon was super original - but a lot of it just seems they way because we don’t learn much about Japanese or asian folklore overseas.
Like take Magikarp. There’s a Chinese proverb about a carp leaping through the dragons gate (an actual waterfall) turning into a dragon (meant to describe how with diligence a common person could become powerful through the civil official exams)… The weak magic carp, if diligently leveled, can become a Chinese dragon that looks exactly like the ones they use in parades.
Meouth - a wealth giving cat, many asian shops have a cat figure with a gold coin for luck. And Persian is just a lioness (a bigger cat) with the same design.
Vulpix/Ninetails - nine tailed fox
Ekans - snakE. Arbok - kobrA. Pidgey - pigeon. Pigiotto, pigeot? Reminds me of fire, fira, firaga, firaja naming scheme from final fantasy
Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan - Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan
Noticably, most of these puns and references to actual people are not copied, instead it is things like wolves and mythological creatures
If anything, it’s the style of the art that makes them so similar - but copying aesthetics is how art grows and develops. It’s not like they were the first or only ones to copy the style either
The game itself isn’t ripping off anything. Pokémon is such a direct “rip off” of digimon, too, then. Except it doesn’t matter, cause that’s what stuff is. Stuff is made up of other stuff and oftentimes there will be similarities!
I mean, for one I was talking about the designs of the creatures and the specific ball mechanic/theme, but also Pokémon came out before Digimon anyway.
Gen 1 Pokemon designs were straight rips of Dragon Quest monsters.
Arguably the Poke ball mechanic first appeared in anime such as Dragon Ball, Im not sure on any games predating Pokemon, but if they had patented it with the first games release it would have expired by now.
Nintendo will pull off some bullshit but they really shouldn’t have a leg to stand on.
How was Dragon Ball similar to pokeballs and their catching mechanics? I’m not seeing that similarity at all.
Never seen any comparisons between Dragon Quest and Pokémon. Do you have examples?
The anime one will be harder to source clips but I do recall creatures being released as ‘energy’ then forming quickly from thrown objects. Will need to get back to you on that one!
Don’t really agree with the top pic at all, but some of the comparisons in the bottom one are interesting. Some are slay a really big stretch I think, but I do see why people would compare. I think if Enix went after Nintendo in the early nineties I could get behind them on a couple of these, but that ship has sailed a long time ago.
Still going to disagree about the Dragon Ball comparison. Not really seeing any comparison between those two.
They might be referring to CapsuleCorp’s capsules. They would store big things in tiny capsules, much like Poke balls work. I don’t recall people or monsters ever being store in them, nor do I remember things forcibly being put into them at all. It’s possible this was bigger on Dragon Ball, as a kid I was more familiar with Dragon Ball Z.
Lemmy is the wrong place to mention Nintendo. You will get obliterated by people.
I don’t mind. It’s no different than Reddit, people see downvotes and just pile on. No room for discussion, no thoughtful discourse, just hive mind.
Brother, you made a stupid comment. You didn’t read the article and you don’t know why the lawsuit is happening. Literally all of your comments are irrelevant to the discussion — you can’t hide behind it’s the hivemind!
I did read the article and I do know why the lawsuit is happening, at least what’s been reported, as I’ve read a few articles about it. I’m not hiding behind anything, and people are free to disagree with me.
A reminder that all I said at first was that I was surprised to find out just how much they were ripping off Pokémon, and what I was referring to (but not clearly) were in many of the designs and the brazen pokeballs. I didn’t comment on the lawsuit at all, at first.
I really hope you’re lying because if you do know what this is about, then that just makes all of your comments worse. Also, you’re calling people who disagree with you a hivemind, so don’t try to pretend you’re fine with it.
You said that, in this case, you were in favor of a big company bullying a little one with the law because they ripped off pokemon designs, which isn’t even a topic that is being discussed here. If anyone needs a reminder of what you commented, it’s you.
I don’t remember the vitriol being as consistent on reddit. On a larger scale here, if it’s a computer, it needs to be Linux or you’re downvoted. If it’s video games, it needs to be a PC or they don’t want to hear about it. Even Steam that was generally loved on Reddit gets some flack, because GOG is more DRM free from what I can tell (I don’t game on PCs)
I’d be more willing to agree if Nintendo was going after them for similar art styles. They went after them for fucking throwing balls of all things. This is going to set a horrible precedent for the game industry.
So either Nintendo didn’t believe the monster designs were rip offs, or they didn’t feel it was a proper violation because they’ve shown themselves as willing to litigate.
You mean like Pokémon “ripping off” Dragon Quest?
You can’t patent an art style.
For one, I didn’t say you could patent an art style. But distinguishable character can be IP. You’re like the fifth person to mention Dragon Quest and I’ve never heard of that comparison before, do you have any examples?
There are a bunch of images out there making the comparison, but here’s a good video of just a direct side to side of each design. https://youtu.be/CZXKKbSCA34
Pokemon is a rip off of Dragon Quest and Shin Megami Tensei.
I disagree with your premise but even if I agreed that any IP theft has occurred, why do you care? surely you’re aware that nintendo aggressively invests in IP lawyers and lawsuits?
Well, yes, that’s why the lawsuit was happening. I’m not sure what your point was. I care because I think that IP theft is wrong.
The lawsuite is Happening because of patent trolling…
that’s actually not why the lawsuit is happening though…
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