With the implementation of Patch v0.5.5 this week, we must make yet another compromise. From this patch onward, gliding will be performed using a glider rather than with Pals. Pals in the player’s team will still provide passive buffs to gliding, but players will now need to have a glider in their inventory in order to glide.
How lame. Japan needs to fix its patent laws, it’s ridiculous Nintendo owns the simple concept of using an animal to fly.
Nintendo are rightly losing their free pass with gamers.
So can we please fork v0.5.4?
I wonder how much of this game they can force them to change. I know Steam has a 2 hour limit for returns but at what point does this game become “not the game I bought”?
I mean, the game is in early access so if you bought it and are now complaining it changed… It’s a you problem, not something that should be refundable.
Nintendo is just a garbage lawsuit company that sometimes makes hardware with stupid subscriptions attached.
and none of it matters, cause they have literal legions of fans that will ride their ride, no matter how much it costs, no matter how poorly made it is, no matter how much nintendo spits in their face.
So Nintendo sees no significant economic repercussions from their behavior, and thus has incentive to change.
I was one of those but they were losing me more and more every year… But 3 years ago it became way too much, and I got off the bandwagon. Screw that lol.
I hope they don’t make as many sales as they expect… But you may be right, too many people who will buy their crap however expensive and how much they’re being mistreated by the company.
I’m not so sure.
All of my friends who are less pissed off at Nintendo than I am are not even considering buying a Switch 2 because Nintendo basically priced themselves out of the market. All of my friends who have a Switch 1 will not be buying the Switch 2, that’s pretty significant IMO, but I guess we’ll see.
I’m a little torn on this.
On the one hand, let’s be real - clearly PalWorld takes more than a little “inspiration” on a bunch of different Pokemon IP. The illustrations, modeling, and just visual style overall matches in many ways almost perfectly for many of the creatures. They are like off-brand versions of Pokemon with the exact same eyes, mouth types, etc. in many cases as if they were illustrated by Ken Sugimori himself
.Additionally, the game involves using handheld ball devices thrown at wild world-roaming creatures you capture after cutting down their health by some amount to increase the catch percentage and different “grade” balls have increased chance for capture.
There is also a nefarious organization competing with you for capturing these wild creatures like Team Rocket.
But on the OTHER hand, the leveling up, breeding, base-building, the various ability tech-trees, item crafting, and just overall engine complexity is VASTLY superior to what appears to now be an almost EMBARRASSINGLY behind set of game design mechanics in the actual Pokemon games… it’s sort of a Saints Row vs GTA IV situation here where they were an obvious copy off, but improved in enough ways that ended up being a fun game in itself.
Copying off exact art asset styles is one thing you shouldn’t do… but taking Nintendo’s gameplay ideas and expanding upon them vastly and being told to remove said mechanics as if they stole code is asinine and sets a bad precedent.
Every time there’s been a popular game, there are a thousand copies off them that twist and evolve those mechanics until something else comes along.
Nintendo came along with platformers after Pitfall on Atari. Sonic copied 2D platforming basics from Mario like running to the right and jumping on enemies but changed so much. Final Fantasy copied off Dragon Quest, which itself was a digital idea based off of Dungeons & Dragons. Doom to games like GoldenEye to Halo to Call of Duty to PUBG to Fortnite to APEX Legends…
This feels like taking advantage of grey area in the realm of visual IP similarity to shut down someone making their gameplay design mechanics look antiquated by comparison.
Really embarrassing for Nintendo to be doing this, when clearly what Nintendo should be doing is doing like what Fortnite did when APEX came along and added location / enemy / weapon call outs and just STEALING the mechanics they weren’t clever enough to think of on their own and implement better versions in their own games… but clearly they’d just rather have a monopoly and continue lackluster work.
clearly PalWorld takes more than a little “inspiration” on a bunch of different Pokemon IP
There’s 1025 Pokemon at this point in time - how the hell are you supposed to create a unique pokemon at this point in time? Even pokemon can’t create unique pokemon anymore.
Th same way Digimon, Monster Hunter monsters, and every other unique IP looks nothing like Pokemon. Make completely original designs that don’t look like fan art or knock offs of another artist’s specific trademark style.
Look, if the problem is the similar designs then sue for that!
I’m a little torn on your comment, because om the one hand you are right and on the other these lawsuits have nothing to do with the designs or art style at all.
There are over 1,000 pokemon. I think it’s a Tolkien situation- where famously, you can’t write fantasy without using ingredients that Tolkien created, because if you do, obviously it’s from Tolkien, and if you didn’t, the reader is asking why not? That kinda deal.
If you set out to create a game involving collecting, or even looking at and cataloguing, a bunch of different fantasy creatures, you’re going to have some that are at least a little similar to pokemon. The electibuzz/grizzbolt example you gave is a fantastic one. You’re claiming it’s stolen, but that there is a cat creature with a single lightning bolt in it’s belly. Versus a… monkeything? Covered in them. My point here being, even if they didn’t steal (which, I’m sure they did, there are other, better examples) at a certain point you have to accept that with 1,000 pokemon, there’s going to be overlap, so you either need to just be up front about the stealing, or you need to spend 5x the amount of development time making sure none of your creatures have overlap.
Personally, Pokemon has been around for more than 25 years. Even if they released a million games a year, they shouldn’t get to gatekeep ‘all creature-collection simulators that you use balls for and that you can ride like a dragon.’ Fuck that. They got infinite money back on their initial investment, and they shouldn’t be allowed to just own the ideas. This is the kind of bullshit that makes me (a lifelong pokemon fan) want to never, ever, ever give them money again.
If you set out to create a game involving collecting, or even looking at and cataloguing, a bunch of different fantasy creatures, you’re going to have some that are at least a little similar to pokemon.
If you search for a fox fire witch you’ll see different interpretations on that. But somehow Palworld made a fox fire witch extremely close to an art of a fanmade Mega Delphox.
It’s not an official pokémon but no way in hell they’re didn’t just create the pal based on this art, it’s just too similar.
If you set out to create a game involving collecting, or even looking at and cataloguing, a bunch of different fantasy creatures, you’re going to have some that are at least a little similar to pokemon
I think Cassette Beasts pulled off the Pokemon gameplay format without making anything that Nintendo could try and sue over.
Bingo. In many ways, but not all, palworld was lazy, and unoriginal.
Design wise maybe, but game play wise, performance wise, mechanic wise.
PalWorld is 100% not lazy in these categories and Pokemon is.
My issue with people taking on PalWorld as a copy cat is it’s really a shit argument. PalWorld is a copy cat of Ark and a much better version of Ark.
Change Pals to anything else. Turn the ball into a net and it isn’t a Pokemon copy cat.
Competition is great. My take on this entire thing is fuck Nintendo.
Oooh, thank you for reminding me that game exists. I still haven’t played it, and so many people have told me it’s good!
I think that’s a pretty generous interpretation.
It’s like you are trying to pretend that character does not look like a Pokemon because their appearance WAS technically different… even though it uses identical parts from several actual characters from the IP.
So it should be counted as non-infringing because they simply re-arranged / mixed and matched those character parts like they were a Mr. Potato-head-esque / ransom note magazine assembly / amalgamation of interchangeable similar puzzle pieces?
And I just grabbed one of the first results from when you search Pokemon Palworld similarities… I’m not familiar enough with every single one to find a more egregious example, but again - let’s be honest. This is the IP equivalent of saying “I’m not touching you” while a sibling holds their finger right next to your eye as if to poke it.
Honestly? I see more Totoro in there than Electabuzz.
Where does the line get drawn between inspiration and stealing? I’m not trying to be facetious, it’s just the kind of question that I think a lot of people will have vastly different answers to.
The line? Usually you need to be doing something conceptually different. This knockoff electrabuzz wouldn’t have raised as many eyebrows if it was in a farming simulator, or a card game.
It’s like if you had a chainsaw gun in your game, and your game was a third person shooter set in a dark gritty sci-fi world where you are fighting subterranean monsters called the Focus Board.
Pokémon TCG would probably make a stink about that too. I would agree that more needs to be done to differentiate them but the Guns and the art-style should do that pretty well.
Using balls to capture and store Pals was a big mistake though and they definitely should’ve made a few more drafts on some of those aspects before reveal.
Pokemon straight ripped off mother nature though.
Eh I think patents in video games just ruins the fun for us since Nintendo/game freak/Pokemon whoever can’t make a good game if their lives depended on it.
At a fundamental level, why should copyright exist? Is it helping society here by incentivizing Nintendo? No. Contemporary copyright has it wrong, and I think your starting assumptions ignore that fact.
Let me be clear :
Copyright law as it stands right now is stupid, and should only benefit individuals from large companies looking to use their resources to steal from them without compensation.
I’m just talking about not letting junk companies pretend they made a game for your favorite IP in a way that lets them trick less-informed people.
It seems most of the actual copyright law benefits big companies as it is interpreted now… which is kind of the opposite of how it originally was intended.
That VGC site has a pretty good sum up of Palworld: cynical and souless, but nonetheless a pretty fun game to play, and I fully agree. Pretty much every design up to version 0.3 was fully copied from pokemon. The more recent patch that added the big island on the south has more original-looking monster designs, though others are still pretty obvious ripoffs.
Additionally, the game involves using handheld ball devices thrown at wild world-roaming creatures you capture after cutting down their health by some amount to increase the catch percentage and different “grade” balls have increased chance for capture.
They did that on Craftopia, too, only it was to catch animals rather than monsters.
There is also a nefarious organization competing with you for capturing these wild creatures like Team Rocket.
Not really. There is a criminal syndicate, a bunch of violent hypocritical hippies, a corrupt police and some Borderlands style psychos, none “competing” with you, they just want you dead. I think only the syndicate would “count as team rocket”, but they’re up for all crimes.
This feels like taking advantage of grey area in the realm of visual IP similarity to shut down someone making their gameplay design mechanics look antiquated by comparison.
Palworld became a target at first because of that visual similarity but, as much as the pals obviously resemble pokemons, they’re visually different enough to be considered original and a case on those grounds alone would go nowhere. Which is why Nintendo shifted from IP to Patent bullshit.
Wait i can’t fly on Pals now?
Does that mean that Ark can’t fly on dinosaurs?
Pretty sure you can still mount and fly on flying pals.
There are some pals that can be used as gliders though, that is what is being patched out.
TIL. Good. Cause I liked my spaceship dragon
You have been nominated for Best Sentences of 2025. Congratulations.
Oh man, let me know when the rewards are named so I can give a speech.
First, I’d like to thank ADHD
I don’t play Palworld, but still hate firms that behaves like this. Not buying Nintendo anymore 🥳 Emulators from here on :)
Patenting common stuff like this is just stupid! Think I read somewhere that Apple patented squares with rounded corners 😂 Hope Nintendo doesn’t use rounded corners in any of their in-game menus.
I though patents were ment to protect important original ideas. Stuff with impact.
Nintendo ownes the IP of hangliders now.
Nintendo will never see another cent from me for this petty bullshit. My kids will play with other toys.
Nintendo can sue me any day, I’m out here making RC hang gliders and making tiny 3 second games where the only purpose is to pull out a glider and put it away instantly.
Make it so that you can give the glider pal skins.
This lawsuit is so stupid. In my opinion, patenting, copyrighting, or trademarking concepts or mechanics in video games shouldn’t be allowed at all. The nemesis system in the Shadow of Mordor games was so cool, but we’re never going to see anything like it again. Warner went through the trouble to copyright (or something idk I’m not a lawyer) that system, and then let the series die out.
I’m waiting to see the headlines that any other games with a shooty thing that goes bang is illegal, and the concept of shooting a gun in a video game is going to be owned by either Rockstar/Take Two or the collective mob of Call of Duty developers. If the world is gonna get that stupid, I got my fingers crossed that Bubsy 3D owns the rights to jumping
Edit: Thought about it for 10 more seconds and I have questions. Is it specifically gliding using a creature that Nintendo has a problem with, or is it creature-assisted traversal in general? Can they sue Skyrim since you can ride horses? Palworld made the change so that you need to build a glider to glide around. BOTW and TOTK used gliders. Is Nintendo gonna sue them for that now too? I fucking hate all of this so God damned much
patenting, copyrighting, or trademarking concepts or mechanics in video games shouldn’t be allowed at all
It’s not allowed at all in board games. There’s a known issue that someone could completly copy the mechanics of a board game, and as long as they don’t copy the art or the exact text of the rulebook there is no legal means to stop it.
Boardgamers are aware of this, and agree that it is better for development of future games than if someone could own the idea of “rolling a dice”, so if knockoffs do come around they tend to quickly get called out and not purchased.
I don’t know how videogames managed to get different rules.
That’s probably Richard Garfield’s fault for setting precedent with his collectable card game patent.
The tried to patent fucking MOUNTS. Someone get square and blizzard on the sue-train and ream Nintendo a new one.
Who the hell in their right mind would want to buy a switch after seeing this?
most consumers don’t care, that’s why they’re consumers. Switch 2 is gonna sell gangbusters and no amount of frivolous lawsuits is going to put a dent in that.
Plus you still have people mad at Palworld for no reason other than they think it “copied” Pokémon, like the guy getting downvoted into oblivion.
I won’t, unless I can buy one 2nd hand AND there’s a way to jailbreak it
All the nintendo boot licking neckbearded incels that you see defending the company like if its their own.
Even that group is a tiny minority. Most buyers are people who just want to play Nintendo games and don’t care about anything else.
Children will, from their parents who don’t see these articles or care, just that their kid is entertained… Don’t be an ass.
Lmao bro wut? The majority of gamers is in their 20s…found the neckbearded cheeto whose gonna boot lick for that switch 2 that’s weaker then a 1050ti and an Xbox series S lmao
Nintendo’s target audience is often young adults, with a large share of Switch players falling between 20 and 25 years old. And then 40 year old
Try again…
I have already boycotted Nintendo, but nice try? I’m on PC and steam deck.
Also a lot of these concerns were not major issues when the switch 1 came out. So I don’t really go off the switch 1 ownership results since Nintendo seems to have done some serious damage to themselves in the past 1-3 years alone.
Iirc sony has a patent on an input device having two separate data streams. It seems you write the most general thing you can on patents and patent offices don’t care
Unfortunately, at least in the US (and from the sound of it, probably Japan), the patent office has the viewpoint of ‘patent everything and let the courts sort them out.’ The courts, on the other hand, defer to the patent office because ‘it’s they’re job so they must know what they’re doing.’
Amazon has a patent on the “one click purchase” button…
I’m unconvinced that the Nemesis system would have worked well in too many other settings, but one game patent that had a tangible effect on the industry was Bandai-Namco’s patent on loading screen mini games. Remember how you could make the Soul Calibur II characters yell stuff while the match loaded? Funny that we didn’t see it again until Street Fighter 6, isn’t it? Conveniently after a patent would have expired. We went through an entire era of games with load times that could have benefited from mini games, and by the time the patent expired, we had largely come up with ways to get rid of load screens altogether.
Well saying the nemesis system wouldn’t have worked well in other games is almost assuming that it wouldn’t be changed or evolved to fit other genres. People forget that the real damage some patents/copyrights do is not in their explicit existence, it’s the sphere of influence they exert on related concepts entirely. We weren’t just robbed of the nemesis system, we were robbed of anything even slightly resembling it.
And I feel like once you understand that you realize it can be adapted to greater things. Spider Man games could have used it. Assassins creed would have been an amazing place for experimentation with those ideas. Could be adapted to Star Wars games, dragons dogma, yakuza, borderlands. And it doesn’t need to be a central focus of these games like it was with the WB games. But even the concept of having enemies that kill you be leveled up in some way is now tainted.
Maybe it is a lack of imagination on my part, but that mechanic seems to rely heavily on characters that can be killed and come back to life with a vengeance on a regular basis, which I don’t think makes sense in any of the settings you listed except for Borderlands, with its New-U stations, funny enough. You could adapt it into something where both you and an enemy are defeated non-lethally, I suppose, but that’s a concept that strangely doesn’t have a common template in video games.
Spiderman and Batman are literally famous for not killing their enemies, so I think your first sentence is way more than a maybe.
It’s the using a creature to glide that’s the specific problem this time. Not the “using a creature” per se, but “pressing a button to instantly summon a non-player-controlled game-creature to allow for gliding, which is instantly dismissed once the player touches the ground” or something like that in the patent
Which is equally insane, no?
Yes, the more you read the patent the more you just want to grab whoever approved it and force them to explain how and why it deserved it, despite lots of prior implementations.
As far as I understand patent law, if nobody has actually patented something someone can just say “mine lol” and scoop up royalties and block shit for spite.
it’s even more stupid because that’s not how the mount works in Pokémon anyway
It’s how it works in Legends: Arceus, isn’t it?
As described in the patent, yes. You press one button, you start riding said mount. If it’s glider mount, it automatically changes to the stag once you touch the ground OR to the fish if you fall to the water.
Palworld never had this “automatic change from one mount to another”, at best it was the glider pals that you didn’t have to manually summon in order to glide and went away once you touched the ground or water. I’ve skimmed the patent a few times, but I don’t recall it having a case for going from creature-assisted-gliding to back on foot
Introduce a .5 second delay before dismissing the creature upon touching the ground.
I mean… Patents in general are bullshit just for things like this.
Japanese ones are particularly worse. In the US a successful defense is prior art, there is no such defense in Japan.
There’s a parasitic egg layer that uses leaves some get put into birds and then get shit out? Why isn’t Nintendo suing these insects for using birds to fly around?
Shit like this is why I haven’t bought a Nintendo product in many years.
They might think it’s keeping their profits up, but it’s hurting their business, as a lot more people than me feel the exact same way.
Since when is flying on a monster patentable. What a bunch of bullshit. Nintendo has really used up the last of any good will the company had. I will not be giving them a dime from here on out.
Yeah, Nintendo seems to think they are untouchable. They can do whatever, charge whatever, not even innovate anymore with the Switch 2, and attack fans. I’m done with Nintendo, the only way I’ll ever play any of their games is on the high seas.
Fuck you, Nintendo. Release a fucking decent Pokemon game instead of lawyering the competition that’s offering a more desirable product
It’s the capitalism way.
“The company with the best, cheapest product will come out on top… Unless the shittier company has more money and lawyers and then they sue everyone else into the ground for even attempting to break into the market.”
Can’t they just release free DLC with those features worldwide exlcuding Japan where those patents are enforceable ?
That would be a nice “fuck you,” but it’s probably not worth the extra effort to them.
The spectacle of it would certainly boost sales for a little bit. How much and whether it covers the development time, who knows.
I’d do it on principle alone, but I’m a petty bitch.
It would be neat if modders put all the “patent-infringing” stuff back in.
I’m sure they will.
And as long as none of them try profiting off it, Nintendo has no leg to stand on with their usual C&D bullshit.
