The tried to patent fucking MOUNTS. Someone get square and blizzard on the sue-train and ream Nintendo a new one.
Comment on Palworld confirms ‘disappointing’ game changes forced by Pokémon lawsuit
Console_Modder@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
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
SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 11 hours ago
Who the hell in their right mind would want to buy a switch after seeing this?
MagnyusG@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
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.
StonerCowboy@lemm.ee 10 hours ago
All the nintendo boot licking neckbearded incels that you see defending the company like if its their own.
thermal_shock@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Children will, from their parents who don’t see these articles. Don’t be an ass.
samus12345@lemm.ee 9 hours ago
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.
ICastFist@programming.dev 7 hours ago
I won’t, unless I can buy one 2nd hand AND there’s a way to jailbreak it
CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 8 hours ago
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.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
That’s probably Richard Garfield’s fault for setting precedent with his collectable card game patent.
Lojcs@lemm.ee 10 hours ago
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
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
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.’
Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Amazon has a patent on the “one click purchase” button…
ICastFist@programming.dev 11 hours ago
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
NightFantom@slrpnk.net 11 hours ago
Which is equally insane, no?
ICastFist@programming.dev 11 hours ago
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.
Yermaw@lemm.ee 9 hours ago
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.
Caesium@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
it’s even more stupid because that’s not how the mount works in Pokémon anyway
brown567@sh.itjust.works 9 hours ago
It’s how it works in Legends: Arceus, isn’t it?
ICastFist@programming.dev 9 hours ago
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
BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Introduce a .5 second delay before dismissing the creature upon touching the ground.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
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.
CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
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.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
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.
tarrox1992@lemm.ee 8 hours ago
Spiderman and Batman are literally famous for not killing their enemies, so I think your first sentence is way more than a maybe.