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Comment on Palworld confirms ‘disappointing’ game changes forced by Pokémon lawsuit

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.

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ouRKaoS@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

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.

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- rdri@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  That sounds like a “look someone managed to pull that off so it’s definitely possible” argument. In other words “you can enter the collectable creatures scene by spending that amount of effort”. And it shouldn’t be that way. The price in effort shouldn’t be that high.
  
  Actually, it should be the customers who decide if your product is worth the effort of playing it. There are a lot of rehashed games in various genres (e.g. horrors, walking simulators) and wee see no issue with them even though they are using exactly same mechanics, or sometimes even assets. What matters is users’ reception. If users think your product is worth it - it means you spent enough effort already. If your product would be a low effort creation users wouldn’t spend money on it in the first place.
  
  I’m sure if Cassette Beasts could accumulate that kind of playerbase and profits, Nintendo would’ve sue them too.
  
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- paraphrand@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Bingo. In many ways, but not all, palworld was lazy, and unoriginal.
  
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  - Prethoryn@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    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.
    
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- flicker@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  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!
  
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  - MolochAlter@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Add one to the list. Really enjoyable, even fun to cheese, not very fond of the ending but otherwise stellar.
    
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ZeroHora@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

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.

delphox comparisson

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.

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- calmnchaos@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  But that’s not the point of this lawsuit. They patented broad game mechanics and are successfully litigating ownership of those ideas.
  
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  - ZeroHora@lemmy.ml ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I’m not talking about the lawsuit, I’m responding about the idea that eventually people will create monsters that looks similar to Pokémon because of the vast amount of Pokémons, Palworld clearly tried to be close as legally possible.
    
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JDPoZ@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
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.

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- philophilsaurus@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - paraphrand@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    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 set in a dark gritty sci-fi world where you are fighting subterranean monsters called the Focus Board.
    
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    philophilsaurus@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    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.
    
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