Submitted 3 hours ago by simple@lemm.ee to games@lemmy.world
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.
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.
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 himselfImage.
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.
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.
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.
Nintendo is just a garbage lawsuit company that sometimes makes hardware with stupid subscriptions attached.
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.
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
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?
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
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.
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
it’s even more stupid because that’s not how the mount works in Pokémon anyway
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.
Wouldn’t a game mechanic/animation like that be equivalent to a stunt in a movie?
Like, imagine if a film director wanted to blow up a car in his movie, but was getting sued by Paramount because Michael Bay already blew up a car in Transformers.
The last Nintendo console I bought was the Nintendo DS lite. The last Nintendo product I bought was Age of Empires DS The Age of Kings.
As you can probably tell, that was a rather long time ago. Since getting my first TTDS flash card I’ve more or less exclusively pirated Nintendo things. I’ll just continue doing that.
News like this isn’t giving me any remorse.
I’ve only pirated old stuff, games from my youth that are collectible items now for silly money or a complete crapshoot on whether 30 year old tech has stood the test of time.
If I had the time to play them I would definitely see my conscience clear on pirating new stuff from them now.
I jailbroke my Switch after they went after Yuzu in March last year. Every time I read about them, it makes pirating new games on it more satisfying. I’m really gonna enjoy Metroid Prime 4 on it!
Patents should last 10 years instead of 20, and digital patents even less.
Digital patents should not exist. Period.
For trivial software features like these, definitely not. I think patents start to make sense in the area of really advanced algorithms, like SAT solvers, ML, and so on. So conditional on patents in general making sense, those kinds of patents seem legit to me.
I can see why parents are so long when you need to build like a billion dollar factory to make a product and mass produce it.
Digital concepts don’t take that much investment and once you have it you don’t need to invest in making more, it’s just there.
So yes, digital patents should be a fraction of the time that physical patents should be. Like 2 years instead of 20.
2 years seems like a nightmare for indie developers. Do you want a bunch of AI Chinese cash grabs pushing things out like Hollow Knight 2: Microtransaction Edition or Stardew Valley Romance Sims? Because without IP protection, indie developers will get creamed.
Glide with a glider in your inventory like Zelda? Is that patented?
How is it that pokemon has a hold on things like animals allowing flight, but gliders allowing flight isn’t under patent?
Like, whoever did gliders first needs to sue Nintendo to change breath of the wild, no gliders allowed anymore.
Cowards, you haven’t lost a legal battle yet so what the fuck are you doing
Legal battles aren’t exactly cheap and they can drag on for years. Pocket Pair could end up bankrupt in the meantime from excessive legal costs, while Nintendo can keep that shit going for decades.
They could simply have the pals hold on to gliders that the players can use and nothing would change in the gameplay…
Serves the Palworld devs right. This is what happens when one blatantly plagiarizes, and I am here for it.
Pathetic corporate simp.
Pathetic corporate simp.
Nothing like feeling powerful behind a screen eh?
We are talking about gliding on a mount…a very common game feature…
We are talking about gliding on a mount…a very common game feature…
"On November 30th, 2024, we released Patch v0.3.11 for Palworld,” it said. “This patch removed the ability to summon Pals by throwing Pal Spheres and instead changed it to a static summon next to the player.
Well I am talking about the blatant plagiarism, which is what the devs for Palworld did.
Palworld dev dares Nintendo to sue. Nintendo sues. Palworld bends over. Seems like everyone got what they wanted.
The first attempt to sue was over copyright. Nintendo figured it had no grounds, so it went for patent bullshit
mhague@lemmy.world 3 minutes ago
I wonder what their plan was – step on the toes of the biggest franchise while operating in one of the many countries with broken copyright laws and then hope for the best while raking in early access money based on an idea that legally can’t exist? Was it being naive and hoping they could just make a fun and successful game and Pokemon would be a merciful god?