I never played any Pokemon, I always thought it was lame, but I absolutely love Palworld. I run my own server and we still play with others, so this makes me sad.
I stopped buying Nintendo things years ago when they began going after emulators, rom sites, and others actively archiving and distributing these means. I don't support litigious companies and the vermin lawyers.
Is it litigious if they're enforcing their own patents? They didn't immediately go after Palworld for copyright infringement, but dug deep and seemingly found something in violation of their own patents lol
There are a large number of patents out there that have no business existing (overly broad, ridiculous broad, patents stuff that already existed or shouldn't be able to be patented, etc). Software patents in particular have quite a bad reputation for this. So yes, trying to enforce one's own patents can absolutely be litigious, since the patents themselves can have no business existing in the first place.
>Is it litigious if they're enforcing their own patents?
In most cases, probably yeah. Patent trolls and malicious actors make such easy money off of frivolous patents that the default assumption in cases like these is that it's just a litigious action to make a quick buck. We're at the stage where it's very rare for a patent to actually aid innovation rather than stifle it.
Early on there were countless pokemon clones back to the OG gameboy that were far more egregious in use of various pokemon features and methods, and there hasn't been legal claim to shut any of them down in 25 years. It is a well discussed topic with the pokemon vs palworld haters, so if Nintendo has anything, I imagine they found some minor method that probably shouldn't have had a patent anyways, but the Japanese agency over patents loving Nintendo for 100 years already gave it freely regardless.
Now with Nintendo in short of revenue and late with a new platform for Christmas with their stock taking a beating, I guess this is how they'll make up some difference and feed their wild herd of lawyers hungry for some action in the mean time.
Rabidly litigious companies still disgust me when outside developers fill a void they cannot or will not. I can buy from Amazon hard drives and entire systems filled with every Nintendo video game from the 80's on, maybe they should sic the lawyers on them instead of the little guys like Pocketpair putting a positive spin on the genre.
"Now with Nintendo in short of revenue and late with a new platform for Christmas with their stock taking a beating, I guess this is how they'll make up some difference and feed their wild herd of lawyers hungry for some action in the mean time."
Mate, Nintendo aren't worried. They have enough money to operate at a a loss for decades without sweating. They're still selling Nintendo Switches by the millions.
I, as a game developer, also ask of a tiny bit of fair play amongst ourselves.
The game isn't fun to play only because they slapped BOTW + pokemon copycats with guns. So, why did they decide to go so much on your face when they could have literally tweaked certain elements to keep them similar but not identical?
People got absolutely bananas with Genshin Impact because of the similarities in style while the core loop and business model being more different.
To top it off, the developers of PalWorld are literal neighbours of Nintendo (both from Kyoto). So this does have to be a very open and direct diss at Nintendo as whole.
I stopped buying Nintendo things years ago when they began going after emulators, rom sites, and others actively archiving and distributing these means. I don't support litigious companies and the vermin lawyers.