How about they everyone just focus on making shit instead of worrying about who owns the gameplay from a toy that’s old enough to have a quarter life crisis now.
Heh, good one. Just think about it for a second - what would then Nintendo do with their whole office building full of lawyers?
Give them jobs as playtesters
They never hoped to win, they just wanted to drain Pocketpair’s money with lawyer expenses
instead making pokemon slop games, including the card game. try to improve it instead. get rid of masuda, and deal with scalpers for the card area.
And fuck off that pikachu guy as well.
Remember to pirate a Nintendo game today
Its the only way to easily play much of their older catalogue anyway
Gonna go seed some roms.
Been seeding a ~30GB “Almost every game before PS1” pack for about a decade now, ratio’s like 1:100. :)
Yup, my NAS has quietly been seeding everything since PS2 for like two years now. It’s one of my most popular torrents. Current ratio is ~830 and climbing.
I’m not defending Nintendo, because they are a shithouse of a company, but I do feel Pocketpair could have avoided all these wasted legal fees by not just blatantly copying a bunch of very recognisable Pokemon, and at best recolouring them, or giving them another Pokemon’s ears.
Which pals used Pokemon trademarked material?
That yellow Gengar with a machine gun on all their advertising for starters.
It’s like when you go to Aldi and see their knock-off products. Although Tunnock’s don’t have a copyright on stripes, diamond shapes, red, gold, chocolate, wafers, or caramel, there’s no accident that their own brand can be mistaken for the real thing if you’re not paying attention.
And sure, it may well hold up in court, but it’s still going to be expensive finding that out.
A large number of pokemon are based on animals/mythical creatures. A large number of pals are based on animals/mythical creatures.
They both have a very similar artistic style. But you can’t copyright a style. At some point using a similar style on similar animals will get you similar looking results.
Allowing companies to copyright styles would be a very bad thing.
There’s actually plenty of material to compare to, with a swath of Pal designs that are clearly original, in a similar style with similar inspirations. Then there are models with almost precisely the same silhouette and proportions as iconic Pokemon, which are frankly just worse designs for it, since the altered colors and markings clash with the original concept and result in a generally forgettable whole. They clearly had the skill and motivation to innovate more within their niche, but instead the game is half-full of what feel like hastily painted over placeholders.
Sure, nobody owns the artstyle. Nobody owns the idea of collecting animals. Not suggesting they do.
But you get enough things the same, lawyers will start sniffing around.
Tem Tem is pretty much Pokemon, far closer in gameplay than Palworld tbh, but they sensibly made it look different, didn’t try to ride the coattails of a lawyer-happy multi-billion dollar corporation, so avoided all this drama and nonsense. Digimon and Yo-kai Watch, again, very games. Different enough marketing that they didn’t get sued.
Sony don’t own metal dinosaurs or post apocalyptic scenarios (although they make so many of the latter they might as well), but when Tencent did this:
… just what do you expect their lawyers to do? Not get paid?
Actually in many countries there’s a thing called “parasitism” which is not legal.
E.g.:
Taking advantage of the reputation, investments, or efforts of another economic operator by placing oneself in their slipstream (copying a business model, marketing concept, or commercial method…).
Source: https://www.grelieravocat.com/en/expertise/unfair-competition-economic-parasitism
Games Fray’s report claims Nintendo now has “zero chance” of prevailing against current Palworld versions under the revised scope, arguing that any injunction would apply only to older builds. The outlet also said the maximum damages at stake would be 5 million yen, roughly $30,000, if Nintendo succeeds on the remaining claims.
Oh what a return for the widespread disgust. No such thing as bad PR right guys? lol
Not really. Sometimes the process is the punishment.
No other game studio/publisher would want to lose a hefty sum in lawyer fees
No such thing as bad pr when your company has millions of brainwashed fans who have literally never played any other games.
have you see then gatekeep the current slop of games.
I know a lot of people including me that haven’t bought a switch 2 after owning every nintendo console released in their lifetime because they’re disgusted with with Nintendo’s behavior. I’m sure some percentage of them will cave eventually but it’s definitely a non-zero amount of money they’ve left on the table by being like this
According to Switch 2 sales numbers, you are sadly the rare exception. Nintendo fans are gobbling up the stuff big N is churning out and asking for seconds.
We must be, “sadly”, 2 rare exceptions. My kid is still playing on the switch with no hope of getting the switch 2 until he is old enough to leave my house and buy it himself. Fortunately, he hates Nintendo’s bullshit behavior as well, and has been playing more on steam instead. And yes, I am brainwashing him against all the corpo crowd. Sue me.
And yes, I am brainwashing him against all the corpo crowd.
Sounds more like you’re deprogramming them.
The brainwashing is the Marketing and PR from the big corps that turns people into mindless consumers and even fans.
The overwhelming amounts of Advertising everywhere every day aren’t there because people are naturaly prone to love brands, they’re there to (mainly using techniques from Psychology) shift people’s perception feelings about a brand to make them love the brand, and if you pay attention most of it is designed to influence people via their subconscious pathways (such as familiarization and associating the brand with other things they feel as positive) rather than to convince people with rational arguments via their conscious mind. So it’s the Advertising that’s using the same kind of technique as brainwashing.
If you’re trying to change your kid’s mind via convincing them of something (i.e. rationalizing with them) rather that through psychological trickery (for example, relentless pressure until they comply), then what you’re doing is the very opposite of brainwashing.
That’s me. I’ve been a day one customer of Nintendo systems for as long as I remember but they simply don’t deserve my money now.
This. I was already losing interest, but I hard left Nintendo when Tears of the Kingdom came out and felt like an unfinished game
Hey that’s me and my pokemon/Zelda/monster hunter stories obsessed daughter! Fuck you Nintendo, you used to be cool. Well…you used to pretend to be cool. Well…we used to buy your games and not think too hard.
I’ve now managed to pirate all the Switch 1 Pokemon games through an emulator.
Sooner or later, somebody’s going to emulate the Switch 2. I can wait.
You’re already not considered the average consumer by using lemmy
I haven’t owned every Nintendo console, just Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Super Nintendo, Game Boy Advance, N64, Wii, New Nintendo 3DS, and Switch. But yeah, all the shit they’ve done recently means I’ll never buy a Switch 2, or whatever comes after it.
This right here 1000%. Nintendo used to get a lot of my money. Not anymore, screw em.
That’s okay. Youtubers still buy the new Nintendo games and consoles day fucking one all in the name of “cOnTeNt”. (RTGame, Poofesure, and others)
So basically good fucking luck trying to get anyone to change when you have people advertising for Nintendo basically for free.
Oh no like 1000 people buy them
Or we can watch those YouTubers to still partake in Nintendo games while not buying anything.
If you can help it, you shouldn’t. It promotes the games to a wider audience if they get views/likes/comments. Nintendo doesn’t deserve that free marketing, and you engaging with it makes it more effective.
I’m not responsible for other people deciding to buy shit.
I never said you were. I said that you’re responsible for your actions. Your action in this is helping Nintendo. This effect is something you own, and you can’t push it off on others. What you do with that is on you.
I watch maybe 5 minutes of any of those Nintendo game videos because after those 5 minutes it becomes incredibly stale and boring looking at the same bright colors and round shapes all the goddamn time.
Also the fact that almost all Nintendo games amount to what is essentially a fancy arcade game with not a lot of depth to them.
I’m in the same boat.
Hey that’s me and my pokemon/Zelda/monster Hunter stories obsessed daughter! Fuck you Nintendo, you used to be cool. Well…you used to pretend to be cool. Well…we used to buy your games and not think too hard.
What are they gonna do? Hack into my PC and send a lawyer to my house demanding I remove the version that has round balls? Kiss my ass Nintendo!
Yes, they will.
Who do they think they are, WotC?
Magic The Gathering is known for it’s 5 color card system. Red, Blue, Black, White and Green.
But the most dangerous color is Pink.
Expected a different
kind of pink
I don’t know how it would work with the lore, but it would be absolutely hilarious if they added Pink. XD
Tell me about pink kryptonite
Well, it IS June…
Even the older versions were vastly different, and Nintendo’s patents are both exceptionally vague and infringe on older works. Hopefully this keeps reducing until it collapses entirely. Any win for Nintendo, even minor, will give precedence for future lawsuits.
That’s not how the law works. It’s not a thing where this company sued another company for patents and won, therefore all future lawsuits on patents automatically win. There may be some precedent about specific details in the case, but there’s no reason to assume a future judge in a future case wouldn’t rule in the same way even if this case never existed. Seems to me precedence paranoia is just some internet lawyer thing.
The strangest thing about this case is that Nintendo didn’t sue for trademark infringement or copyright. I assume Pikachu is trademarked and this company had a Pikachu with a machine gun on the cover of their game. Looks like an easy win for trademark infringement, given everyone referred to it as Pokeman with guns.
Beyond the black/yellow coloration it really does not resemble pikachu. If anything it looks kinda like electabuzz
There is no Pikachu in the game. While it does take inspiration from Pokémon certainly, that is perfectly legal. Imagine the shit hole the art world would be in if you couldn’t take inspiration from previous works. Their argument is about mechanics, and their mechanics aren’t particularly unique anyway.
After the first few paintings of humans and animals, painters would have had to get damn creative to not step on previous painters toes.
No, it’s just a monster capture and battling game. Their issue most definitely losing Pokemon sales to this game but the lawsuit they went with is in relation to a patient on throwing a ball and a creature being summoned to do battle. So Palworld removed the ball throwing aspect and the creature now just appears which is why they are now focusing on older versions of the game that still contain that.
I wasn’t aware that they had a ball throwing mechanic in the game. Considering the context they put a Pikachu with a machine gun on the cover, yeah they were just copying someone else’s shit.
No, it’s just a monster capture and battling game.
Do you really believe the similarities are coincidental? Like if Pokeman didn’t exist, they would’ve had the character on the cover look like that and would’ve had players collecting creatures with balls?
They’re obviously just ripping off someone else’s ideas.
There’s very few “original” Pokemon. Most of them come from Japanese folklore
There’s a reason Nintendo didn’t use the trademark angle, they would have lost very quickly
Well, I think at this point most of them come from whatever object was in a designer’s field of view at any given moment. Some are from folklore, but many are just random pieces of furniture, or things like that.
There’s a pokemon that’s literally a lamp.
There’s also a scoop of ice cream, multiple different sentient clouds, geometric shapes, and I’m pretty sure there’s at least one that’s literally made of trash.
by that logic pokemon is just an obvious rip of dragon quest
Shin Megami Tensei too
humans have been trapping and taming and riding animals long before electricity, let alone video games. Flying on animals isn’t a thing in real life but its been in fables and myth. Cockfighting and other animal abuse is also a tale as old as time. You can’t legitimise patents for any of that and nintendo can get fucked.
Actually play it and give it a shot. You’ll see how unlike pokemon it actually is. And you may just have some fun.
