kotaku.com

alyaza, do gaming w According to Kotaku: 25 Days Into 2024 And 5,800+ Video Game Layoffs Have Been Announced
@alyaza@beehaw.org avatar

i think it’s very clear now that the lack of unionization in the gaming industry will need to change, or every year or two or whatever arbitrary interval we’ll see an astronomical number of people losing their jobs all at once in this way.

Zworf,

Yeah and without that the crunch time practices will never change.

falsemirror,

This is true across tech workers. Having a nice salary kept unionization at bay, but there are no assurances during hard times.

These coordinated layoffs are almost certainly intended drive down labor costs in the long run by flooding the labor pool. Sure in a year we’ll get “not enough developers” stories forgetting to mention the drastically smaller salary…

xfc, do gaming w According to Kotaku: 25 Days Into 2024 And 5,800+ Video Game Layoffs Have Been Announced

Why is it happening this week? Are we approaching end of financial year in the US or something?

peter,
@peter@feddit.uk avatar

All the companies that didn’t want to do layoffs at Christmas

rwhitisissle,

A lot of companies overhired during COVID, Trump basically turned the Federal Reserve into an unlimited money hack for banks and other companies, the tech sector is particularly sensitive to boom and bust cycles of mass hiring/layoffs every few years, there’s been Fed rate hikes recently, and other factors. Your more conspiratorially minded would say it’s a concerted effort to make people too afraid to unionize by making them think their jobs are in danger.

WebTheWitted,

Some companies end their fiscal year at the end of January, i.e. FY23 ends January 31, 2024.

millie, do gaming w According to Kotaku: 25 Days Into 2024 And 5,800+ Video Game Layoffs Have Been Announced

Seems like a good time to go indie. Big game companies are bloated and unhealthy. Specialization is so niche that there clearly isn’t the kind of interdepartmental communication there ought to be, and it’s pretty obvious that the money people have their hands in way too much.

That doesn’t seem to me like an environment that’s conducive to art.

EdibleFriend, do gaming w Nintendo DMCAs Palworld Mod That Makes Everything Pokémon
@EdibleFriend@lemmy.world avatar

Nintendo is going to be watching this motherfucker till the end of time

Synthuir,

Just ask Gary Bowser…

CaptainEffort,

That poor guy got screwed. His life is forever changed because of a fucking Switch mod

Zuberi, do gaming w Nintendo DMCAs Palworld Mod That Makes Everything Pokémon
@Zuberi@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Fuck Nintendo

Jako301,

Nah, that one’s legit. Nintendo does a lot of fucked up claims, but this is a 1 to 1 ripoff of their IP and models.

Zuberi,
@Zuberi@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Be Weird, Download a Car, Generate Art, Fuck Copyrights

ArmokGoB,

The most based of the instances

moosetwin,
@moosetwin@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar
InputZero,

And a broken clock is right twice a day. Sure this one is legit, it’s still Nintendo’s legal department. Just because they’re right this time doesn’t change anything.

SomethingBurger,

The mod or Palworld?

Jako301,

The mod. Palworld should be distinct enough in gameplay and monster design that any lawsuit would fail.

fidodo, (edited )

I saw some comparisons of unrigged models from pal world overlayed with Pokemon models and they had nearly the exact same pose and proportions with some geometry tweaked. The chances of them matching up that closely by chance is practically impossible, and there were several examples. One rip off model is not enough to win a case, but if there’s a lot of them I think there’s a pretty good case that can be built. Gameplay and concept wise, I don’t think there’s a case, but with the model infringement there may be enough to show a deliberate pattern of ripping their model files.

EDIT: Found the post: twitter.com/covingtown/…/1749462735291859423

The silhouettes minus the the extra details are nearly identical.

Sheeple,
@Sheeple@lemmy.world avatar

Yes

CaptainEffort,

Tbf this guy was sticking his mod behind a paywall. Scumbag

lelgenio, do gaming w Nintendo DMCAs Palworld Mod That Makes Everything Pokémon
@lelgenio@lemmy.ml avatar
  • Posts “Surprised Picachu face” image
  • Gets DMCA’ed by Nintendo lawyers
saigot,
Toribor,
@Toribor@corndog.social avatar

I’m so behind on Pokemon that I genuinely can’t tell if this is a Pokemon or a Pal.

saigot,

Issa pal

orbitz,

As someone with minimal pokemon knowledge, only played two due to being older and not having Nintendo consoles really, I thought this game was a spin off till I realized no big pokemon or Nintendo logo anywhere. They must have threaded the needle to avoid that copyright infringment.

Cypher,

They’ve done a great job and nailing the art style modern Pokemon games should have had, while being distinct enough to avoid any serious chances of a lawsuit winning.

Modders will be the ones running afoul of Nintendos lawyers.

Aermis,

As long as the mods are free (can’t monetize on IP) most mods should be legally safe from copyright. But I’m not a lawyer so not sure how this works.

Jako301,

Nah, once you start distributing the mod, be it free or not, it’s copyright infringement. They can’t sue you for the profits made, but they can still force you to take it down and pay reparations for any potential damage to their IP, as stupid as that may sound.

Aermis,

So the pokemon mod for minecraft can be sued and taken down?

Sweetpeaches69,

It actually had been, yes.

Thcdenton,
@Thcdenton@lemmy.world avatar
AClassyGentleman, (edited ) do gaming w Nintendo DMCAs Palworld Mod That Makes Everything Pokémon

One extra thing a lot of articles haven’t pointed out is that the mod was locked behind a patreon paywall. Sticking mods behind paywalls has been a hot subject (to put it gently) in the community for a while now. Not to rush to the defense of the most profitable franchise in the world, but yeah that’s absolutely gonna get you shut down.

Crikeste,

Paywalled mods are debatable themselves. Throwing one of the most protected IPs that’s ever existed in the mix?

Lmao, yeah. Of course this would happen.

I’m surprised it hasn’t happened to Palworld directly.

DebatableRaccoon,

My guess is Palworld has done their homework on how to be “legally distinct” enough. It’s quite a different gameplay loop, after all and Nintendo can’t copyright “cute little animals that do the manual labour for the humies” otherwise things like Digimon already wouldn’t exist.

pixelscript,

This kinda flies in the face of what I heard the Palworld devs are: a rag-tag handful of nobodies on a budget of $0 making a Steam game in their free time.

I heard they didn’t even use a version control system because they didn’t know how to use one, they just put a copy of the code repo on a flash drive once a day, and when they ran out of drives, they went to the store to buy more.

If even a slightly less embellished version of half of what I’ve heard is true, I wager none of these people got anywhere near a lawyer before putting this game out.

Omega_Haxors, (edited )

Life has taught me a zillion times over to never buy into the story of the scrappy underdog. 9/10 it’s completely fabricated where it turned out actually no they were a multiberyllionaire oil baron who had everything they needed to succeed 30 times over. Even that other 1/10 times it’s still a massive stretch of the truth where the person in question was more than prepared for what was ahead of them. People naturally embellish their opposition and downplay their capacities; and underdog narratives crank that natural tendency up to 11.

DebatableRaccoon, (edited )

You don’t necessarily need a lawyer on-hand to figure out “legally distinct”. Everything that Nintendo has taken down before has blatantly used the name and existing characters in both name and likeness. Even if the core idea when they started the game was “pokemon but with guns” - which I doubt - it’s still a good start in the vein of “inspired by” instead of “ripping off” and I bet Nintendo knows this otherwise Palworld would have been hit just as quickly as the mod was considering this is a company who made themselves infamous for going after youtubers making let’s plays of a basic racing game. They’re famously litigious so they’re going to be watching Pocketpair and Palworld like vultures after their next meal but either Pocketpair are more careful than they’d like the public to believe or their idea is different enough from the get-go that Nintendo will never get anything on them.

canis_majoris, do gaming w Nintendo DMCAs Palworld Mod That Makes Everything Pokémon
@canis_majoris@lemmy.ca avatar

I don’t get how this is news, it’s the most predictable, obvious outcome.

Nintendo literally DMCA’s hentai artists bro.

DebatableRaccoon,

Slow news day for games journalism and writers trying to justify their paychecks. Plus, I’d imagine it helps those who were running bets not on if Nintendo would crush it, but how long before they did.

Omega_Haxors, (edited )

One of these days I want to see it go to court just so that the judge and jury has to discuss the legitimacy of sexualized cartoon animals, with the defence forced to keep a straight face as they try to explain why a person banging a goodra with giant jugs in a wedding dress isn’t infringing copyright. Just a bunch of professional adults in a room forced to dance around the elephant in the room because it’s irrelevant to the case.

altima_neo, do gaming w Nintendo DMCAs Palworld Mod That Makes Everything Pokémon
@altima_neo@lemmy.zip avatar

This was expected, concidering it’s using copyrighted characters

BassaForte,
@BassaForte@lemmy.world avatar

That’s not even it. It’s because it was paywalled. The Minecraft Pokemon mod has stuck around.

Omega_Haxors,

Should have done what that terrible zelda unity port did; have the project free to download with a patreon on the side.

Strayce, do gaming w Nintendo DMCAs Palworld Mod That Makes Everything Pokémon

That was fast.

BarrierWithAshes,
@BarrierWithAshes@kbin.social avatar

Yeah turns out putting it behind a paywall pisses of Nintendo lmao.

Aermis,

Yeah you can’t make money off of copyrighted intellectual property without seeing some lawyers.

Seaguy05, do gaming w Nintendo DMCAs Palworld Mod That Makes Everything Pokémon

They were so busy thinking to NintenDO the mod. Instead they should have been thinking NintenDONT break copyright laws.

hoshikarakitaridia, do gaming w Nintendo DMCAs Palworld Mod That Makes Everything Pokémon

Unfortunately that sounds like a clear cut case. Iirc they have copyright to the creatures themselves, and that case is very straightforward to prove.

FrankLaskey, do gaming w Nintendo DMCAs Palworld Mod That Makes Everything Pokémon

Wow… didn’t see that coming… /s

Katana314, do gaming w Square Enix Wants To Make Fewer Games – New CEO Takashi Kiryu wants to focus on making AAA and indie titles and marketing those titles better

I can’t say I agree with the approach. Someone like Sony can perhaps get away with this knowing that even with routine mechanics, they can reliably sell a good story.

But Square is sort of discovering their niche for modern Japanese RPGs; if their singular high budget games are going to be like Final Fantasy 16, there’s definitely some risk of overinvestment in stories people are “meh” about. Meanwhile, if people were asked to name their favorite JRPG stories, I imagine a lot of them were not ridiculously high budget.

DumbAceDragon, do gaming w Hogwarts Legacy Just Broke A 14-Year Games Industry Streak – For the first time since 2008, something other than Call of Duty or a Rockstar game was the best-seller
@DumbAceDragon@sh.itjust.works avatar

Tbh that’s a low bar to pass. The newest CoD flopped pretty bad and Rockstar has been too busy with GTA6. Almost every other notable release was either a flop or a smaller studio or indie title.

slimerancher,
@slimerancher@lemmy.world avatar

While that might be true, 2023 was an year filled with great games and yet Hogwarts Legacy is first, and Call of Duty is 2nd.

As for notable games of the year that weren’t flop (in no particular order):

  • Spider-Man 2
  • Baldur’s Gate 3
  • Diablo IV
  • FF 16
  • Armored Core 6
  • Street Fighter 6
  • Alan Wake 2

Not to mention:

  • Resident Evil 4 Remake
  • Dead Space Remake

They may not be to your taste, but they all rated very highly. I haven’t included any Nintendo games, cause they don’t share digital data. Their numbers are based only on physical sales.

DumbAceDragon,
@DumbAceDragon@sh.itjust.works avatar

That’s actually fair. I barely pay attention to AAA gaming to begin with, so most of these games just weren’t on my radar. I just thought “oh, Starfield was the big hyped flop of the year, of course there wasn’t much AAA competition”

slimerancher,
@slimerancher@lemmy.world avatar

No worries. Of all the games mentioned above Starfield was probably my most anticipated. But it let people down.

cbarrick,

Those Nintendo releases this year we’re bangers:

  • Tears of the Kingdom
  • Super Mario Wonder
  • Pikmin 4
  • Super Mario RPG Remake
  • Metroid Prime Remastered

Plus the DLCs for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe came out this year.

Great year for gaming IMO. But yeah, all of these are niche enough that I wouldn’t expect any of them to be top sellers.

On the other hand, I know at least one non-gamer that got a Switch just to play Hogwarts Legacy.

slimerancher,
@slimerancher@lemmy.world avatar

Well, Mario has kind of a general appeal, so I won’t call it a niche (and it was in 12th with just physical sale). And Pikmin 4 also sold over 2 Million in just first month or so, IIRC, though not sure if that’s enough for being a top seller in a year like the one we just had.

Also, Tears of the Kingdom was on 5th overall sales, and that’s only with the physical sales. Don’t know the actual number difference between 1st and 5th, but with digital added, it could’ve at least entered top 3, if not gone for 1st.

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