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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This article was a wild ride. I have not been keeping up with Square Enix so I had no idea they were all in on the web3 hype and now AI, too. I am wondering what is going on with the title “Infinity Strash: Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai”, did AI come up with that wordy name? What even is a Strash?
Someone needs to teach this company about sunk costs. Just because they invested in blockchain and AI doesn’t mean they need to keep throwing money and resources at it. Maybe they would have a better marketing budget and better market research into the new trends in their field if they weren’t so busy constantly salivating over all the latest tech bro hype.
She is a terrible bigot, and a loud one, and that sucks because she also produced a cultural phenomenon of my childhood, and while the canon of HP is only just barely pretty okay sometimes, it spiralled out from there and SO MUCH of the media and culture I’ve consumed and existed within since then has been informed by it.
So yeah. If there’s any comfort, let it be that any money she gets from this comes from explicitly affirming a trans woman through the work, as well as implicitly affirming any trans players through the character creation options. Small comfort maybe, but she is far away.
That, and there was an entire team of people working on this game for years, trying to make it the best vision of theirs as well as making it fit within the pre established world.
“Moderately related” as in “written by and with royalties paid to”
People, and trans people especially, absolutely have good reason to not want to buy a product that directly funds a person who is actively hostile to their existence.
You can’t deal with critical comments from a community who are directly affected by the actions of a major stakeholder? That’s pathetic.
Sealioning Sealioning is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity, and feigning ignorance of the subject matter.
shes wrong about the second part if she said that, it just means you dont care enough about their position (/ them) to stop you or you believe in art ≠ artist. about the first part, it’s too vague for me to take a stance on. if shes called for their deaths thats horrific. if she said that trans minors should get a 40 minute psych checkup before irreversible surgery, i couldnt care less.
I suggest you do your own research then. From everything I’ve read, JKR is a horrible person and virulently anti-trans. There are a lot of ways to br horrific without outright calling for people’s deaths.
i dont put that much weight on some random authors societal takes to research them. if shes calling to take away trans peoples votes or for them to be removed from the work force or something insane thats wrong. if shes just saying ‘idc about peoples preferred pronouns’ i couldnt gaf, shes one person of billions, so what honestly.
She’s one person influencing millions, if not billions, that’s for sure. She’s not some random author, she is one of the most well known personalities of the 20th and 21st century. Her opinions carry weight, as misguided as that may be on the part of her followers.
I’d partially agree with you if we were talking about some random who has sold a few hundred kindle copies of their book on Amazon and is spewing nonsense. And even then I’d call for people to not support that author in any way shape or form. JKR is however hugely influential, and that absolutely should matter when it comes to deciding who you give your money to.
First: she doesn’t need to say anything specifically or explicitly to be a transphobe actively hostile to the existence of trans people.
Second: she says things and creates spaces that are very specifically and explicitly hostile to the existence of trans people.
Third: she associates with and collaborates with people who openly advocate for “reductions in trans people”.
Honestly I could go through my understanding of her issue, but many people have spoken at great length about why her behavior is harmful. If you’re truly interested seek them out.
You can search up “jk Rowling transphobic” or “jk Rowling anti trans” and you’ll find a plethora of sources yourself, this isn’t really a controversial thing. She’s the most well loved transphobe in the world.
It makes absolute sense that people are passionately against this game, which puts money directly in the pockets of not only a very vocal transphobe with a huge following-but one who actively finances anti-trans causes. The game itsself has its own incredibly problematic issues, but I focus on the transphobia because that’s what your comment was concerned with.
Quite frankly, yes, we want acceptance. But “acceptance” of trans people as people who have human rights should be the bare minimum. That is in no way comparable to pushing back against this game, or pushing back against JKR.
Eh. Hopefully this doesn’t include their 2DHD department. Those are probably classified as low budget but are by far and away the best games they make rn.
I’m pretty sure that if she had the power to do so she would have deathsquads going after anyone remotely suspected of being trans. I was in her telegram group just to watch the crazy unfold and she is absolutely batshit and hates trans people with a burning passion.
kotaku.com
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