and none of it matters, cause they have literal legions of fans that will ride their ride, no matter how much it costs, no matter how poorly made it is, no matter how much nintendo spits in their face.
So Nintendo sees no significant economic repercussions from their behavior, and thus has incentive to change.
I was one of those but they were losing me more and more every year… But 3 years ago it became way too much, and I got off the bandwagon. Screw that lol.
I hope they don’t make as many sales as they expect… But you may be right, too many people who will buy their crap however expensive and how much they’re being mistreated by the company.
All of my friends who are less pissed off at Nintendo than I am are not even considering buying a Switch 2 because Nintendo basically priced themselves out of the market. All of my friends who have a Switch 1 will not be buying the Switch 2, that’s pretty significant IMO, but I guess we’ll see.
I agree, they definitely priced themselves out of several demographics including casual gamers, parents of young children gamers, and “I guess I’ll get a switch as a second device” gamers. These people aren’t going to look at a switch that’s roughly the same price as the ps5 and xbox and think “yeah let’s grab that one”.
The wii u showed their demographic of “die hard fans that buy no matter what” is actually really small compared to the rest of their sales. And I think we’re going to see a repeat of that.
I bought a WiiU refurbished directly from Nintendo shortly before the Switch came out. I did it purely because the first big hax was released and I was able to easily port my GC\Wii hacked HDD to it AND also have WiiU games hacked games available. WW and TWP were also a big part of that purchase decision for me.
I got a Switch and BotW ultimate CE on release, but will be skipping the S2 for some time. Likely until the next Zelda comes out if the Steam Deck can’t easily emulate other S2 titles by that time. I’m bummed I’ll be missing the new DK game (only 10GB file size though so not very big) and Hyrule Warriors game as the last one was amazing, but it’s a basic beat em up so no love really lost there.
Lemmy constantly falls into the same social trap as reddit: that we think we’re some monolith of consumerism and when we believe something we think everyone else will be on our side.
Go on YouTube and look up the hundreds of videos from the past few months alone of scalpers and other Pokemon buyers getting into actual physical fights, buying literally 10+ of those huge box sets, and camping out at those vending machines and buying literally everything in them the minute they restock.
I’m a vendor at comic and anime conventions here in the US. I did a show last month that was literally 99% Pokemon cards and merch, and everyone was buying that shit up regardless. There were actually maybe five booths including my own that weren’t selling just Pokemon stuff, if at all.
Lemmy constantly falls into the same social trap as reddit: that we think we’re some monolith of consumerism and when we believe something we think everyone else will be on our side.
I dont know why you are whinging about this when literally no one is making this claim. In fact, we are talking about the exact opposite of it.
Go on YouTube and look up the hundreds of videos from the past few months alone of scalpers and other Pokemon buyers getting into actual physical fights, buying literally 10+ of those huge box sets, and camping out at those vending machines and buying literally everything in them the minute they restock.
I’m a vendor at comic and anime conventions here in the US. I did a show last month that was literally 99% Pokemon cards and merch, and everyone was buying that shit up regardless. There were actually maybe five booths including my own that weren’t selling just Pokemon stuff, if at all.
Yes, thats the legions of people we were talking about, before you came in with this weird tangent.
I was agreeing with you with my anecdotal experience.
The comment you replied to said Nintendo is going to lose customers over this, while your comment said Nintendo fans are still gonna be their dumb shitty selves by buying multiple of the same system or even game. Where does my comment diverge from that line of thinking?
ETA: the consumerism claim was just something that I’ve noticed between reddit and Lemmy. Reddit might have thousands of users in one sub, while Lemmy only might have a few hundred. Both sites/whatever you call the collective of Lemmy, constantly think that people will go along with their beliefs about boycotting certain games/not buying certain products for whatever reason; when the fact of reality is that both of these places are actual echo chambers full of common denominators, and we need to face reality.
I think they will lose customers over this, sure, but nowhere near enough to make them reconsider being the biggest a-holes in gaming (take that 2nd place, EA)
Now look at switch game sales, scroll past their major IPs and pokemon games, and once again the sales show around 13 million or less.
On wii u mario kart had 8 million sales, and not one other game passed 6 million.
The wii, wii u and switch all had around 3 million sales in their first quarter and didn’t really pass that 13 million mark in their first year.
If only die hard fans that buy no matter what buy it, I think it absolutely will be a problem for them. And I think it has a real chance of happening. Half my casual gamer friends didn’t even know switch 2 was a thing, and the ones that did know about it said they haven’t seen any reason to get it yet, especially at the prices they’re seeing.
The reality is, the family and casual markets are what carried them whether they like it or not. Not the rabbid fans. And like with the wii u, if they don’t appeal to those markets properly, they won’t sell well.
Mafia 3 is the only nonlinear Mafia game, and ditching the open world sounds great. I just played the first game’s remaster and I was really annoyed by the futile open world of that game.
Mafia 2 did a similar thing. I like the games, they’re fun and interesting and all, but it’s kinda weird when you spread collectables throughout a map but they’re almost all in the opposite direction of any missions.
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 himselfhttps://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/4e6a9e85-e9ae-4407-86b2-7aadae1a5943.jpeg.
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.
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
I think Cassette Beasts pulled off the Pokemon gameplay format without making anything that Nintendo could try and sue over.
That sounds like a “look someone managed to pull that off so it’s definitely possible” argument. In other words “you can enter the collectable creatures scene by spending that amount of effort”. And it shouldn’t be that way. The price in effort shouldn’t be that high.
Actually, it should be the customers who decide if your product is worth the effort of playing it. There are a lot of rehashed games in various genres (e.g. horrors, walking simulators) and wee see no issue with them even though they are using exactly same mechanics, or sometimes even assets. What matters is users’ reception. If users think your product is worth it - it means you spent enough effort already. If your product would be a low effort creation users wouldn’t spend money on it in the first place.
I’m sure if Cassette Beasts could accumulate that kind of playerbase and profits, Nintendo would’ve sued them too.
Honestly? I see more Totoro in there than Electabuzz.
Where does the line get drawn between inspiration and stealing? I’m not trying to be facetious, it’s just the kind of question that I think a lot of people will have vastly different answers to.
The line? Usually you need to be doing something conceptually different. This knockoff electrabuzz wouldn’t have raised as many eyebrows if it was in a farming simulator, or a card game.
It’s like if you had a chainsaw gun in your game, and your game was a third person shooter set in a dark gritty sci-fi world where you are fighting subterranean monsters called the Focus Board.
Pokémon TCG would probably make a stink about that too. I would agree that more needs to be done to differentiate them but the Guns and the art-style should do that pretty well.
Using balls to capture and store Pals was a big mistake though and they definitely should’ve made a few more drafts on some of those aspects before reveal.
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.
If you search for a fox fire witch you’ll see different interpretations on that. But somehow Palworld made a fox fire witch extremely close to an art of a fanmade Mega Delphox.
I’m not talking about the lawsuit, I’m responding about the idea that eventually people will create monsters that looks similar to Pokémon because of the vast amount of Pokémons, Palworld clearly tried to be close as legally possible.
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.
At a fundamental level, why should copyright exist? Is it helping society here by incentivizing Nintendo? No. Contemporary copyright has it wrong, and I think your starting assumptions ignore that fact.
If I spend millions of my own money and hundreds or thousands of hours of my own time to build something, another company should not just be able to yoink that, put a coat of paint on it, and leave me with nothing to show if theirs just happens to get more popular or be advertised a little better. I don't think the current laws are good but, absent basic income and such for everyone, I see why something should exist.
Sorry but why not? If you can’t afford that don’t make it or don’t publish it.
We see with open source that lack of copyright is not restricting anyone’s creativity and ability to create. In fact the open source world is significantly more creative and productive than proprietary one.
open source doesn't pay my mortgage, pay back any business loans, put food on my table, etc. as the sole breadwinner in my family.
To be clear, I have contributed in a minor degree to open source and build things for fun; this is specifically about why copyright exists in certain domains. I also think it should be something more like 3-5 years max. I am a software engineer and used to work in the games industry for a number of years (though not anymore).
Not being able to steal something someone put a ton of time and/or money into for a couple of years without compensating them at all is ruining society... how exactly?
Here’s where you fail to think when you call this “stealing”. You don’t own intellectual property as it didn’t come from the vacuum of your head. It’s built from millions of other contributors and our collective intelligence.
Don’t like this? You’re free to leave this to people who do and go do something else. No one’s forcing you to do this. You’re not even aware of your own entitlement.
Eh I think patents in video games just ruins the fun for us since Nintendo/game freak/Pokemon whoever can’t make a good game if their lives depended on it.
I’m a little torn on your comment, because om the one hand you are right and on the other these lawsuits have nothing to do with the designs or art style at all.
clearly PalWorld takes more than a little “inspiration” on a bunch of different Pokemon IP
There’s 1025 Pokemon at this point in time - how the hell are you supposed to create a unique pokemon at this point in time? Even pokemon can’t create unique pokemon anymore.
The same way Digimon, Monster Hunter monsters, and every other unique IP looks nothing like Pokemon. Make completely original designs that don’t look like fan art or knock offs of another artist’s specific trademark style.
I just assume that as long as everyone is fine with derivations produced by AI (text, pics, music), all derivations that don’t look exactly like original Pokemon are fine (also real people put some effort into those). Palworld compared to Pokemon is a much better product than, say, Fifa XX compared to Fifa XX-1. Also Pokemon series is notorious for useless editions of the same games masked as separate products - that level of rehashing feels much more illegal to me.
they barely changed the overall “palmon” to the orignal pokemon they stole from. kinda hard to defend palworld when they just copy and pasted, and slightly changed the feature.
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.
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?
Nintendo shouldn’t be trying to own mechanics. if someone took their core idea and made it so good people who are Pokemon fans are buying it en masse then maybe they should take a hint and make a game that people want. but instead they’re out there suing devs for “stealing” their idea of holding onto the feet of creatures with wings to glide? they’re clearly unable to take down the game and decided to blindly keep stabbing away at random things trying to bankrupt them with trivial lawsuits. it’s pathetic
Does your comment make sense as a response to my comment?
I’m confused why the devs stuck their head in the jaws of a sue happy monster. I ask, “But what was the point? What did they plan to happen?”
And you tell me Nintendo shouldn’t own mechanics? Like… I know that. I am so used to people misunderstanding me, that I specifically go back and add a huge banner saying “I agree with you.” I can call Nintendo assholes, call copyright broken, paint the devs as good but naive, and I still get “listen here, Nintendo is bad. Copyright is broken.”
You’re getting down votes from astroturfers, idiots, and kids who can’t handle attacks on their precious favoritist little game, but you’re right, palworld has zero leg to stand on here and they’re lucky their company even still exists with the sheer scale of blatant theft going on. But DAE Nintendo bad hurr hurr?
So, Nintendo can file patents after years of not filing them just to fuck with an Indie company after that company put out a product with game mechanics that “infringe said patents”, but not to go after other large gaming companies like Microsoft that also infringe those same patents. Interesting take.
What the hell is wrong with you? Did I say Nintendo ought to be allowed to drive drunk? Or did I express confusion at why someone stepped in front of the speeding drunk? I’m fucking tired of “oh you defended him? What do you love him?” bullshit.
Sorry I didn’t just shake my magic 8 ball and generate a pithy comment like you (probably) did. Here, I’ll shake my ball and write what comes up.
Nintendo is fucking scum. I want a competitor to Pokemon. Copyright laws are broken. Lawyers! LAWYERS!!
Either you haven’t read into what Nintendo is doing and kept up with what’s been going on in the court case, (and perhaps meant to put a /s at the end of your first comment), or you’re blaming Palworld for something Nintendo did because they are big mad that anyone would dare make a game even remotely similar to theirs. I don’t care if you’re defending Nintendo or not.
NINTENDO LITERALLY APPLIED FOR PATENTS FOR GAME MECHANICS used in Palworld after the game was already released to the public. They invented a reason to sue. They directly manufactured it. Your inability to communicate your thoughts on the matter is not my problem. Maybe stop raving for a minute and compose a reply that actually makes sense.
I wonder how much of this game they can force them to change. I know Steam has a 2 hour limit for returns but at what point does this game become “not the game I bought”?
I mean, the game is in early access so if you bought it and are now complaining it changed… It’s a you problem, not something that should be refundable.
Nah, not complaining, idly wondering. I made my bed, I’ll sleep in it, I’m just wondering how far a game can go to change a game and still claim it’s the same game.
Yuuup, Palworld was a rare early access buy for me. Burned too many times but a sale burnt a hole in my pocket after holding off for years and I got curious, I knew what I was getting into haha
Pretty much anything so long as Palworld doesn’t have 1.- a backbone and 2.- a dictionary at hand. Because it is as simple as finding a picture of any of a long list of animals that can glide, state the words “previous art” and they should be free from this ridiculous demand.
Mechanics that already exist in nature should not be copyrightable. Can you imagine if the first videogame company ever patented “character walking”?
I've seen no evidence of this. People are clamoring for the switch 2 and talking about all they want to buy. Fuck Nintendo, but people keep giving them money so they're going to keep doing anti-consumer shit with no sign of any government stopping them. The government isn't going to attack one of the most beloved companies in Japan whose mascot they used at their olympics. A lot of Japanese are event against things like free, labour-of-love randomizers made for old games. People need to stop buying their shit globally if they want anything to happen.
that was the same issues with swsh all the way to arceus, people were repeatadly warned how half-assed the games were, and then complain later on the subs. they still bought it.
That has happened my whole life, I’m 44. Nintendo supposedly does low first batch numbers so the can get in the news that they sold out. Then scalpers sell the machines for $1500.
Sure but I don’t see any evidence of Nintendo’s decline. The truth is that gamers are incredibly spineless and will continue to bootlick corporate boot unless they put “something woke in the game” at which point they’ll leave a review somewhere and still clock in 300 hours if entertained enough.
Serious now, I wouldn’t be surprised if USA’s video game industry was suddenly gone - because for countries not directly caught in the tariffs war, businesses outside USA (like Sony and Nintendo) will get another competitive advantage.
I don’t care about it either personally, but my wife really enjoys playing the game with friends, and I’m pissed on her behalf. Luckily, she’s told me the devs are being really good about making the changes feel good (not like a punishment).
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