Shouldn’t it be trivially easy to demonstrate “prior art” in this case, making the patent invalid? I guess that requires someone to get into a legal battle with Nintendo… but it’s not like this is some niche mechanic. Surely there are other entertainment megacorps who are currently in violation of this “patent” and do have the resources to fight it in court.
Indeed. The sources I’ve read seem to lay blame with games not usually patenting mechanics (which apparently is all patent officers look at for prior art, not other games), meaning it needs active challenging to be thrown out.
PocketPair is based in Japan, which is where the previous, more directly problematic patents have been filed mid-litigation. While there is clearly prior art for the US patent, it isn’t quite as comically broad as the Japan ones, and since Japan doesn’t seem to care about prior art, those remain the most concerning to me.
The patent office has long said they’re unable to attract and retain the expertise needed to evaluate novelty in any given field, and so the courts are left to sort it out.
I wonder how could a government agency not have the funding it needs? /s
You can thank good ole Walt Disney and his lawyers for first pissing all over the public domain laws and then throwing as much of his weight as he could behind increasing the penalties for copyright infringements.
This patent could have a chilling effect, but there’s no way it would stand up in court. They can still use it as a bargaining chip. Court cases are expensive. And if you don’t have a legal department, they are also a personal drain. But that’s small fry. Financially, I don’t believe it makes sense for them to resort to criminality to get such a patent. Maybe they hope it will influence their court case in Japan against Palworld?
Sort of the point though. If they take a small creator to court, they can just bankrupt them through expensive legal proceedings, and because they do have the patents the judge is unlikely to throw the case out
Yes, absolutely. And there is money in patent trolling. I just don’t see the business case here. Why damage the Nintendo brand with such shenanigans when you could leave the patent trolling to some formally independent company. Maybe I just underestimate how much money can be made by shaking down small devs.
What damage? Its been known for years what a scummy company Nintendo is and people still buy their games and consoles in the millions. The fans will just say that Nintendo is in the right and move on
People literally die of preventable diseases due to patents. I can’t find any news regarding the last time some nutjob died because they couldn’t torrent Sham’alyan’s Avatar movie.
Like the other guy said it’s a patient. I don’t know why these days it seems like the patent office is allowing patents for vague concepts, But it needs to stop. The entirety of the video game industry is built on itineration of ideas and concepts that came before. How much longer before they try to patent jumping?
I cant wait to have Tarkov on steam and play a game thats flooded with hackers, thats developed buy people who uses their admin powers to punish people that kill them.
This is why I loved the DMZ mode of Warzone when it launched. The stronger bots were mother fuckers but there were missions to finish, so the players (all fresh from Warzone and new to having prox chat,) were mostly carefully happy to talk and often helped each other. It got pretty sweaty over the next two seasons though. After that it was kill on sight.
A few weeks ago, soon after they spun it off to its own download apart from Warzone, someone cracked it for solo play. I’d love someone figuring out a way to let people play private servers for that.
Extraction shooter market is getting crowded quick. It’s probably wise move by Tarkov devs to bank some money before Arc Raiders comes out on October 30th. I have a feeling Arc Raiders just might dominate the extraction shooter market for broad general audience. I’m sure more hardcore extraction shooter fans will stick with Tarkov but I don’t see Tarkov will appeal to the masses. I hear developers of The Division might be working on an extraction shooter too. It’s quite ironic since they accidentally stumbled onto the extraction shooter idea and just now figured out there may be a demand for the genre. There is Marathon but I have no idea what’s going on with that game. I’m not sure if Bungie or Sony knows what will happen to that game.
Tried changing my email on my Tarkov account but it was nor possible. I contacted support and they refused to change it too. I simply wanted change the email as i no longer use outlook as my mail provider. After multiple refusals i simply deleted the account instead.
You got lots of downvotes, but assuming you’re earnest, the game has a reputation of being rife with cheaters. Here’s a popular video that showed how bad it was a couple of years ago: youtu.be/p5LfGcDB7Ek
There’s also lots of allegations about the developers not being great people, which you can read in this thread. I have no idea about that, though. But complaints are not rare.
Last time I played I got curious hit up a buddy who cheated and grabbed walls. I haven’t used cheats in a shooter since I was 14 I’m fucking 34 now. I’ve gotten kappa twice legit and had basically quit the game over being pissed about the cheaters.
And holy fuck playing around for a few weeks was absurd. I was mostly just questing, no farming or killing for the most part.
But there were so many obvious cheaters that I didn’t even have issues finishing the kill quests doing a HvH only rule.
I was worried I would mistake people who are actually good for cheaters but no. Not even remotely, it’s so absurdly obvious it’s funny.
Honestly HvH was more fun then normal tarkov just because it actually was a level playing field. Definitely a different experience.
Tarkov REALLY is one of the most cheated in shooters there is.
Personally I’ll avoid sending any Western money to the Russian economy that I can. BSG has been able to weasel out of political controversy thus far…but it’s a milsim, the devs are probably more pro-Russia than not, they’re just smart enough to keep their mouths shut and keep accepting Western patronage.
Blue beret item references the VDV, airborne russian troops, in the description. Also one of the armbands has the russian flag on it.
Although because the game is shown through the lens of PMCs (you’re not fighting as or against Russian/UN/NATO troops), most of the russian military references are minimal (unless you count the descriptions of weapons detailing their design/usage histories).
This also makes me curious how it was even possible for them to bring it to Steam in the first place, logically speaking, with Russia being under international sanctions and all major payment processors no longer accepting business from there?
Did they like make this happen with a shell company or something elsewhere? Lol
forbes.com
Gorące