Patents are (at their core) a good thing. It protects little Jimmy Inventor from putting hours and his blood, sweat and tears into coming up with a novel invention, only for some big corpo to see it, steal the idea and bully Jimmy out of the market.
Jimmy has legal recourse to sue the big corpo if he has a patent, whereas without one he has nothing.
Just because the system’s been gamed (especially in the US) doesn’t mean it’s impossible to reform, and is currently still better than nothing.
Patents as well as intellectual property laws, are entirely unnatural and only exist to prop up Capital.
Most people won't understands this concept due to poor education they received. They will spout the propaganda that benefits their owner daddy and they will feel super smug about it too 🤡
I agree. The system is screwed up, but that doesn’t mean the intention was bad. Having no patent rights just means that whoever has more money will win. Big corps have the resources in both money and infrastructure to bring anything anybody else invents to market faster.
So today, big corps win. If we do away with the system, then big corps win. The only solution is reform. Or consumer knowledge and the ability to resist buying something in protest (which has failed time and time again which is evident by the big corps existence).
Patents are not, at their core, a good thing. They are nice for an idealized and transient scenario, but the reality of capitalism is that the vast, vast majority of investment, production, etc. are done by a handful of large companies, and that includes R&D. Patents are, in reality, overwhelmingly one of the many tools large corporations have to shut out upstarts. In short, it entrenches the power of monopolies, trusts, and similar large businesses.
And that’s without even starting on how the law can be abused and, with the way our legal systems work, it is fundamentally more abusable for the side that has more money and can afford top corporate lawyers to concoct convenient arguments, leaving little Jimmy in the dust.
Yeah, it protects Jimmy from having to unconditionally contribute to society & its many organizations.
It allows Jimmy to set conditions and control who can use it and who cannot. For example, he can ally with one particular big corpo (or even start building one himself) so they can hold that thing hostage and require agreements/fees for the use of that thing for a long long time.
So now, instead of all people, including big (and small) corpos, having free access to the idea, only the friends of Jimmy will.
The reality is that if it wasn’t for Jimmy, it’s likely that Tommy would have invented it himself anyway at some point (and even improved on it!). But now Tommy can’t work on the thing, cos Jimmy doesn’t wanna be his friend.
So not only does it protect Jimmy from having to contribute to society without conditions, it also protects society from improving over what Jimmy decided to allow (some) people access to. No competition against Jimmy allowed! :D
Even without patents, if the invention is useful I doubt the inventor will have problems making money. It would be one hell of a thing to have in their portfolio / CV. Many corpos are likely to want Jimmy in their workforce. Of course, he might not become filthy rich… but did Jimmy really deserve to be thatmuch more richer than Tommy?
Sure, but how do you solve the problems that patents in turn solved (and brought new problems with them of course)? That as kinda my point, if we just ban patents we can just look back to know which problems we need to solve in another way.
I agree, but I think all intellectual property laws should be repealed. I came to the conclusion that patent, copyright, and trademark are all varying levels of bad years ago and I think it clearly holds the human race and human progress back by limiting creative iteration.
They’d have very little chance in a copyright suit and they know it. Because you can’t copyright game mechanics or general concepts, and those are the things Palworld pretty obviously copies.
Except for the capture mechanic working similar, which hopefully was not just copy-pasted, the gameplay is completely different. Palworld plays like Arc x Fortnite, while Pokémon plays like Final Fantasy.
And the general design-inspiration itself shouldn’t be an issue. Because I don’t think “style” can be copyrighted
I know that’s how it works in the US, but the lawsuit is in Japan, which you always hear about having stricter copyright laws. Not really sure how this one will play out though.
it’s really funny to me how obvious the… “inspiration” of this game is from pokemon, and yet nintendo has been struggling so hard to come up with something to sue them for, like i don’t really care about this in and of itself, but seeing a big company unable to remove a splinter from their toe and copyright unable to be enforced brings me joy.
They want so hard to remove false competition, that is a glorious frustration.
Pokemon is Pokemon, Palworld is Palworld. One trying to claim the other steps on their toes is hilarious. If they have merit, Doom could sue every FPS with monsters.
Stay mad Nintendo/GameFreak, you are a joke and should make better games.
Went on to that modder’s profile and I can only see comments on randomizer mods? How is that infringing lol. That’s a shame since I loved replaying the original Breath of the Wild with the Linkle mod that even changed dialogue.
The mods only work with ROMs, so the idea is to take down anything that might make people want ROMs to emulate. Whether they have a legal right to do so or not.
Some of it is pure hubris. But some of it is American IP law, which will punish you if you don’t zealously prosecute people in defense of your patents. Its sort of like laws on squatting. If someone is openly and notoriously using your IP and you don’t try to sue them for a long enough time, they can claim the property as functionally abandoned.
For Nintendo, which hasn’t had a particularly good new idea in 20 years, the idea of losing Mario or Link or Pikachu to a legal loophole like this would be devastating.
I’d agree with you, except Sony, another massive Japanese company operating in the same industry as Nintendo, doesn’t lash out this aggressively at their own community that is just desperately trying to enjoy games in their own way.
Sony has left basically all emulation projects alone as well as modding projects like 60FPS patches (there was one emulator that they took to court in the 90s, Bleem, but Bleem was charging money for the emulator. Funnily enough, Bleem won the case and was allowed to continue existing, but the company went under due to the cost of the legal battle) .
Nintendo doesn’t have to act out like this. They actively choose to stifle such products so that they themselves can offer tightly curated versions on their own schedule and at their own price. This isn’t an IP protection strategy, it’s an agressive cornering of their own market.
Sony, another massive Japanese company operating in the same industry as Nintendo, doesn’t lash out this aggressively at their own community
What IP does Sony hang its hat on? I’m hard pressed to name a uniquely Sony-esque title or franchise. They partner with Square Enix on the reg, but Square is also horrifyingly litigious.
Nintendo doesn’t have to act out like this.
No. There are proven effective ways to monetizing the modding community and exploit them for their free labor. And that’s not part of the Nintendo business strategy, possibly because their creative directors’ egos can’t handle it or possibly because some bean counter thinks it’ll hurt profits long term or maybe possibly even because Nintendo has a better-than-average work culture and the staff doesn’t like the idea of being undercut at their jobs by hobbyists.
Idk. But I also just don’t get the desire to bang your heads against this wall over and over again, on the modder side of the equation. There are other franchises and platforms to mod on. At this point, it feels more like a battle of wills than a rational strategy on either end.
Ratchet and Clank, Uncharted, Killzone, Sackboy, inFamous, God of War, The Last of Us, and if you want to go older, SOCOM, Syphon Filter, Spyro, Sly Cooper, I could go on.
I mean, I get what you’re saying, they don’t have something as iconic as Mario, but to say you’re hard pressed I think is a bit of hyperbole. Sony has had a really well rounded line of exclusives for decades. Sure, some are on PC now, but they’re expressly “PlayStation ports” not console ports.
There are other platforms and franchises to mod on
I personally disagree with that attitude. If every consumer went along with that set of ideals, every studio, firm and corporation would be free to jerk us around willy nilly because we’d just move on to the next thing. There are people out there who really don’t care about modding Skyrim, they want to mod BOTW.
Ratchet and Clank, Uncharted, Killzone, Sackboy, inFamous, God of War, The Last of Us, and if you want to go older, SOCOM, Syphon Filter, Spyro, Sly Cooper, I could go on.
They’ve all got their own boutique developers and were simply published by Sony at one point or another (not even exclusively). Insomniac Games seems to be the real owner of the IP for a bunch of them. Hell, most of these are just knock offs of other franchises. Sackboy is a very obvious Mario/Sonic analog that simply never got popular in the same way.
If every consumer went along with that set of ideals, every studio, firm and corporation would be free to jerk us around willy nilly
There are definitely some publishers more open to modding than others. Early on, you could accuse Nintendo of being a sleeping giant who failed to give modders warning or opportunity to compromise. But now modders are just trying to hug a very large hedgehog with it’s spikes out.
Sony probably just learned their lesson when they lost their case against the Bleem! emulator back in the late 90’s/early 2000’s. They were, originally, just as rabid as Nintendo against emulation. And perhaps they also learned that you attract more flies with honey than with vinegar.
Then again, while Sony isn’t as aggressive as Nintendo, they are a bit slow on the up take and sometimes do really dumb things. Like their current strategy of releasing the first thing of a series on PC but the followups only on the PS5 to try and get PC gamers to buy PS5s. Why would I do that if my save isn’t on that platform and there’s no way to convert them?
The followups do usually come, just later. It’s more like the GTA double dipping strategy where they get console users (and impatient PC users who buy a console) then PC users, both often paying at full price.
That’s the thing though, they really were never as rabid as Nintendo. Bleem wasn’t the first PS1 emulator, it was just the fact that it was a commercial product that Sony took issue with, honestly understandably so.
There are actually PS1 emulators from the pre-Bleem era that are still available. Sony did nothing to shut those ones down because they were being offered freely.
Piracy is a totally different deal. I’m not delusional, any company that owns an IP is completely within their rights to aggressively stomp piracy at every turn, and I think it’s silly to criticize a company for trying to protect one of their main sources of income (I mean really, do people expect a company to spend billions on a product, then just be okay with the theft of that product?).
That’s not to say I’ve never sailed the high seas, or think it’s objectively wrong to do so no matter what, but I tend to save it for times where I really wouldn’t be able to enjoy the product otherwise (abandonware, or in Nintendo’s case, games they stubbornly lock behind ridiculous paywalls).
It’s not patents, it’s trademarks. Kleenex is the best example: Overuse of it as a generic term leads the company to call it “Kleenex brand”. Lego has fought this for years, with the boxes promoting calling them “Lego bricks”, lest all building bricks become generic “Legos”.
Patents expire after 17 years regardless of usage, trademarks can last forever.
Right, but when companies go after pirated games, they are going after them because of copyright, not patents or trademarks. The way copyrights are enforced and the way the law works is a lot different than how it works with patents and trademarks.
There is no “use it or lose it” clause for copyrights. If somebody is breaking copyright, you still have the right to enforce it for a long as the copyright is still valid, and don’t have to vigorously defend it to keep it.
I am getting really tired of these all these chucklefucks being in charge of things they patently do not understand. Modders are the modern lifeline of gaming. They work for free, fix your fuck-ups, and breath life into games that are years and sometimes decades old. Rimworld and Factorio both started their crowd funding campaigns in 2013, and both are wildly popular 11 years later, still selling copies. Factorio is just now coming out with their first expansion, and Rimworld just came out with their 4th. Neither Ludeon Studios (Rimworld) nor Wube Software (Factorio) have had ANY financial need to produce any other projects besides these games. Why are they so wildly profitable and evergreen? They both have rabid modding communities that have been supported and cultivated by the developers constantly fixing and expanding modding support to allow for an infinite variety of new content to be created for their games. Hell, the Vanilla Expanded team of Rimworld modders have actually turned it into a primary income source via Patreon.
AAA devs need to just sit down and thank these modders for tirelessly working on their games after release for free. Ever since DoTA became more popular than Warcraft 3, they all have their panties in a bunch and keep trying to claim ownership over all mods. No, bad developers smacks on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. God, it pisses me off to no end.
I just cant support Nintendo anymore, Sony burned their bridge with me after terrible support of the Vita and PSVR and hardware issues with the PS4, Microsoft seems hell-bent on becoming a third party.
I have a Steam Deck and honestly its the only platform i feel good about the future of. I thought I was done with PC gaming in 2013, Im getting older and I much prefer the simplicity of the console experience, but its looking like the ONLY choice rn.
Release a SteamOS console and save us Valve, youre our only hope.
Yep, Steam Machines were basically that, but just a PC that ran SteamOS. I think they could come back to moderate success now where they kinda failed before.
No one bought them before, and since literally nothing has changed since then besides graphics card prices, no one will continue to buy them if they get re-released.
If their pricing and performance is comparable to premium consoles, and your whole Steam Library automatically carries over, I definitely think more people would be interested.
What’s crazy was that they performed better than consoles at the time compared to price, and people still didn’t buy them. So no, you’re wrong people won’t change and it still wouldn’t sell
Well, for one, there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of compatible software, which has been a big factor in the success of the Steam Deck and was a big complaint about the original Steam Box/Machine.
Steam Deck and other handhelds like Lenovo Legion Go, ASUS ROG Ally (I know, their horrible customer support…), Odin 2, RG556, Retroid Pocket 4 Pro, etc make portable gaming better than ever tbh.
Playing steam games on the TV has become really good. I played through most of control over steamlink and besides my ps4 controler losing power too often - which has nothing to do with steam, it has been a blast.
Games that can be played with controller work great on the tv.
Outside of a few first party titles (Even those have been lackluster), Nintendo doesn’t really have much going for it lately does it? I know the Switch 2 is coming which I have no desire for. Hell, my Switch hasn’t been touched in a couple years. So many other options that Nintendo no longer sits on the pedestal it once did.
It’s the typical end-of-generation lull right now, but even with that, the brand is broadly, wildly popular. The Switch is approaching the PS2’s sales record. Throw in all the money from MTX now and it’s surely the most profitable venture ever in traditional video games.
That’s precisely why Nintendo can afford to burn up goodwill with trash like this move.
I’ve been the same way with my switch, I haven’t touched it for probably a year and a half outside of a short bit when tears of the Kingdom launched where I replayed some of breath of the wild and a small portion of Animal Crossing, I agree
They had been falling for at least 4 years now, I had already strayed from doing anything on the switch from lack of appeal, but their crackdown on dmca with the yuzu Community was the final straw for me, I didn’t even use the emulator myself but I’ve always heavily embraced emulation and the ability to Tinker with stuff that you purchase and that just didn’t sit right with me.
It was also around that time that I actually read into what happened with Gary Bowser, and that made me sick to my stomach, because it was essentially the equivalent of Prosecuting a cashier for the crimes that the CEO did.
Honestly even if they were still prospering I wouldn’t recommend the products, it’s hard enough to recommend their product to customers in the first place due the platform restrictions and the fact that they just keep regurgitating the three same IP over and over again, and that’s without the active hostilities towards their fanbase
I couldn’t disagree more. Other than Pokémon their first-party releases have been pretty much flawless this generation, it’s arguably the strongest lineup of games any Nintendo console has ever seen. There’s a reason the Switch is currently in route to become the best selling console of all time. That’s not an excuse to their legal team shenanigans, of course, but credit where credit is due.
I’m sure the fact that Nintendo systems sell well with families and has been massively cheaper than a ps5/Xbox series x plus been available for much longer and there’s been very little stock problems unlike the ps5 has nothing to do with why its one of the top selling systems… Comments like yours always read like propaganda as they never mention other factors than games.
Why, just because I decided to leave my honest opinion instead of trashing Nintendo like every other comment here? I can see where people are coming from with their complaints but to say Nintendo’s games have been disappointing is absurd. Yes, there are other factors contributing to these sales numbers, and none of them would matter at all if the Switch didn’t also have great games on it.
GameBanana mods have saved me so much wasted time while playing animal crossing nh with my daughter.
The game is cute but it’s so slow with many long loading screens and has one if the worst UIs of any game I’ve ever played. Mods were able to help a bit atleast.
nintendolife.com
Gorące