But code subject to copyright (which I agree with the concept of but it needs a reform). While concepts and ideas in computer programs and games can be patented (which I think is tremendously stupid)
From the translation of the claims, they appear to describe Pokémon-style activities, with ‘191 focused on the act of throwing a ball at characters in a field, ‘117 tied to aiming, and ‘390 on riding characters.
If this is indeed the case, the lawsuit is clearly illegitimate (in the real sense, can’t speak for legal nuances). Not surprising.
That’s not exactly it. I read the description of '191 and it seems to be more like “throwing a ball to capture a character and place it in the player’s possession or throwing it to release a captured character”. You can see the patent drawings also depecting that, so it’s basically a patent of the Pokeball.
Not a lawyer so I have no idea how it’ll go in court but it does sound like Palworld infringes on this. It’s kinda funny that they could’ve avoided this by being a bit more legally distinct, like how TemTem throws cards instead of balls.
The second one is an older application of the first patent (pokeball again). The third one is literally just being able to mount an object or creature with some caveats like a flying one having to come down and carry you up, that one is ridiculous and a lot of games do something similar all the time.
Skyrim did it first with dragons. Honestly I bought palworld specifically to spite shitendo and ended up pleasantly surprised by a very playable game. Shitendo is just mad that someone else did it better on a shoestring budget
It would be funny if a legal defense would have been using an n-sided 3d polygon that definitely isn’t a sphere. Is a tetrahedron legally distinct enough? How about a truncated isocohedron? Seems silly for the shape to matter.
The one thing about patent law I know is that you can’t patent something that already exists in the wild (“prior art”), so surely that can’t be the case, and if it is then it’s open-and-shut, right?
Why is everyone here pretending like palworld isn’t a straight up Pokemon clone that went a bit too close with the designs? I mean the game was basically marketed as pokemon with guns. I know you guys have this new hate for Nintendo, but this isn’t even them.
If I made a game about an Italian contractor with a red hat and mustache that fights mushroom people and turtles, you guys would defend it and claim it isn’t a copyright issue lol
Why is everyone here pretending like palworld isn’t a straight up Pokemon clone that went a bit too close with the designs? I mean the game was basically marketed as pokemon with guns. I know you guys have this new hate for Nintendo, but this isn’t even them.
Because it doesn’t matter. Palworld isn’t getting sued for copyright infringement, it is being sued for patent infringement.
If I made a game about an Italian contractor with a red hat and mustache that fights mushroom people and turtles, you guys would defend it and claim it isn’t a copyright issue lol
Again, Nintendo isn’t suing for copyright infringement, but for patent infringement. It’s more like Nintendo suing Monster Hunter Stories for allowing you to ride your monsters (this is literally one of the patents Pal World is getting sued for).
I will never understand when people engage in volunteer (i.e. unpaid) PR work for some random company.
Criticizing a company for lazy patent trolling (a patent for riding a mount?) is not engaging in “hate crimes against video games”.
Nintendo is welcome to release good products on multiple platforms (Palworld runs on PC) to compete with Palworld. Crazy idea, I know!
One would think I should patent the concept of releasing good games to compete with other companies, but out of the goodness of my heart I will release this unique idea into the public domain.
If your opinion is identical to the corporate sourced PR copytext (not to mention the condescending style - “everyone knows”), then yes it is de facto PR work.
Even if it were an exact clone I don’t think a single company should have a monopoly on the idea for almost 30 years. Pokemon red was released in 1996, 28 years ago. Why should they still be able to be the only company that releases pokemon-type games?
5 mil yen is about $32k. In total they’re suing for about $100k.
I would imagine the 3rd patent at the very least should be invalidated - riding characters in video games predates Pokemon (MegaMan riding Rush comes to mind, as well as World of Warcraft [although I don’t know if the patent predates WOW mounts]). However the nature of patents is that once they’re granted they are very difficult to dismiss.
The other two are more tricky. Throwing balls at something us a uniquely Pokémon idea, I think, and the aiming one would come down to the technicalities of the patent itself, which is all Japanese to me.
Yeah the newer they are, the more frivolous they are - especially since you could argue the release of games using those patents amounts to public disclosure.
However, you’re still left in the situation where an established patent is very solid and difficult to challenge, even when it should never have been granted in the first place.
Seriously? Are they gonna go after TemTem. Coromon, Cassette Beasts, or any number of Pokémon clones for being too similar? The only thing i can see as a legitimate thing to sue on is if they find out palworld did use AI based off of Pokémon models to generate their models, but I think that was just a rumor anyway.
The difference between palworld on the ones you listed is Sony made a move to start a “Pokemon company”-like business with the Palworld devs (named Palworld Entertainment) and Nintendo feels threatened by the potential damages Palworld Entertainment would be able to cause being backed by Sony to the pokemon franchise. In-depth look on this theory: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8apzrwv75i0
It was a indie publisher, not developer, big difference. They published titles from indie studios. Publishing is the act of funding, supervision, sometimes giving advice, doing a launch marketing campaign, etc. In short, indie publishers are key for a indie game to make money, as tradicional publishers tend to avoid them because they are high risk.
They still haven’t formally announced that development on KSP2 has stopped right? They didnt even announce the studio shutdown. Yet it’s still on sale on Steam…
In case you haven’t heard, a bunch of the original KSP developers are teaming up with the DayZ guy’s company to make a spiritual sequel: Kitten Space Agency.
Initial version will be free, and DRM free, distributed by us and completely open. This will be so we can get feedback from modders and establish some confidence. When the project becomes more structured we will look at future options.
Not sure how to feel about the company behind DayZ getting in on it though. It’s kinda ironic, because they (or the guy that is/was leading them) are quite notorious for abandoning active running projects for something new, and repeatedly doing so. They even did this with DayZ until after a long time they picked it up again (I think), but I’m not sure what state the DayZ is in now.
It’s not a myth when it really happens. I specifically remember DayZ being the first game I even reviewed on Steam because they abandoned it to work on a new project before wrapping up DayZ.
It’s just bad business to let projects linger in early access while starting new ones, or even sell loads and loads of DLC for these games. Frankly Steam should do something about it and punish studios abusing the system.
Nope. They had anti cheat that supported it, but they experienced higher issues with cheating via linux than elsewhere. Which sucks. People who cheat suck.
I’m curious to see how Valve will respond to this seeing as they have CS. I imagine they’d be interested to build a solution but I’m not sure how plausible that even is.
That would just cause legit Linux players to generate negativity by always being stuck with cheaters. It’s way easier to just remove support if it really is most of your cheating problems for such a small player base.
theverge.com
Aktywne