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.
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?
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.
Man I’ve not heard about the finals in a while. I remember I played it every day for two week straight and got everything for my class. Is it better now than at launch?
Apex was the game I played with my friends to keep in touch long distance. Guess I gotta find something new now. Sure as he’ll ain’t installing Win11 for it.
I guess it’s been a long time coming. The dev decisions and priorities the last few years have really made it feel like I’m the last person they want playing their game.
If you are looking for a semi competitive shooter, I’d highly recommend The Finals. Tons of fun and solid gun play. Game isn’t officially supported but runs great on linux.
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