Patents and video games huh? We can’t ignore what John Carmack had to say about this:
The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.
–John Carmack
More like he wouldn’t be able to sell his solution to others, but yeah I think Patents on simple processes and mechanisms are dumb, especially certain software and firmware.
Imagine if you had a hammer and decided to use it to hit a nail and then someone came along and said “I see you’re using my method to build a house! Pay up!”
Well, you can’t patent something like that!
Imagine you open up a game engine, any engine, and decide you need to point to an objective so you decide to use an arrow. A game company says “You’re using our method to identify objectives! Pay up!” and that one is a unique mechanic?
How long has humanity been using arrows to point to things? How can you patent it just because it’s a digital arrow?
Jfc this guy
> The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.Thats essentially what both an AI does and what ChatGBT does. Are you gonna defend that to?? Just dont take credit for shit someone else made, who cares if its Nintendo. I don’t want my game sprites altered and then sold as though whoever altered them made them by handI was mislead about what the lawsuit was about and Im retracting all my statements thank you :’ )
My cock is not inspired after reading this bad take.
John Carmack is human intelligence and therefore more valuable than artificially generated drivel.
-edit- I mistook inspecting for inspiring for your name. I’m leaving it.
John Carmack is human intelligence
[X] Doubt
John Carmack is many things, but I have my doubts about whether human is one of them. At minimum, he’s some kind of alien. Most days I lean more toward incognito archdevil of the plane of knowledge. I’ve heard someone accuse him of being God, or at least standing in for him on Wednesdays.
At least on Wednesdays.
I never said John is an AI. But there are steps Palworld coulda taken to avoid the inevitable. If anything its just sad they did nothing to prevent this. I can see why thousands of people like it a fuckton. But they did nothing to actually avoid this from happening.
The whole game was intended from the very beginning to thumb their nose at Nintendo, just so happens that it got really popular and sold a ton of copies because it isn’t difficult to make a better Pokémon game than The Pokémon Company does, even when the entire game in question is a shitpost.
Im not about to sit here and tout the game that gives Lugia a gun as a game better than Pokemon, fuck no 😭😭😭
I’ve changed my statements (see above) about the lawsuit but this game is DEADASS just a higher quality newgrounds game similar to “Mario with a gun/bazooka/truck”
A shitpost is a better way to describe this. I simply refuse to look past the quirky, cartoony, 3d monsters HOLDING WHOLE ASS GLOCKS n RIFLES, to suspend my disbelief just enough to enjoy whatever this game has to offer. It hits these levels of Uncanniness with me that I severely dont like and bothers me for whatever reason.
Patenting vague game mechanics is egregious. This would be like Insomniac patenting “character runs around with a big gun” and subsequently filing a lawsuit against Nintendo for Splatoon, because both Ratchet and the Inklings run around with big guns.
They’re gonna fight it, but not for the fans. They’re doing it for themselves. They’re a company too.
All the same, I’m glad someone is standing up to those litigious fuckwagons.
I’ve never been interested in Palworld, and I certainly don’t intend to play it, but I’ll probably buy it today.
Because fuck Nintendo.
It’s clunky and the novelty wears off quickly, but it was worth a play.
It’s still identifiably distinct, I really hope Nintendo lose because allowing copyright of a concecpt is dystopian especially in the context of our lengthy time frames for copyright.
It reminds me of when Apple wanted to patent the idea of rounded corners.
It’s not even copyright, they’re suing for using things they patented, but their patents are extremely general. I kid you not, they have a patent for MOUNTING CREATURES, something hundreds of games have done.
Abstract: In an example of a game program, a ground boarding target object or an air boarding target objects is selected by a selection operation, and a player character is caused to board the selected boarding target object. If the player character aboard the air boarding target object moves toward the ground player character automatically changed to the state where the player character is aboard the ground boarding target object, and brought into the state where the player character can move on the ground.
I’m no lawyer so I can’t tell you how well this would hold up in court but it’s ridiculous. See more: https://patents.justia.com/assignee/the-pokemon-company
I am positive prior art could be claimed for most if not all of those. Square Enix could cry afoul of the “mounting creatures” one as well as I’m sure many, many other earlier games on a plethora of platforms.
You could mount and ride Chocobos in Final Fantasy 2, i.e. the real “2,” the JDM only one on Famicom, which was released in 1988. The aforementioned patent was only filed on Nintendo’s part in 2024.
They can, to use a technical legal term, get fucked.
Yes but it’s fucking expensive to invalidate a patent. Possibly in the millions of dollars. That’s how patent trolls succeed - it’s far cheaper to own a bad patent than to fight one.
Well it’s a good thing Palworld was a huge sales success.
Blizzard should be paying attention to this, as it perfectly describes their flying mounts.
I really hope Nintendo just picked a fight with Blizzard/Microsoft lol
Bullies tend to pick victims who can’t fight back too effectively, so I doubt they’d go after Microsoft.
All the big tech companies have a bunch of vague patents than in a just world would never exist, and they seldom go after each other, because they know then they’ll be hit with a counter-suit alleging they violate multiple patents too, and in the end everyone except the lawyers will be worse off. It’s sort of like mutually assured destruction. They don’t generally preemptively invalidate each other’s patents, so if Microsoft is not a party to the suit, they’ll likely stay out of it entirely.
However, newer and smaller companies are less likely to be able to counter-sue as effectively, so if they pose a threat of taking revenue from the big companies (e.g. by launching on competitor platforms only), they are ripe targets for patent-based harassment.
It’s a little more specific, I think the patent is about:
- mounting either an air or ground mount
- when riding the air mount, going close to the ground transforms it into the ground mount and you keep riding it
But that’s still something multiple games have done in some way I think.
So, just like FFXIV?
Drakengard comes to mind
Holy shit I forgot about Drakengard. That’s the one with the giant sky babies right?
Ya!!! The prequel to nier ❤️
I mean they successfully defended the motion of swiping up or down as distinctly different than left or right for the purpose of activating a device. Which seems insane to me.
And now you have to swipe up to activate the iPhone as well 🤭
That’s a patent, not a copywrite.
Software patents are also terrible, though.
It is all known as intellectual property. This covers copyright, trademarks, and patents all with the same concept of creating artificial scarcity to ensure profits.
I’d support anything to see NIntendo get kicked in the nuts for shutting down yuzu, which could have easily continued legally by removing like 2 paragraphs and probably a few lines of code.
Also Citra which was 100% legal.
EDIT:
I also wanna mention that current Pokemon gameplay sucks, and would also kill to see GameFreak’s billion dollar franchising burn. Maybe
1520 years ago when hardware was “limited”, a low asset turn based RPG focused around pocket monsters was a fun game. Ain’t no way a PS1 graphics looking game with practically zero changes to the formula can be considered AAA title in 2024. And even then they’ve somehow made it into an A button press simulator by nuking the difficulty.Being completely honest, the DS hardware was not that limited (had 2 generations on it with significant upgrades despite being the same console). BW2 was probably the golden era with very well done animated sprites, overworld, features, etc. The moment it hit the 3DS, it started showing its cracks with GF continuing to develop the game without expanding the team to meet development demand.
Palworld isn’t even the first challenger. TemTem gained some popularity purely for showing how much of an upgrade it was from Pokemon only a few years ago.
Normally I’d say fuck Nintendo but palworld obviously stole the designs and artistic direction for many of their characters.
Most of the pals I saw at first were modified versions of an already existant pokemon with little to seperate it from fan art of that pokemon. This is particularly agregoous as they clashed against the rest of this games aesthetic. Nothing that was original fit with the design of the pokemon rip offs.
Many other games have a pokemon esque aesthetic without direct copying. It looking similar is not my issue. My issue is that while playing I could easily name most pals to a pokemon. Seriously, look up comparisons. It’s blatant.
They’ve moved away from thisbrecently but fuck man if it ain’t obvious. If they did the same to some small project I’d assume people would be much more up in arms, rightfully so.
Still though, I won’t cry if Nintendo loses. I hope they pay an insane amount in lawyers fees either way and never see a dime out of the case
I am typically anti-capitalist and usually root for the underdog. Palworld is a blatant ripoff of Pokemon and those denying it are delusional. Reverse the situation, where Nintendo releases Pokemon after Pocketpair releases Palworld and everyone would be calling it a ripoff.
Yeah, Nintendo’s legal department does some shitty stuff, but their likeness was stolen. Also, they are suing for patents, not copyright. The fact that the monsters are caught in a sphere is damning Pocketpair, while other Pokemon copies like Digimon avoid this.
It’s just my opinion. I’m often wrong.
Just going to share this for all the palworld blatantly ripped off pokemon people
So it was wrong for Nintendo to do that?
I’m just going to shove these words into your mouth because I cannot grasp the obvious.
It was wrong for Nintendo to copy someone, but it’s not wrong for Pocketpair to copy someone. That’s what you are saying?
More like “it’s not wrong to take inspiration from something else”.
I don’t disagree with that, but the line that is drawn between inspiration and imitation is blurred and the courts will probably rule in favor of those with the most money, unfortunately.
For everyone’s edification, Geigner’s take on Techdirt. I suspect this won’t be the last TD article on this trainwreck-in-the-making.
Oh wow, this suit is shaping up to be silly. I didn’t realize it was filed in Japan, too. That makes the patent aspect even shakier. Japan has no discovery process like in the US, which is generally very necessary for many software-related patents as, assuming they have a strong likelihood of surviving challenge, they are typically drawn to processes that are completely obfuscated from the user and outside observes.
I can read the room here. I know this will be an unpopular opinion, and I want to preface this with a big “fuck Nintendo” and particularly their legal team.
That said, fuck Palworld, too. They are absolutely just straight up copying Nintendo/The Pokemon Company’s designs. It’s blatant. It’s AI bros making money by copying Pokemon designs, plain and simple. Palworld would not have caused the stir it did if not for the blatant “It’s Pokemon with guns!” angle.
So, while Nintendo can normally go suck the biggest of dicks when they swing around their lawsuit arms, this time I think they fully have every right to go after these guys, I don’t care how much they say they’re gonna fight the big bad mega company “for the fans and for indie devs everywhere” lol man, great statement. Guaranteed to get the base riled up.
Thank you for reading, you may downvote.
I just don’t believe in copyright, IP patents or having fences on human culture.
So even if they straight up put Pikachu in their game I think they have the moral right to do so. If they can make a good game with Pikachu in it, who is Nintendo to private humanity from that piece of culture?
My statement is about morality. What’s legal or not is another matter.
I mean…artists should be paid for their work right? Fuck Nintendo, but that same logic could be applied to anyone. I’d be pissed if someone just straight up lifted my designs and resold it.
Absolutely. I don’t get how someone can say stealing the work of others is morally correct.
Are you talking about some heist on Nintendo’s blueprint vaults?
Because IP infringement is never theft.
They didn’t copy Pokemon, they created new content that is similar to Pokemon.
Do you believe it is wrong to create new content that is very similar to existing content that people enjoy?
Is it wrong for Pocket Pair (Palworld’s creator) to create new content that is similar to existing Pokemon? Is it wrong for GameFreak to create new content that is similar to existing Pokemon? Morally speaking, why are the answers to those questions different?
If you can’t see how blatant it is, I don’t know what to tell you. You can be all “it’s just SIMILAR wink wink” all you want. Similar is a fucking understatement.
Have you played Pokémon and PalWorld? One is a pit-fighter-trainer where the other is a base-builder. Or does the capturing of creatures and the similar art style make them too much alike?
In a truly competitive capitalist market there should be room enough for both. But Nintendo wants their players to be obligated to own only Nintendo approved products.
Have you? The monster designs, some of them are straight up copycats and pallette swaps and such. Others are basically that “ok copy my homework, but don’t make it identical so we don’t get in trouble.”. It is absolutely pushing the limits. To say you do not see that is willful. It has to be.
So Nintendo is suing them over the monster design similarities? I thought it was a patent suit, not copyright.
Whatever. I can talk about whatever I want.
Yes, but I’m curious what Nintendo is talking to the courts about, or if this is merely a weaponization of litigation.
Copyright only exists for the wealthy to own even more.
Idk about that, maybe indefinite copyrights would be but limited term is entirely fair. Like imagine you spend 5 years and $50M to develop something (random numbers here), then the next day someone just copies it and sells it cheaper since they had no overhead in copying your product. There’s no incentive to create if all it does is put you in debt, so we do need copyrights if we want things. However Pokemon came out in 96, that’s 28 years. There’s been very little innovation in their games since. And seeing as Digimon wasn’t sued it’s not about the monsters, it’s about the balls. But those balls haven’t changed in almost three decades so I don’t think the really have a case to complain
How about no. Let people create if your only incentive is money fuck you. If someone spent $50 million to develop something the labor has been paid. You will be first to the market and you can make money if your invention isn’t that unique oh well.
Thats a great way to make companies spend 0 on r&d that has longterm benefits and instead focus on squeezing out every penny from current assets.
Want to make something, the people eho want it pay to make it happen, once it’s done and paid for, it belongs to everyone. I rather live in the star citizen dystopia than the Disney vampire dystopia.
Making an unlimited reproducible resource artificially scarce for 160 years is really fucking evil parasiticism.
I dont think anyone here thinks that the ridiculous terms on current IP laws make sense (at least I havent seen anyone defending them), but there is a big difference between a short term of 5-10 years for you to get the earned benefits of an innovation you created and zero protection where a larger more well funded company can swoop in copy your invention and bury you in marketing so they get the reward.
However Pokemon came out in 96, that’s 28 years. There’s been very little innovation in their games since.
First, not really, there’s been a LOT of innovation in Pokémon, as much as people want to deny it.
And second, 28 years is really not that much. We’re not in the Disney realm of copyright-hogging, I think 50 years is a fair amount of time. The issue is that it’s often way too broad: it should protect only extremely blatant copies (i.e. the guy who literally rereleased Pokémon Yellow as a mobile game), not concepts or general mechanics. Palworld has a completely different gameplay from any Pokémon game so far, and (most of) the creatures are distinct enough. That should suffice to make it rightfully exist (maybe removing the 4/5 Pals that are absolute ripoffs, sure).
I think 50 is generally too much, but I think it should depend on categories, so that it is based upon the efforts put into an idea to create and how much it value (like in expected ROI).
I fear, that is hard to define
As an artist 20-50 depending on context is where I’m hovering. It is very hard to define.
No, Copyright exists to protect creators. It’s just been perverted and abused by the wealthy so that they can indefinitely retain IP. Disney holding on to an IP for 70 years after an author dies is messed up, but Disney taking your art and selling it to a mass audience without giving you a dime is worse.
What creator has been protected by copyright?
Anyone who creates anything? If not for copyright Steam would be a sea of games named Undertale Stardew Valley Elsa Spider-Man
Half of Pokémon are heavily inspired by artist’s (who are not affiliated with Nintendo) illustrations of popular Yokai (Japanese mythological creatures). The rest are simply animals with very generic additions. “It’s a cow but bipedal” “It’s a kangaroo but with horns” “It’s a pigeon but… actually yeah it’s just a pigeon. No difference.”
How can you copyright/patent that? It’s hardly original.
I say this as someone who grew up loving Pokémon.
It’s a patent case. It has nothing to do with the creative design of the games.
But yes. Every pokemon is copyrighted. Every pal is copyrighted. (In the US) All creative work is automatically copyrighted to the creator.
You can’t copyright “a standing lizard with a small flame on its tail” but you can copyright Charmander. If you copy enough elements that a lay person can’t distinguish the original and the copy then it opens it up for a copyright claim.
None of that is relevant in this case.
A patent is to protect a specific invention from being copied. In this case, there is an innovative game mechanic that Nintendo patented has that Palworld copied. The speculation is with throwing an item that captures a character that fights other characters in a 3d space.
The patent is dumb. Personally I don’t think it is innovative or special enough to be patented. Patenting software or game mechanic are dumb anyway.
And hopefully something that they’ll be able to find reams of prior art that precede the patent
Once again. Patents have nothing to do with art. And even if they had proof they worked on those mechanics before Nintendo patented them doesn’t mean they have the right to use it. Yes, it’s kinda a dumb system. But there is a lot of effort to get a patent, and once you have one you have a lot of protection because of it.Disregard. :) see comment below
Roger, disregarding :-)
I mean, Nintendo isn’t typically the bad guy though, right? And palworld is a pretty clear like 1:1 rip, so…
I mean, good to challenge the “big” guy generally, but wrong target here specifically and weak case, right?
Rooting for Nintendo on this one. Palworld was dumb, you can’t just steal others’ IP without consequences. They could have made things just different enough… But they didn’t, they were dumb.
