Topic: Nintendo Lawsuit's by Palworld

And there goes mountable Pals and if Nintendo wins mountable creatures/animals will be Pokemon exclusive...

Here's what Palworld's developer had to say about their upcoming update for the game:

We would like to express our sincere gratitude and appreciation for the continued support of our fans over the past few months. We apologize for not being able to share as much information as we would like, but we trust our fans understand how difficult it is to be fully transparent while litigation is ongoing.

Currently, we remain involved in prolonged legal proceedings regarding alleged patent infringement. We continue to dispute these claims and assert the invalidity of the patents in question. However, we have had to make certain compromises in order to avoid disruptions to the development and distribution of Palworld.

On November 30th, 2024, we released Patch v0.3.11 for Palworld. This patch removed the ability to summon Pals by throwing Pal Spheres and instead changed it to a static summon next to the player. Several other game mechanics were also changed with this patch. As many have speculated, these changes were indeed a result of the ongoing litigation. Everyone here at Pocketpair was disappointed that this adjustment had to be made, and we fully understand that many players feel the same frustration. Unfortunately, as the alternative would have led to an even greater deterioration of the gameplay experience for players, it was determined that this change was necessary.

Furthermore, we regret to inform our players that with the implementation of Patch v0.5.5, we must make yet another compromise. From this patch onward, gliding will be performed using a glider rather than with Pals. Pals in the player’s team will still provide passive buffs to gliding, but players will now need to have a glider in their inventory in order to glide.
We understand that this will be disappointing for many, just as it is for us, but we hope our fans understand that these changes are necessary in order to prevent further disruptions to the development of Palworld.

We also want to extend our apologies to our fans for the discomfort and concern this ongoing litigation has caused.
We remain committed to developing Palworld and delivering exciting new content to our fans.

On behalf of everyone at Pocketpair and Team Palworld, thank you again for your continued support.

What do you guys think of this news?

@WiiWareWave I'm not a fan of pocketpair or how they're trying to utilize people's hatred for Gamefreak in order to garner sympathy.. but the patents for riding animals/creatures is insane given that TPCi can't- or at least shouldn't be able to trademark mounting monsters. Especially given that several games have done this before Pokemon even featured this.

What does this sort of thing spell out for other monster collectors? Games like Monster Hunter Stories or the new Digimon Cyber Sleuth? I get the capturing monsters in balls thing- especially if that mechanic is more specific to how pokeballs work, but this seems waaay too general. Are they going to start slapping MMO RPGs with legal notices for having mounts in the game? What about the new Fantasy Life game?

@VoidofLight I don't think it's likely that they're going to start trying to slap random patent lawsuits on other studios just because they can. Pocketpair were just basically asking for it.

@BenAV Reading more into it, this patent is more specific than @WiiWareWave made it out to be. It basically is a patent for a context that's specifically similar to Pokemon I believe.

Honestly...at this point...I'm getting of hearing about the lawsuit crud...but that's just me and I don't know nothing about this law crap mumbo-jumbo.

I'm tired of this lawsuit as well @DanijoEX-The-Kumiho. I feel like lots of people are picking sides (publications included) without really researching anything regarding it. It's either news framed in a way that sells the narrative "Gamefreak bad," or people using this as an opportunity to continuously hate on Gamefreak. I don't think Gamefreak is in the right, but I won't let myself be manipulated by Pocketpair's whole "Oh, we're just a little guy!!!! We can't do anything wrong!!!" when Pocketpair has a history of copying famous games and making bootleg versions of them in order to make a quick buck off of the trend.

@VoidofLight Honestly...both sides are to blame. That's the way I see it...

I'd never even heard of this game before (apparently it's quite a healthy seller) but it seems like this furore is all over the internet now, could someone please explain it to me and what Nintendo is supposedly doing wrong.. is it something we should be worried about.