With the implementation of Patch v0.5.5 this week, 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.

How lame. Japan needs to fix its patent laws, it's ridiculous Nintendo owns the simple concept of using an animal to fly.

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[–] Console_Modder@sh.itjust.works 236 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (12 children)

This lawsuit is so stupid. In my opinion, patenting, copyrighting, or trademarking concepts or mechanics in video games shouldn't be allowed at all. The nemesis system in the Shadow of Mordor games was so cool, but we're never going to see anything like it again. Warner went through the trouble to copyright (or something idk I'm not a lawyer) that system, and then let the series die out.

I'm waiting to see the headlines that any other games with a shooty thing that goes bang is illegal, and the concept of shooting a gun in a video game is going to be owned by either Rockstar/Take Two or the collective mob of Call of Duty developers. If the world is gonna get that stupid, I got my fingers crossed that Bubsy 3D owns the rights to jumping

Edit: Thought about it for 10 more seconds and I have questions. Is it specifically gliding using a creature that Nintendo has a problem with, or is it creature-assisted traversal in general? Can they sue Skyrim since you can ride horses? Palworld made the change so that you need to build a glider to glide around. BOTW and TOTK used gliders. Is Nintendo gonna sue them for that now too? I fucking hate all of this so God damned much

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 91 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I'm unconvinced that the Nemesis system would have worked well in too many other settings, but one game patent that had a tangible effect on the industry was Bandai-Namco's patent on loading screen mini games. Remember how you could make the Soul Calibur II characters yell stuff while the match loaded? Funny that we didn't see it again until Street Fighter 6, isn't it? Conveniently after a patent would have expired. We went through an entire era of games with load times that could have benefited from mini games, and by the time the patent expired, we had largely come up with ways to get rid of load screens altogether.

[–] CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world 25 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

Well saying the nemesis system wouldn’t have worked well in other games is almost assuming that it wouldn’t be changed or evolved to fit other genres. People forget that the real damage some patents/copyrights do is not in their explicit existence, it’s the sphere of influence they exert on related concepts entirely. We weren’t just robbed of the nemesis system, we were robbed of anything even slightly resembling it.

And I feel like once you understand that you realize it can be adapted to greater things. Spider Man games could have used it. Assassins creed would have been an amazing place for experimentation with those ideas. Could be adapted to Star Wars games, dragons dogma, yakuza, borderlands. And it doesn’t need to be a central focus of these games like it was with the WB games. But even the concept of having enemies that kill you be leveled up in some way is now tainted.

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[–] SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 72 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

The tried to patent fucking MOUNTS. Someone get square and blizzard on the sue-train and ream Nintendo a new one.

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 30 points 21 hours ago (7 children)

Who the hell in their right mind would want to buy a switch after seeing this?

[–] MagnyusG@lemmy.world 29 points 19 hours ago

most consumers don't care, that's why they're consumers. Switch 2 is gonna sell gangbusters and no amount of frivolous lawsuits is going to put a dent in that.

Plus you still have people mad at Palworld for no reason other than they think it "copied" Pokémon, like the guy getting downvoted into oblivion.

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[–] Lojcs@lemm.ee 25 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Iirc sony has a patent on an input device having two separate data streams. It seems you write the most general thing you can on patents and patent offices don't care

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[–] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 23 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

patenting, copyrighting, or trademarking concepts or mechanics in video games shouldn't be allowed at all

It's not allowed at all in board games. There's a known issue that someone could completly copy the mechanics of a board game, and as long as they don't copy the art or the exact text of the rulebook there is no legal means to stop it.

Boardgamers are aware of this, and agree that it is better for development of future games than if someone could own the idea of "rolling a dice", so if knockoffs do come around they tend to quickly get called out and not purchased.

I don't know how videogames managed to get different rules.

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[–] Darkcoffee@sh.itjust.works 124 points 19 hours ago (4 children)

Nintendo is just a garbage lawsuit company that sometimes makes hardware with stupid subscriptions attached.

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[–] NONE_dc@lemmy.world 113 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

I mean... Patents in general are bullshit just for things like this.

[–] BombOmOm@lemmy.world 45 points 22 hours ago

Japanese ones are particularly worse. In the US a successful defense is prior art, there is no such defense in Japan.

[–] DeathsEmbrace@lemm.ee 26 points 22 hours ago

There’s a parasitic egg layer that uses leaves some get put into birds and then get shit out? Why isn’t Nintendo suing these insects for using birds to fly around?

[–] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 78 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Since when is flying on a monster patentable. What a bunch of bullshit. Nintendo has really used up the last of any good will the company had. I will not be giving them a dime from here on out.

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[–] peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 74 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Wait i can't fly on Pals now?

Does that mean that Ark can't fly on dinosaurs?

[–] vodka@lemm.ee 46 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

Pretty sure you can still mount and fly on flying pals.

There are some pals that can be used as gliders though, that is what is being patched out.

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[–] JDPoZ@lemmy.world 63 points 19 hours ago (16 children)

I'm a little torn on this.

On the one hand, let's be real - clearly PalWorld takes more than a little "inspiration" on a bunch of different Pokemon IP. The illustrations, modeling, and just visual style overall matches in many ways almost perfectly for many of the creatures. They are like off-brand versions of Pokemon with the exact same eyes, mouth types, etc. in many cases as if they were illustrated by Ken Sugimori himself

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Additionally, the game involves using handheld ball devices thrown at wild world-roaming creatures you capture after cutting down their health by some amount to increase the catch percentage and different "grade" balls have increased chance for capture.

There is also a nefarious organization competing with you for capturing these wild creatures like Team Rocket.

But on the OTHER hand, the leveling up, breeding, base-building, the various ability tech-trees, item crafting, and just overall engine complexity is VASTLY superior to what appears to now be an almost EMBARRASSINGLY behind set of game design mechanics in the actual Pokemon games... it's sort of a Saints Row vs GTA IV situation here where they were an obvious copy off, but improved in enough ways that ended up being a fun game in itself.

Copying off exact art asset styles is one thing you shouldn't do... but taking Nintendo's gameplay ideas and expanding upon them vastly and being told to remove said mechanics as if they stole code is asinine and sets a bad precedent.

Every time there's been a popular game, there are a thousand copies off them that twist and evolve those mechanics until something else comes along.

Nintendo came along with platformers after Pitfall on Atari. Sonic copied 2D platforming basics from Mario like running to the right and jumping on enemies but changed so much. Final Fantasy copied off Dragon Quest, which itself was a digital idea based off of Dungeons & Dragons. Doom to games like GoldenEye to Halo to Call of Duty to PUBG to Fortnite to APEX Legends...

This feels like taking advantage of grey area in the realm of visual IP similarity to shut down someone making their gameplay design mechanics look antiquated by comparison.

Really embarrassing for Nintendo to be doing this, when clearly what Nintendo should be doing is doing like what Fortnite did when APEX came along and added location / enemy / weapon call outs and just STEALING the mechanics they weren't clever enough to think of on their own and implement better versions in their own games... but clearly they'd just rather have a monopoly and continue lackluster work.

[–] flicker@lemmy.dbzer0.com 59 points 18 hours ago (5 children)

There are over 1,000 pokemon. I think it's a Tolkien situation- where famously, you can't write fantasy without using ingredients that Tolkien created, because if you do, obviously it's from Tolkien, and if you didn't, the reader is asking why not? That kinda deal.

If you set out to create a game involving collecting, or even looking at and cataloguing, a bunch of different fantasy creatures, you're going to have some that are at least a little similar to pokemon. The electibuzz/grizzbolt example you gave is a fantastic one. You're claiming it's stolen, but that there is a cat creature with a single lightning bolt in it's belly. Versus a... monkeything? Covered in them. My point here being, even if they didn't steal (which, I'm sure they did, there are other, better examples) at a certain point you have to accept that with 1,000 pokemon, there's going to be overlap, so you either need to just be up front about the stealing, or you need to spend 5x the amount of development time making sure none of your creatures have overlap.

Personally, Pokemon has been around for more than 25 years. Even if they released a million games a year, they shouldn't get to gatekeep 'all creature-collection simulators that you use balls for and that you can ride like a dragon.' Fuck that. They got infinite money back on their initial investment, and they shouldn't be allowed to just own the ideas. This is the kind of bullshit that makes me (a lifelong pokemon fan) want to never, ever, ever give them money again.

[–] ouRKaoS@lemmy.today 25 points 18 hours ago (5 children)

If you set out to create a game involving collecting, or even looking at and cataloguing, a bunch of different fantasy creatures, you're going to have some that are at least a little similar to pokemon

I think Cassette Beasts pulled off the Pokemon gameplay format without making anything that Nintendo could try and sue over.

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[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 36 points 17 hours ago

Look, if the problem is the similar designs then sue for that!

[–] Realitaetsverlust@lemmy.zip 23 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

clearly PalWorld takes more than a little “inspiration” on a bunch of different Pokemon IP

There's 1025 Pokemon at this point in time - how the hell are you supposed to create a unique pokemon at this point in time? Even pokemon can't create unique pokemon anymore.

[–] JDPoZ@lemmy.world 24 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (3 children)

The same way Digimon, Monster Hunter monsters, and every other unique IP looks nothing like Pokemon. Make completely original designs that don’t look like fan art or knock offs of another artist’s specific trademark style.

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[–] Furbag@lemmy.world 62 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (2 children)

Palworld did more for the monster-collecting genre in one early access title than Pokémon has in the last decade of AAA titles.

Why does Nintendo deserve these patents when they aren't going to produce anything meaningful with them and simply weaponize them to squash any real threatening competition?

Pokémon is the highest grossing franchise in the world, and 2nd place isn't even close. I think they can give a little ground to an indie developer who makes games that people are actually interested in playing. The patent bullshit is ridiculous.

[–] SupraMario@lemmy.world 33 points 12 hours ago

Because that's how Nintendo works. They are the Disney of gaming.

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[–] SabinStargem@lemmy.today 59 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

This is bullshit. Warner Brothers and Nintendo need to lose, hard.

Also, why the hell does Nintendo think they were first when it comes to the concept? Animals and gliding have been a thing for a long time.

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[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 54 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Fuck you, Nintendo. Release a fucking decent Pokemon game instead of lawyering the competition that's offering a more desirable product

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[–] joel_feila@lemmy.world 46 points 12 hours ago

Remember they amended the patent after palworld came out

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 45 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (8 children)

This is why I'll never feel sorry for Nintendo - karma is long overdue for this company. In fact, I'll download a switch emulator right now just to spite them.

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[–] sirico@feddit.uk 36 points 14 hours ago (7 children)

Nintendo are rightly losing their free pass with gamers.

[–] thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 19 points 13 hours ago

That is very true, but the Venn Diagram overlap between Gamers^TM^ and ‘Nintendo gamers’ is a rapidly shrinking area.

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[–] Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 34 points 12 hours ago

Fuck Nintendo.

[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 31 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I don't care about Palworld, but I do hate Nintendo. Enemy of my enemy and all that.

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[–] vane@lemmy.world 30 points 21 hours ago (8 children)

Can't they just release free DLC with those features worldwide exlcuding Japan where those patents are enforceable ?

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[–] oyzmo@lemmy.world 23 points 18 hours ago

I don't play Palworld, but still hate firms that behaves like this. Not buying Nintendo anymore 🥳 Emulators from here on :)

Patenting common stuff like this is just stupid! Think I read somewhere that Apple patented squares with rounded corners 😂 Hope Nintendo doesn't use rounded corners in any of their in-game menus.

I though patents were ment to protect important original ideas. Stuff with impact.

[–] gradual@lemmings.world 20 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (3 children)

Victims of Stockholm Syndrome always focus on what their abusers provide, but never what they take away.

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[–] phx@lemmy.ca 19 points 11 hours ago

I wonder how hard it would be for an "unofficial" patch to "somehow" be released that restores the previous functionality

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