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.

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

Nintendo filled some vague ass patents after the game launched, they are a disgusting company that already did the same to white cat project because of some virtual analogue because they were releasing their own Dragalia Lost.

Decided to finally go watch gameplay of this game.

It's definitely a fan ripoff mashing up Breath of the Wild with the newer open world pokemon games.

I'm not saying nobody else is allowed to make these kinds of games. But this absolutely is just trying to rip those off. Looks as unimaginative, boring, and empty as all of Nintendo's adventure games.

They've stolen Nintendos IP of providing half-assed garbage and watching people eat it up.

Is Pocketpair Indie? Didn't they just make a new company with Sony Music and Aniplex?

Patenting things like this that are obviously unpatentable ideas rather than actual inventions is unfortunately a necessity for defensive purposes in a world where companies will do anything in order to kill competition except risk competing with them since that isn't guaranteed by throwing money at it. Enforcing a bunch of patents against a company with fewer liquid assets is a guaranteed way to beat a competitor with money alone since winning the suit isn't the goal, only draining the assets of the competitor. Sucks that this is considered a valid business practice now.

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.