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Palworld Developer Reveals The Pokémon Patents Nintendo Claims It's Violating (kotaku.com)
submitted 7 months ago by cyrano@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/games@lemmy.world
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Looking up those patents, the first alludes to a system where a player aims and fires an “item” toward a character in a field, and in doing so triggers combat, and then dives into extraordinary intricacies about switching between modes within this. The second is very similar, but seems more directly focused on tweaking previous patents to including being able to capture Pokémon in the wild, rather than only during battle. The third, rather wildly, seems to be trying to claim a modification to the invention of riding creatures in an open world and being able to transition between them easily.

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[-] LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world 184 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

People need to stop supporting Nintendo at all. They're lawsuit happy assholes who have been doing everything they can to piss away any good will they might have had. They're the only game company out there who refuses to make enough of many of their products, like their mini NES and SNES, to meet demand because then its "exclusive", they are the only company trying to destroy all type of emulation for Nintendo consoles, and they're the only company who seems to actually want their older games to disappear into the ether. Edit: Oh and they fucking refuse to put their games on sale or lower their prices years afterwards. BoTW is still 60 bucks even though it's 7 and a half years old. Fucking insane.

Fuck Nintendo.

[-] RiikkaTheIcePrincess@pawb.social 53 points 7 months ago

trying to destroy all type of emulation for Nintendo consoles

Only emulation used by others. They're happy to kang all' the ROMs and emulators off' a site before destroying it for everyone else, then not even sell most of the damn things. Absurd. There's nothing good about that, not even for Nintendo themselves.

[-] merthyr1831@lemmy.ml 2 points 7 months ago

Then not even sell the damn things

Sorta true. Nintendo has been monetizing emulation for years, ever since they started releasing "virtual console" games on the Wii web shop.

The Switch now offers NES/SNES games as a benefit of their online service, and has released a handful of games as standalone releases which are literally just nicely-packaged emulators (Mario Sunshine and Galaxy 1/2 bundle for example)

If emulation and "piracy" of old consoles is allowed, then Nintendo fears it won't be able to charge as much to repackage identical technology as full-price game releases.

[-] riskable@programming.dev 144 points 7 months ago

Software patents shouldn't exist!

[-] piecat@lemmy.world 46 points 7 months ago

Patents shouldn't exist! Mostly.

[-] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 19 points 7 months ago

Patents shouldn’t exist! Mostly.

We had a history before patents/copyright were enforced. It was pretty brutal for anyone trying to make a living with their creations. Take a look and see if you want to return to that.

[-] Grass@sh.itjust.works 32 points 7 months ago

yeah now its brutal for anyone trying to make a living and excellent for anyone who already inherited a living and has more money than they could use in multiple lifetimes. I'd hate to go back to when it was just brutal for anyone trying to make a living.

[-] otp@sh.itjust.works 4 points 7 months ago

I think the problem would be similar. The rich and powerful would be the only ones to profit off of inventions and innovations.

We still have indie game devs today. Imagine if any company could just copy an indie game and scale it up/polish a bit and get all the sales.

[-] riskable@programming.dev 3 points 7 months ago

Imagine if any company could just copy an indie game and scale it up/polish a bit and get all the sales.

You're describing the entire mobile games industry. You think all those top apps in the app stores are 100% original? No. They copied other games.

Also, patents have nothing to do with that. Software is covered by copyright.

Furthermore, "back in the day" manufacturing was expensive and required huge factories to build stuff (in quantity). The barrier to entry was enormous! People were mostly uneducated and there was not much in the way of "shared engineering knowledge". Ten thousand people could look at a car engine and have no friggin clue how it worked. That's why patents were necessary: Disclosure

These days disclosure has become irrelevant. Any engineer can look at an invention or product and figure out both how it works and how it was made. At the very least, they can figure out a way to make it. Just look at all the Youtube channels where every day people are making complicated machines, parts, and electronics! The mysteries are gone. Disclosure is unnecessary.

Since the entire point of patents was disclosure why do we still need them?

[-] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

yeah now its brutal for anyone trying to make a living

What patent or copyright is preventing you from making a living?

[-] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 months ago

Uhhhh…. You are aware of what topic you are posting in, right?

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[-] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 6 points 7 months ago

A shitty solution for a shitty situation is not a good solution

[-] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago

A shitty solution for a shitty situation is not a good solution

Feel free to share your revolutionary idea that will still incentivize people to create without creating a "shitty situation".

[-] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 7 points 7 months ago

I don't need to come up with any revolutionary ideas, the open source folks are already creating without patenting their creations

Here's a revolutionary idea: universal basic income. No need to prevent other people from monetizing your idea if you don't need to monetize your idea in the first place

[-] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I don’t need to come up with any revolutionary ideas, the open source folks are already creating without patenting their creations

The largest contributors to Open Source make their money from patents and other IP. As in, they can afford to give away lots of time and effort because they make their money with IP. If IP were to be eradicated as you're proposing, all those contributions to Open Source by those largest contributors would evaporate. Here's the largest Open Source contributors from 2017-2020.

source

[-] riskable@programming.dev 2 points 7 months ago

The largest contributors to Open Source make their money from patents and other IP.

The data in that video is (probably) accurate but your statement is completely wrong: In that list only Intel makes anything but trivial amounts of money from patents. In fact, Microsoft, Google, and Docker have famously lost shittons of money thanks to patents. They basically siphoned money out of those companies into the pockets of lawyers and provided absolutely no benefit to society.

For fuck's sake: Features were removed from Android because of software patents!

Not only that but Google makes almost all of its money from advertising, not "IP". Same for Meta which is oddly missing from the graph (even though they contribute to and maintain a ton of FOSS stuff).

Then let's talk about #1: Redhat. They absolutely would be 1000% behind banning software patents. It's nothing but trouble for them.

I'd also like to note that Microsoft has been very much in favor of software patents since they were invented by the courts (remember: no legislation added software as a category of patentable subject matter: They exist as a result of court rulings!) because they thought they would put an end to open source software (see: Halloween documents). However, software patents have actually cost Microsoft more than they ever helped the company! In short: They're idiots. They opened a can of worms that's kept them constantly under attack but because those worms also hurt their perceived enemies they've doubled down on their decision.

[-] riskable@programming.dev 2 points 7 months ago

Software existed for decades without (software) patents and has innovated and evolved vastly more quickly than any other science. Then we created software patents and things actually started to slow down (because lawsuits take time and threaten to end great software before it even exists).

Software is already covered by copyright which is all that was necessary for some of the richest companies in the world to come into existence (e.g. Microsoft, Oracle). Software patents shouldn't exist!

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[-] TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago

Patents are not the problem, they serve as a way to share the knowledge of a creation with everyone while protecting your company for a REASONABLE TIME to compensate for the RnD costs.

The problem is the distortion of the concept to fit late stage capitalism delights.

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[-] Venicon@lemmy.world 83 points 7 months ago

Fuck Nintendo. They get a pass so often from people when they really shouldn’t.

[-] Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 7 months ago

Part of the reason is because most people don't notice the lawsuits or think this is boilerplate legal stuff that happens in the background all the time. They're too distracted by the entertainment side of things.

[-] peopleproblems@lemmy.world 71 points 7 months ago

Ok that third one, come the fuck on.

Like don't even pretend. You could never ride nearly the number of Pokemon you can compared to Pals in Palworld.

That's basically patenting riding a fucking horse

[-] UnsavoryMollusk@lemmy.world 8 points 7 months ago

I hope they sue Ubisoft for Assassin's Creed 1 after that /s

[-] Blaster_M@lemmy.world 58 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

People who don't like Palworld, maybe give a real reason? The AI stuff was made up by a salty troll who admitted later he made it up. It being "legally distinct from pokémon" isn't a good enough reason. It having the ability to

Spoilerbutcher your Pals for resources

may be a reason to be upset about the gameplay, but then again, many, many, many RPGs have you culling the local wildlife and depopulating a nation for quests too. Neither is the Genshin Impact art style a reason to hate it. That's just JRPG asthetics.

[-] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 25 points 7 months ago

The butchering thing always bugged me. Where tf do you think your chicken nuggies come from? The only difference is that we don't let real animals have friends before we kill em

[-] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 10 points 7 months ago

Real animals have friends. Beef cows are slaughtered at about 1 yr old, and they don't keep them in isolation for a year

[-] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 5 points 7 months ago

I guess I should have said we don't make friends with them. I could have also drawn attention to the awful living conditions, but getting all Dominion-y wouldn't have the pizzazzy oomph that I was going for

[-] icogniito@lemmy.zip 15 points 7 months ago

Its a very lazy mediocre game that only got recognition because it was ”Pokémon with guns”

I don’t like what Nintendo is doing, but I also thing palworld is a crap game

[-] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 16 points 7 months ago

It definitely only got popular because of the hype re: "Pokemon with guns," but it's legitimately better than the game it actually copied, which is Ark. You know what's cool about Palworld? Me and my coplayer were able to stop playing without losing everything we've built

Anyone who thinks Palworld is actually a Pokemon ripoff either hasn't played Palworld or hasn't played Pokemon

[-] icogniito@lemmy.zip 4 points 7 months ago

Gameplay wise palworld has nothing to do with Pokémon, it was simply a marketing tool for em.

As for the ark comparison I can’t comment, the one time I played it was on the early access launch day during which I refunded it within 45 minutes because it performed horribly, that was almost 10 years ago though so not sure how the current game compares

[-] Glytch@lemmy.world 12 points 7 months ago

Butchering your pals is less of a problem than enslaving other human beings.

More to the point it's just bad. It's incredibly grindy, has an incongruous tech tree, and the A.I. (both enemy and ally) is trash. It's also mostly a copy of their previous game, Craftopia, which was also bad and has been in Early Access for 4 years now with no signs of ever leaving it.

I don't hate Palworld because it's a low effort Pokemon knockoff, I hate Palworld because it's a low effort Ark knockoff following the same business plan of not finishing their previous game before abandoning it for their new game. At least with Ark you got to ride dinosaurs rather than store-brand Rapidash.

[-] ColonelThirtyTwo@pawb.social 6 points 7 months ago

Really buggy at launch (not sure if it still is). "Pokemon with guns" is the least creative direction to take the concept. Devs reportedly don't know how to use any sort of SCM, a basic development tool

[-] dev_null@lemmy.ml 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

People say "Pokemon with guns" as if that was some kind of core gameplay. You can play through the game without ever using them. It's a small feature, that absolutely is there, but reducing the game to that is missing the forest for the trees.

It's an open world crafting base building game to enjoy with co-op, that has catchable creatures like Pokemon. There is no Pokemon game that fits this niche. The guns are not important to what the game is.

[-] ColonelThirtyTwo@pawb.social 2 points 7 months ago

I would absolutely classify it as "core gameplay" given that it's the primary ranged weapon of both the playable character and most of the NPCs, past the crossbow. Saying "oh just ignore the stuff you don't like" is pretty dismissive of critique.

And don't get me wrong - mons with base building is a good idea, which is why I played it. But IMO palworld doesn't do much with it but put the two concepts together.

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[-] PapaStevesy@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago

To be fair, Genshin Impact art style could be a reason to hate it if you hate JRPG aesthetics.

[-] LANIK2000@lemmy.world 35 points 7 months ago

Pretty sure 1 and 3 could be applied to many modern actions games. Software patents shouldn't exist! Same with apple's patents for specific menu animations. It's fucking evil!

[-] Bosht@lemmy.world 26 points 7 months ago

So greed. Like everyone predicted.

[-] merthyr1831@lemmy.ml 19 points 7 months ago

Software parents, specifically game mechanic parents, are fucking insane. You should see the stuff Square Enix has patented following death stranding.

I get the whole "they just reskinned my game mechanics!!!" but also: I don't. It's like saying Go, Draughts, Chess, etc. are copies or "infringing" on one another for being a board game set on a grid with black/white pieces.

Even the idea of intellectual property is shaky for me but at least it's more clear cut whether you've directly copied or deceived someone with a similar design of a character.

[-] irotsoma@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago

They left it small so that it wouldn't be worth it to fight in court and they'd either just settle for a license fee or pay the fine. But sounds like the best way would be to get the patents revoked, but that's probably more expensive than just paying the fine due to the legal fees.

[-] Nexy@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 7 months ago

Its like seeing the 2 worst people fighting, I dont know who I want to to win.

[-] DuckWrangler9000@lemmy.world 21 points 7 months ago

Sorry I'm out of loop. Why is Palworld bad? If I'm reading your comment right when you say 2 worst.

[-] slazer2au@lemmy.world 18 points 7 months ago

You don't have to pick a side. You have no skin in this beef between big N and legally not Pokemon.

[-] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

legally not Pokemon

You mean Digimon? Or Monster Rancher? Or Cassette Beasts? Or Temtem? Or Shin Megami Tensei? Or Kingdom Hearts DDD? Or Ark? Or Yo-kai Watch? Or Telefang?

[-] DarkThoughts@fedia.io 2 points 7 months ago

Digimon was inspired by Tamagotchis though.

[-] Mandy@sh.itjust.works 6 points 7 months ago

I don't want palword to win.
I just need Nintendo to loose.

[-] otp@sh.itjust.works 4 points 7 months ago

Why do you need Nintendo to loose? You wouldn't rather Nintendo to tight?

[-] Shanedino@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago

Still better than Disney!

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this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2024
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