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Nintendo DMCAs ‘Palworld’ Mod That Puts Actual Pokémon Into The Game
from the highlighting-my-point dept
Just days ago, we were talking about the release of PC game Palworld, an open-world monster collecting game that has often been described as “Pokémon, but with guns.” The point of my post was that this game served as a great example of the idea/expression dichotomy in practice. This game, whatever similarities it may have in concept or otherwise to Pokémon and its related video games, is not a direct copy of the actual expression that is the Pokémon Company’s games. Now, as we mentioned in that last post, the Pokémon Company is making noises about reviewing the game to see if it wants to take action. And perhaps it will, but based on everything I’ve seen any such action should fail on the merits, at least in the United States.
And if I wanted to highlight the point illustrated in that first post, I probably couldn’t have asked for a better real world event than Nintendo DMCAing a mod for Palworld that puts actual Pokémon IP into the game.
Nintendo has taken action against the Palworld mod that would have made the “Pokémon With Guns” label much more literal. So if you were hoping to play Pocketpair’s monster-taming survival game as long-time Pokémon anime protagonist Ash Ketchum capturing and enslaving Game Freak’s monsters, you might want to temper your expectations, as the mod seems to be in a more dubious position.
The mod was revealed yesterday, January 22 by one of its creators, YouTuber ToastedShoes, who posted a short clip teasing the mod and a full video that went up on the channel today, January 23. However, the teaser has been hit with a DMCA from Nintendo on X (formerly Twitter). As a result, the mod will not be made publicly available right now as previously planned, as ToastedShoes wants to “tread lightly for the time being.”
Now, I could also pivot to suggesting that there is absolutely no need for Nintendo to take even this action. I refuse to believe that there is some massive group out there that would be out buying Nintendo’s Pokémon games, or hardware, but now won’t due to the existence of this one mod for this one game. That’s just not how this works.
But the fact is that Nintendo is within its rights when it comes to copyright and this particular mod. And for the exact reason why I believe it wouldn’t be within those rights if it took legal action against Palworld in general. The mod injects Nintendo’s expression into the game, which shares only idea similarities with Nintendo’s games.
While the mod that actually uses Pokémon characters may be on Nintendo’s radar, Pocketpair believes the game itself is safe from Mario’s legal team because it doesn’t explicitly use any copyrighted characters.
I agree. I won’t be surprised if Nintendo actually ends up suing Pocketpair over the game, but I will be surprised if any legal action was successful.
Filed Under: copyright, dmca, mod, palworld, pokemon, video games
Companies: nintendo, pocketpair, pokemon company
Comments on “Nintendo DMCAs ‘Palworld’ Mod That Puts Actual Pokémon Into The Game”
Nintendo legal Action
I’ve seen some evidence that the PalWorld models were kit bashed from actual Nintendo models. If any of the models in PalWorld did start from models ripped from pokemon games I could see legal action succeeding. If its just a matter of them looking similar I agree that their is likely not a successful case there.
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The guy who claim that came out and said he made it all up.
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/modder-who-accussed-palworld-of-using-3d-models-from-pokemon-games-admits-that-he-has-faked-everything/
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Last I remember the guy even pinned the comment and doubled down on the reasons for faking the evidence – as some general comment about animal cruelty or commentary against AI art or the like. Because Pokemon clearly is all about treating animals respectfully and not training them for dogfights, and Deviantart clearly isn’t flooded with people trying to mimic and master the Sugimori art style.
People really looked at shit like the “chocolate bird” meme and genuinely think that you can weaponize non-existent drama for clout and pray that others will just give it to you if you scream “listen here cumslut” loud enough.
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That’s misinformation. The twitter post “proving” that he made it all up has been conspicuously deleted and also the “reasons” were nonsensical – the supposed “smoking gun” was that he used the scale tool to demonstrate the similarities between the models, even though scaling doesn’t actually change the geometry and even scaling on one or two axis can credibly demonstrate how a model was modified. Also, the motives are kinda irrelevant.
Other people have also been examining the models and have been making similar findings, including one Palworld model that has a very similar skeleton to a Pokemon model, just with extra bones added on the ends. There’s nothing conclusive, but there’s a lot of red flags.
https://x.com/themimegogo/status/1750601767031595407?s=20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcmCuimN6YY
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The whole thing can be summarized as “Random dudes on the internet don’t know what confirmation bias is”.
If Pocketpair made one fatal mistake, it’s releasing Palworld while being based in Japan. At the very least, launching it outside would have made them less of an obvious target to go after.
Just over in China there’s countless collection clones flooding app stores – not only that, they regularly use Pokemon IP down to the names in Mandarin. That’s not even forgetting the overt art theft of Mega and Gigantamax forms that aren’t even in the games but lifted from DeviantArt. All backed up by the usual predatory monetization strategies we’ve all come to expect from the platform. The fact that I can still see ads for those run on games I play is proof that these actual ripoffs aren’t going away any time soon.
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The Chinese IP environment is a different beast.
And apparently, a bad one too, considering the state of Chinese aviation and metallurgy…
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China doesn’t have an IP environment as much as it has a “thanks for the free shit to help us advance our economy and a free lesson on how to be assholes enforcing trade secrets” environment.
And that’s even before we go into the part where you minimize your own personal welfare, safety and progression for the motherland or something.
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If they did commit a crime, then moving to a country that doesn’t extradite or repatriate criminals back to Japan should be Pocketpairs top priority
Is it strange that when I think of a company named “Pocketpair”, my mind immediately thinks it’s a company related to poker and not monster collecting?
“I won’t be surprised if Nintendo actually ends up suing Pocketpair over the game, but I will be surprised if any legal action was successful.”
Gawker says, “Winning the case, doesn’t mean winning.”
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Gawker, Vimeo, Backpage…
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I don’t get why you included Vimeo, they still exist…
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Do they? I might be thinking of the wrong company, I do seem to remember that there was a video service that despite winning all the lawsuits filed against them still ended up shutting down regardless but if Vimeo isn’t it the name escapes me at the moment.
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You’re thinking of Veoh.
https://www.techdirt.com/2013/03/15/veoh-wins-important-case-against-universal-music-over-dmca-safe-harbors-again-is-still-dead-due-to-legal-fees/
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Ah, that was it, thanks.