Techdirt is off for the holidays! We'll be back soon, and until then don't forget to 
As The Nintendo, Palworld Lawsuit Continues, Switch 2 Store Hosts Blatant Palworld Clone
from the hypocrites dept
We’ve talked a bunch about the lawsuit drama between Nintendo and the Pokémon Co. against PocketPair, the makers of the hit game Palworld. The short version goes something like this. Palworld is clearly inspired by the Pokémon world and games, but does not directly copy anything from those properties. Nintendo in particular seems very annoyed by this game even existing, but, again, no actual direct copying is occurring here. Instead, Nintendo has sued PocketPair for patent infringement over patents it holds for Pokémon video game mechanics that are, to put it mildly, quite generic and for which prior art/use already exists. That lawsuit is still ongoing, but PocketPair proactively removed several supposedly offending features from Palworld to protect itself as much as possible.
If you take anything away from all of that, it should be that Nintendo cares deeply about its IP and protecting its rights in any way imaginable. At least for itself, that is, because as this lawsuit is still active Nintendo is also offering up a clear Palworld clone on its Switch 2 eShop.
Published by BoggySoftware, Palland has been available since July 31 and is available to buy for £9.99. A handful of images from the game show Pokemon-inspired monsters being shot at with a gun. “I watched a few minutes of gameplay and holy shit it looks so bad,” one fan wrote on Reddit. “This is so absurdly bad looking I am not surprised they let it onto the Switch. They don’t have to worry about anyone actually wanting to play it,” added another.
Dataminers have also found evidence that Palland developers were calling the game “Palworld” during development. “I really fucking hope this gets thrown in Nintendo’s face during court,” said one fan.
Now, let’s stipulate a couple of things. First, Techdirt has historically taken the position on video game clones that is something like: We totally understand why this annoys the original creator, but if your game is first and good and the “clone” doesn’t do a bunch of direct copying, we don’t really think it’s a threat to the original creator making money. Second, PocketPair specifically has come right out and has said that it has zero problem with others trying to clone its game.
But PocketPair also obviously doesn’t see any issue with Palworld being inspired by Pokémon and Nintendo just as obviously disagrees. That’s how moral stances work. If Nintendo has a problem with PocketPair’s bankshot of inspiration over properties it owns, it should have just as big a problem with selling more clear clones of others’ games. It appears it does not have that problem, however, and is happy to collect money for a Palworld clone even as it sues the company behind the game for patent infringement.
It’s hypocrisy of a kind, at the very least. Sadly, that isn’t terribly surprising for Nintendo.
Filed Under: competition, palland, palworld, patents, pokemon, switch 2
Companies: boggysoftware, nintendo, pokcetpair
Comments on “As The Nintendo, Palworld Lawsuit Continues, Switch 2 Store Hosts Blatant Palworld Clone”
It's not hypocrisy
The only reason Nintendo sued Palworld and not Palland is because Palworld is literally better than anything GameFreak released for a long time. And that includes Legends games.
It’s blatantly obvious anti-competitive behavior. Abolish copyright. That’s what is needed to stop these things from happening over and over again.
Re: For all complex problems
there is a solution that is simple, straightforward and wrong.
Have another go, taking into account the reason copyright was originally implemented?
Re:
Even better: Punish copyright abuse to a greater extent than copyright infringement. That way, small producers (such as indie app developers) do not have a larger company undercut them on the exact same product.
The popularity of Palworld has always (nerd-)enraged me because it is a sloppy clone of Craftopia, which is itself Sloppy-Bugridden-Shovelware-Early-Access-Survival-Crafting-Game-#9045. Of all the games to randomly get popular, why this piece of crap?
Of course, that Palworld is a shameless bag of half-coded digital garbage has nothing to do with whether Nintendo’s lawsuit has any merit (it sounds like it doesn’t). What is important though is that Palworld is popular. It has been noticed by Nintendon’t, and therefore it must be destroyed. Palland probably gets a “pass” because I would bet money that no one at Nintendo realizes it is being sold in the eShop, which seems to be giving Steam a run for its money in the “Mos Eisley of Video Game Stores” competition. If Palland somehow became a breakout hit, it would no doubt be quietly removed from the eShop without recourse.
In fact, some might point out that Palland’s only attracting quality is that it exists to generate controversy by virtue of being on Nintendo’s eShop. “People know about the Nintendo lawsuit against Palworl. Let’s make a Palworld and sell it on the eShop and sell copies before it inevitably gets taken down.” seems to be business model here. This game lives on articles just like this one essentially doing their viral marketing for them, and getting some interested person to look at them and maybe buy for the funny “ha I own not-not-Pokemon on Dindendo store”.
Re: Wrong.
Palworld is actually better than anything Gamefreak done in years. Just look at it side by side, compare sword&shield, scarlet&violet and brilliant diamond/shiny pearl to Palworld. You don’t even have to play either, having a working set of eyes is enough.
Re: Re:
That says more about how low Gamefreak has sunken than how good Palworld is.
Re:
Craftopia and Palworld are made by the same devs, for the record.
Re: Re:
Yes. That’s my point exactly. We’re used to calling things that look visually similar clones, but it really is a clone, as in they copy/pasted the game. It’s the same game under the hood.
Re: Re: Re:
And?
There are good and bad ways to do it but it isn’t new. Original mario brothers 1 and 2(american lost levels), half life, counter strike, garry’s mod, and a few others, I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the first few final fantasy games were built on top of each other, call of duty, and many, many more. Hell video game expansions before DLC were exactly this.
I mean just look at disney, they have reused character designs plenty of times. Once you have something built it can often be much, much faster to rework it then create something from scratch.
Pretty much every long lasting video game company is reusing what they already built to some degree or another.
Re: Re: Re:2
IIRC Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights are more or less the same games under the hood. Both classics.
That is not my takeaway. Given Nintendo’s history, my opinion of them is that they are a grasping monolith that is in desperate need of being bankrupted and it’s C suite leaders barred from any position with more responsibility than sweeping, since they cannot be trusted with dirty diapers and their attorneys should be disbarred.
My considered opinion is that their entire IP portfolio (trademarks, patents, and copyrights) should be revoked and placed in the public domain. Give me a minute and I’ll tell you how I really feel.
Nintendo can afford expensive lawyers even though it’s patent has prior art it’s very hard to make an original game nowadays mo’s games are based on genres eg RPGs war fos games simulators driving from fighting games
People buy games that look good and are advertised and get good reviews
Palworld sold a lot because it’s a good game with high quality art in the catch a creature genre
Yeah. And water is wet. All the big names in music and movies have never had a problem scamming, stealing, or ripping off from writers, musicians, or singers they hire, or even from each other even as they demand people be sentenced to life and their entire family line be wiped out for pirating content.
Copyright, patent, and trademark laws only exist at this point to protect the powerful. It doesn’t even matter if you do anything wrong, just a company taking you to court can bankrupt you or your business without the actual legal matter getting answered.
If you think I’m wrong, I would love to see you explain how you think some random artist could ever hold Disney accountable for stealing their artwork without backing and funding.You cannot enforce these laws without having at least close to equal funding of the one you want to hold accountable.
Nintendo is probably not being hypocritical because the lawyers/bosses behind the lawsuit probably don’t even know about pal land.
But this is really a conflict between the copyright maximalists, everything belongs to us and the artists, who borrow, have inspiration, do stuff like people they like etc just like they have for centuries and have practical issues like there are so many good chords and if you have alleady written x for company z that when you right z for company y its really hard to make x and y not almost identical
technically its not even a copyright issue because copyright does not cover it,so they are using patents.