In last January, Palworld took the gaming world by storm as a “Pokémon with guns,” and immediately the question was: What would Nintendo’s response be? At the time, The Pokémon Company only said it would investigate the situation and take necessary measures… but now we know the first details. Nintendo and TPC officially announced the start of a lawsuit against Pocketpair Inc., creator of Palworld, for the violation of “multiple patent rights”.
Its moment of popularity has certainly passed. After reaching a peak of two million players in January, today Palworld averages the 20,000. In fact, some media outlets were quick to label it a “dead game” and suggested it should undergo major changes. In essence, Palworld can maintain its current model and target a much smaller scale, or adopt the free-to-play model and monetize secondary aspects of the gameplay. However, today its leaders face another challenge: Avoid Nintendo eating them for breakfast.
The creators of Palworld sued
With a brief post translated into English on its official portal, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company announced the start of legal action against Pocketpair Inc., in the Tokyo District Court. The language chosen is also interesting, because this announcement does not openly talk about copyright (that word doesn’t even appear), but rather a compensation for damages associated with “the violation of multiple patent rights” in the development of Palworld.
Unfortunately there are no details about the patents in question, but it is necessary to remember that in January of this year, Pocketpair’s CEO Takuro Mizobe said they had passed all legal reviews, and that they had “no intention” of using other companies’ intellectual property.
Some comments on the Web have already equated the lawsuit to a kind of “SLAPP”, a classic intimidation strategy. Copyright laws don’t usually protect the fundamental idea of a game or its rules, but the way they are expressed. But by mentioning patents, Nintendo might be anticipating a technical conflict we don’t know about, and the detail of having started the lawsuit in Tokyo is not minor. To be continued…
Official announcement: Click here
Source: Ars Technica
