With the implementation of Patch v0.5.5 this week, we must make yet another compromise. From this patch onward, gliding will be performed using a glider rather than with Pals. Pals in the player’s team will still provide passive buffs to gliding, but players will now need to have a glider in their inventory in order to glide.
How lame. Japan needs to fix its patent laws, it’s ridiculous Nintendo owns the simple concept of using an animal to fly.
I’m a little torn on this.
On the one hand, let’s be real - clearly PalWorld takes more than a little “inspiration” on a bunch of different Pokemon IP. The illustrations, modeling, and just visual style overall matches in many ways almost perfectly for many of the creatures. They are like off-brand versions of Pokemon with the exact same eyes, mouth types, etc. in many cases as if they were illustrated by Ken Sugimori himself
.
Additionally, the game involves using handheld ball devices thrown at wild world-roaming creatures you capture after cutting down their health by some amount to increase the catch percentage and different “grade” balls have increased chance for capture.
There is also a nefarious organization competing with you for capturing these wild creatures like Team Rocket.
But on the OTHER hand, the leveling up, breeding, base-building, the various ability tech-trees, item crafting, and just overall engine complexity is VASTLY superior to what appears to now be an almost EMBARRASSINGLY behind set of game design mechanics in the actual Pokemon games… it’s sort of a Saints Row vs GTA IV situation here where they were an obvious copy off, but improved in enough ways that ended up being a fun game in itself.
Copying off exact art asset styles is one thing you shouldn’t do… but taking Nintendo’s gameplay ideas and expanding upon them vastly and being told to remove said mechanics as if they stole code is asinine and sets a bad precedent.
Every time there’s been a popular game, there are a thousand copies off them that twist and evolve those mechanics until something else comes along.
Nintendo came along with platformers after Pitfall on Atari. Sonic copied 2D platforming basics from Mario like running to the right and jumping on enemies but changed so much. Final Fantasy copied off Dragon Quest, which itself was a digital idea based off of Dungeons & Dragons. Doom to games like GoldenEye to Halo to Call of Duty to PUBG to Fortnite to APEX Legends…
This feels like taking advantage of grey area in the realm of visual IP similarity to shut down someone making their gameplay design mechanics look antiquated by comparison.
Really embarrassing for Nintendo to be doing this, when clearly what Nintendo should be doing is doing like what Fortnite did when APEX came along and added location / enemy / weapon call outs and just STEALING the mechanics they weren’t clever enough to think of on their own and implement better versions in their own games… but clearly they’d just rather have a monopoly and continue lackluster work.
Look, if the problem is the similar designs then sue for that!
There’s 1025 Pokemon at this point in time - how the hell are you supposed to create a unique pokemon at this point in time? Even pokemon can’t create unique pokemon anymore.
The same way Digimon, Monster Hunter monsters, and every other unique IP looks nothing like Pokemon. Make completely original designs that don’t look like fan art or knock offs of another artist’s specific trademark style.
I just assume that as long as everyone is fine with derivations produced by AI (text, pics, music), all derivations that don’t look exactly like original Pokemon are fine (also real people put some effort into those). Palworld compared to Pokemon is a much better product than, say, Fifa XX compared to Fifa XX-1. Also Pokemon series is notorious for useless editions of the same games masked as separate products - that level of rehashing feels much more illegal to me.
Earnest question - what trademarks does Nintendo/pokemon have on artistic style?
Any trademarks they need because Nintendo have allegedly been filing new patents mid-lawsuit in order to justify suing palworld.
I’m a little torn on your comment, because om the one hand you are right and on the other these lawsuits have nothing to do with the designs or art style at all.
Pokemon straight ripped off mother nature though.
Eh I think patents in video games just ruins the fun for us since Nintendo/game freak/Pokemon whoever can’t make a good game if their lives depended on it.
At a fundamental level, why should copyright exist? Is it helping society here by incentivizing Nintendo? No. Contemporary copyright has it wrong, and I think your starting assumptions ignore that fact.
deleted by creator
If I spend millions of my own money and hundreds or thousands of hours of my own time to build something, another company should not just be able to yoink that, put a coat of paint on it, and leave me with nothing to show if theirs just happens to get more popular or be advertised a little better. I don’t think the current laws are good but, absent basic income and such for everyone, I see why something should exist.
Sorry but why not? If you can’t afford that don’t make it or don’t publish it.
We see with open source that lack of copyright is not restricting anyone’s creativity and ability to create. In fact the open source world is significantly more creative and productive than proprietary one.
open source doesn’t pay my mortgage, pay back any business loans, put food on my table, etc. as the sole breadwinner in my family.
To be clear, I have contributed in a minor degree to open source and build things for fun; this is specifically about why copyright exists in certain domains. I also think it should be something more like 3-5 years max. I am a software engineer and used to work in the games industry for a number of years (though not anymore).
Then do something that does? Are we supposed to literally ruin part of society just for your benefit? You’re not entitled to this.
Not being able to steal something someone put a ton of time and/or money into for a couple of years without compensating them at all is ruining society… how exactly?
Here’s where you fail to think when you call this “stealing”. You don’t own intellectual property as it didn’t come from the vacuum of your head. It’s built from millions of other contributors and our collective intelligence.
Don’t like this? You’re free to leave this to people who do and go do something else. No one’s forcing you to do this. You’re not even aware of your own entitlement.
That VGC site has a pretty good sum up of Palworld: cynical and souless, but nonetheless a pretty fun game to play, and I fully agree. Pretty much every design up to version 0.3 was fully copied from pokemon. The more recent patch that added the big island on the south has more original-looking monster designs, though others are still pretty obvious ripoffs.
They did that on Craftopia, too, only it was to catch animals rather than monsters.
Not really. There is a criminal syndicate, a bunch of violent hypocritical hippies, a corrupt police and some Borderlands style psychos, none “competing” with you, they just want you dead. I think only the syndicate would “count as team rocket”, but they’re up for all crimes.
Palworld became a target at first because of that visual similarity but, as much as the pals obviously resemble pokemons, they’re visually different enough to be considered original and a case on those grounds alone would go nowhere. Which is why Nintendo shifted from IP to Patent bullshit.
I thought copyright and patent laws were supposed to incentivize innovation, not stifle it.
Just kidding! They always existed to make rich people richer at the expense of useful idiots.
they barely changed the overall “palmon” to the orignal pokemon they stole from. kinda hard to defend palworld when they just copy and pasted, and slightly changed the feature.