Palworld Developer Responds to Pokemon Lawsuit from Nintendo

09/19/2024 10:19 AM

Palworld developer PocketPair Inc. has issued a response to the lawsuit filed against their company by Pokemon Publisher Nintendo. It was only a matter of time before someone knocked at PocketPair Inc’s door, and now they’ll need to defend their most successful IP. So, how did the team respond, and what can we expect moving forward? Let’s find out.

PocketPair Inc. Responds to Nintendo Pokemon Lawsuit: “It is truly Unfortunate”

Regarding the Lawsuit

Yesterday, a lawsuit was filed against our company for patent infringement.

We have received notice of this lawsuit and will begin the appropriate legal proceedings and investigations into the claims of patent infringement.

At this moment, we are unaware…

— Palworld (@Palworld_EN) September 19, 2024

Palworld developer PocketPair Inc. responded on their website and social channels about the Lawsuit filed against them by Nintendo.

“Yesterday, a lawsuit was filed against our company for patent infringement,” The post says. “We have received notice of this lawsuit and will begin the appropriate legal proceedings and investigations into the claims of patent infringement.” The developer also claims that they were “unaware” of certain patents that they “are accused of infringing upon.”

Last year, PocketPair released Palworld, an open-world, action-adventure RPG where you collect monsters who can fight alongside you. You catch these creatures using spherical objects, storing them until you release them for battle. If this already sounds like Pokemon to you, it gets worse.

Many of the monsters in Palworld, referred to as “Pals” resemble existing Pokemon. While some look fairly original, there are some pretty obvious similarities:

• Anubis shares the same type body type and similar design to Lucario
• Dinossom is just Meganium with a more dinosaur-themed look
• Direhowl and Lycanroc look almost completely identical
• Celaray looks like a cross-breed of Mantine with a touch of Lanturn

And we could keep adding to the list, but we think we made our point. But it’s not even just design, but also certain gameplay elements that make Palworld seem like Pokemon. In addition to the Pal Spheres (Poke Balls), there are typings for each Pal, as well as Gym Leaders (simply referred to as “Bosses”) and Legendary Pals which are much rarer than others.

However, Palworld is not completely like Pokemon. For one, there’s a big emphasis on crafting and base-building. Sure, you could build secret bases in past Pokemon titles, but Palworld takes it to a new level. You need to farm resources, allocate your Pals to do certain jobs at the base, and even defend your base from attackers.

Additionally, Palworld lets you join in on the action. While your Pals do most of the fighting, you can equip yourself with all sorts of weapons to fight with. There’s a lot of other gameplay features that help Palworld differentiate itself from Pokemon. But is it enough? Only one thing is for certain: PocketPair isn’t backing down.

“Pocketpair is a small indie game company based in Tokyo. Our goal as a company has always been to create fun games. We will continue to pursue this goal because we know that our games bring joy to millions of gamers around the world.

Palworld was a major hit when it launched in Early Access. It sold over eight millions unit in less than a week while reaching over 2 million concurrent players on Steam alone. Although early trailers were already pulling a considerable number of views, nobody expected the game to become so popular in such a short amount of time.

Although that popularity has died off a bit, PocketPair wants to continue to improve the game. However, it seems these legal issues could pose a problem for their development cycle. In their post, they wrote that they “will continue improving Palworld and strive to create a game that our fans can be proud of. It is truly unfortunate that we will be forced to allocate significant time to matters unrelated to game development due to this lawsuit.”

In the end, they apologized to their fans for “any worry or discomfort that this news has caused.”

It will be interesting to see how this all ends up turning out. I can’t help but think of the case between Universal City Studios and Nintendo back in 1983, where the former alleged that Donkey Kong was a trademark infringement upon King Kong. Since Nintendo won that case, could PocketPair use that verdict in their favor to show that they’re “fighting the same fight”.

But at the same time, both cases are completely different, and copyright law has changed a lot during that time. Furthermore, as someone who’s spent more time playing Phoenix Wright than being in an actual courtroom, I won’t pretend to know what I’m talking about.

Nintendo filed their lawsuit on Wednesday, September 19th, in the Tokyo District Court. They seek an “injunction and compensation for damages”.

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