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I've seen a few arguments, but I still don't see how Gamefreak/Pokemon isn't just going to sue the crap out of these developers (Pocket Pair). Maybe they can g

I've seen a few arguments, but I still don't see how Gamefreak/Pokemon isn't just going to sue the crap out of these developers (Pocket Pair). Maybe they can get away with loosely copying the creatures, but they blatantly rip off the pokeball/catching design/mechanics that are a part of Pokemon's core IP. Maybe someone can tell me I'm wrong?

falcor84 3y ago
Is that sort of game mechanic copyrightable/patentable? The only example of a patentable mechanic I'm familiar with is the Shadow of Mordor "Nemesis" system [0], which is relatively complicated. [0] https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/-i-shadow-of-war-i-publisher-warner-bros-has-patented-the-series-nemesis-system https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/-i-shadow-of-war-i-pu...
- thereddaikon 3y ago
  Game mechanics are generally not copyrightable. Nintendo did file patents for some mechanics in the newest Zelda game. I don't know how well those would hold up under court scrutiny, bad patents are approved every day. Pokemon's mechanics were also not fully novel, it was inspired by what was already in 1997 the well established JRPG formula.
BadHumans 3y ago
Mechanics are cannot be copy-written and there are dozens and dozens of creature collector games that use similar mechanics to Pokemon. Pokemon isn't even the first creature collecting game.
shantara 3y ago
Game mechanics and "feel" are generally not copyrightable with a few exceptions, such as the infamous Tetris lawsuit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_Holding,_LLC_v._Xio_Interactive,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_Holding,_LLC_v._Xio_Int....
- dymk 3y ago
  Character design is copyrightable however, and a few of the pals are straight up copied with the ears tweaked.
  - HideousKojima 3y ago
    >straight up copied with the ears tweaked. Do you have a specific example?
swashboon 3y ago
Game mechanics are not copyrightable.
- StephenSmith 3y ago
  But character Design is. Here's a good summary of just how close a lot of the characters are. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1749183059877085396.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1749183059877085396.html
  - doublerabbit 3y ago
    close != is. Unless you have solid proof that the characters were taken from Pokemon. The Lion King characters look close to Kimba The White Lion ReactOS is close to Windows Close isn't an argument you can really fight upon. This is why we have so many knock-offs of toys, computer kit and the likes.
  - fkyoureadthedoc 3y ago
    There aren't even close enough to confuse someone who doesn't watch/play Pokemon. If you showed me any given pal or Pokemon and asked me if it was a Pokemon, I couldn't tell you. They are obviously in the same style. But looking at that page I don't think they are actual copies, and I don't think anyone shown both at once would not be able to distinguish them.
  - Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
    I can't believe they have the gall to infringe on gamefreak inventions such as sheep and porcupines...
  - Sirizarry 3y ago
    I couldn’t finish the list because by the time I got to shaymin it’s obvious that the majority of this is just picking out details that look similar NOT the same. Bunch of nitpicking with no substance.
snowram 3y ago
Palworld creators designed their models to be as close as possible to Pokémon while still staying legally distinct. It is so genius I wonder why no one has thought about doing this before.
- rantallion 3y ago
  > as close as possible to Pokémon while still staying legally distinct I'm definitely not an expert on the matter, so this is just curiosity. How can something be so similar that the average person looks at it and thinks it's a Pokémon clone and not count as a derivative work?
  - Boogie_Man 3y ago
    I think the distinction is that they think it's a Pokemon clone, not that they think it's a Pokemon.
  - piaste 3y ago
    Copyright covers the specific work of art you created, not anything that looks like it. Birdman didn't violate Batman's copyright even being an international callback. Nor did every superhero movie that tried really hard to copy Nolan's style after his trilogy. It was perfectly fine in 2023 to create a cartoon about a prankster mouse called Nicholas sailing a steamboat. What became legal in 2024, with the copyright expiration, was to give him those exact pants and ears and call him Mickey. I'm not familiar with Pokémon, so I'm not sure if the PW cartoon monsters are literal copies of the originals or just drawn in the same style.
    - rantallion 3y ago
      Copyright laws vary between countries. I imagine a UK court might treat things differently, given our Copyright Service's rules: > Legally only the copyright owner has the right to authorise adaptations and reproductions of their work - this includes the making of a derivative work. But of course, this all comes down to whether or not a court considers it derivative, which is what I was curious about. https://copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p22_derivative_works https://copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p22_derivative_work...
yungporko 3y ago
nintendo are the most overly litigious company i'm familiar with, if nothing comes of it then i guess it must mean they don't think they have a winnable case
- whythre 3y ago
  Or the gears turn slowly… but either way I hope palworld is able to do their thing.
pjc50 3y ago
I do wonder how this game became quite so successful - it seems to be an indie overnight success despite incredible cheapness and a certain amount of ripoff?
- iinnPP 3y ago
  I imagine the impact of big name streamers killing their pals and or people helped. This tranalates directly (for me) to a lack of hand holding and censorship.
- ihuman 3y ago
  Their previous game (Craftopia) did well, and people have been looking forward to this since the first announcement a few years ago
- thinkingtoilet 3y ago
  From what I've read, there is a massive amount of disappointment with the previous Pokemon games. I haven't played them but if you read about what the community thinks it's almost entirely negative. They feel like there is no effort put into making those games truly great. This game, apparently, is close enough to Pokemon to scratch the itch and is done well enough. That doesn't explain all the popularity but it explains some of it.
bluetidepro 3y ago
First off, look into how much IP/character design Pokemon stole from Dragon Quest. Pokemon isn't the "og" of this style. Also, the Palworld creator is already known for this style of "rip-off" game. Their other title, Craftopia, was a game they basically ripped directly from Zelda's Breathe of the Wild. They also have a title, Never Grave, which is basically a rip of Hollow Knight. They seem to know how to toe the line without getting sued.
- yungporko 3y ago
  a lot of the original pokemon were blatant ripoffs of dragon quest's monsters too
  - bluetidepro 3y ago
    Yup, exactly.
  - dingnuts 3y ago
    I keep seeing this claim repeated without a citation. I just looked at Wikipedia and could not find any examples, except as it pertains to Dragon Quest Monsters, which does seem similar to Pokemon, but came out in 1998, after Pokemon. Regular Dragon Quest -- which I have not played -- looks like a normal JRPG like Final Fantasy. Dragon Quest Monsters appears to be a monster collector, but the timeline (as mentioned) is wrong. Care to provide any evidence for this claim? I'm starting to think this is another case of "Kimba the White Lion is a ripoff of The Lion King" and someone is going to have to make a 2.5 hr long YouTube video debunking the Internet's idea that Pokemon is a ripoff of Dragon Quest.
    - rideontime 3y ago
      This is the picture going around that this claim seems to be based on. Not a JRPG guy, so I can't tell you which game those DQ designs are from or when they actually debuted, but that doesn't seem to be stopping people from accepting it at face value. https://twitter.com/kelskiYT/status/1749243751460188233 https://twitter.com/kelskiYT/status/1749243751460188233
rideontime 3y ago
The “looseness” of the copies is up for debate. Comparisons of the 3D models against the latest Pokémon games’ models have raised a lot of suspicion: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/palworld-pokemon-plagiarism-accusations-pile-up-as-ceo-responds/ https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/palworld-pokemon-pl...
HideousKojima 3y ago
In addition to the already mentioned Digimon, there are already several other games with similar styles and ideas, like Yokai Watch or Robopon.
tourmalinetaco 3y ago
Nintendo has no leg to stand on and they know it. Otherwise they would have acted immediately, just as they did for the PalWorld Pokémon mod that was foolishly shown off before being publicly released.

falcor84 3y ago

Is that sort of game mechanic copyrightable/patentable? The only example of a patentable mechanic I'm familiar with is the Shadow of Mordor "Nemesis" system [0], which is relatively complicated. [0] https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/-i-shadow-of-war-i-publisher-warner-bros-has-patented-the-series-nemesis-system https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/-i-shadow-of-war-i-pu...

thereddaikon 3y ago
Game mechanics are generally not copyrightable. Nintendo did file patents for some mechanics in the newest Zelda game. I don't know how well those would hold up under court scrutiny, bad patents are approved every day. Pokemon's mechanics were also not fully novel, it was inspired by what was already in 1997 the well established JRPG formula.

BadHumans 3y ago

Mechanics are cannot be copy-written and there are dozens and dozens of creature collector games that use similar mechanics to Pokemon. Pokemon isn't even the first creature collecting game.

shantara 3y ago

Game mechanics and "feel" are generally not copyrightable with a few exceptions, such as the infamous Tetris lawsuit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_Holding,_LLC_v._Xio_Interactive,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_Holding,_LLC_v._Xio_Int....

dymk 3y ago
Character design is copyrightable however, and a few of the pals are straight up copied with the ears tweaked.
- HideousKojima 3y ago
  >straight up copied with the ears tweaked. Do you have a specific example?

swashboon 3y ago

Game mechanics are not copyrightable.

StephenSmith 3y ago
But character Design is. Here's a good summary of just how close a lot of the characters are. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1749183059877085396.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1749183059877085396.html
- doublerabbit 3y ago
  close != is. Unless you have solid proof that the characters were taken from Pokemon. The Lion King characters look close to Kimba The White Lion ReactOS is close to Windows Close isn't an argument you can really fight upon. This is why we have so many knock-offs of toys, computer kit and the likes.
- fkyoureadthedoc 3y ago
  There aren't even close enough to confuse someone who doesn't watch/play Pokemon. If you showed me any given pal or Pokemon and asked me if it was a Pokemon, I couldn't tell you. They are obviously in the same style. But looking at that page I don't think they are actual copies, and I don't think anyone shown both at once would not be able to distinguish them.
- Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
  I can't believe they have the gall to infringe on gamefreak inventions such as sheep and porcupines...
- Sirizarry 3y ago
  I couldn’t finish the list because by the time I got to shaymin it’s obvious that the majority of this is just picking out details that look similar NOT the same. Bunch of nitpicking with no substance.

snowram 3y ago

Palworld creators designed their models to be as close as possible to Pokémon while still staying legally distinct. It is so genius I wonder why no one has thought about doing this before.

rantallion 3y ago
> as close as possible to Pokémon while still staying legally distinct I'm definitely not an expert on the matter, so this is just curiosity. How can something be so similar that the average person looks at it and thinks it's a Pokémon clone and not count as a derivative work?
- Boogie_Man 3y ago
  I think the distinction is that they think it's a Pokemon clone, not that they think it's a Pokemon.
- piaste 3y ago
  Copyright covers the specific work of art you created, not anything that looks like it. Birdman didn't violate Batman's copyright even being an international callback. Nor did every superhero movie that tried really hard to copy Nolan's style after his trilogy. It was perfectly fine in 2023 to create a cartoon about a prankster mouse called Nicholas sailing a steamboat. What became legal in 2024, with the copyright expiration, was to give him those exact pants and ears and call him Mickey. I'm not familiar with Pokémon, so I'm not sure if the PW cartoon monsters are literal copies of the originals or just drawn in the same style.
  - rantallion 3y ago
    Copyright laws vary between countries. I imagine a UK court might treat things differently, given our Copyright Service's rules: > Legally only the copyright owner has the right to authorise adaptations and reproductions of their work - this includes the making of a derivative work. But of course, this all comes down to whether or not a court considers it derivative, which is what I was curious about. https://copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p22_derivative_works https://copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p22_derivative_work...

yungporko 3y ago

nintendo are the most overly litigious company i'm familiar with, if nothing comes of it then i guess it must mean they don't think they have a winnable case

whythre 3y ago
Or the gears turn slowly… but either way I hope palworld is able to do their thing.

pjc50 3y ago

I do wonder how this game became quite so successful - it seems to be an indie overnight success despite incredible cheapness and a certain amount of ripoff?

iinnPP 3y ago
I imagine the impact of big name streamers killing their pals and or people helped. This tranalates directly (for me) to a lack of hand holding and censorship.
ihuman 3y ago
Their previous game (Craftopia) did well, and people have been looking forward to this since the first announcement a few years ago
thinkingtoilet 3y ago
From what I've read, there is a massive amount of disappointment with the previous Pokemon games. I haven't played them but if you read about what the community thinks it's almost entirely negative. They feel like there is no effort put into making those games truly great. This game, apparently, is close enough to Pokemon to scratch the itch and is done well enough. That doesn't explain all the popularity but it explains some of it.

bluetidepro 3y ago

First off, look into how much IP/character design Pokemon stole from Dragon Quest. Pokemon isn't the "og" of this style. Also, the Palworld creator is already known for this style of "rip-off" game. Their other title, Craftopia, was a game they basically ripped directly from Zelda's Breathe of the Wild. They also have a title, Never Grave, which is basically a rip of Hollow Knight. They seem to know how to toe the line without getting sued.

yungporko 3y ago
a lot of the original pokemon were blatant ripoffs of dragon quest's monsters too
- bluetidepro 3y ago
  Yup, exactly.
- dingnuts 3y ago
  I keep seeing this claim repeated without a citation. I just looked at Wikipedia and could not find any examples, except as it pertains to Dragon Quest Monsters, which does seem similar to Pokemon, but came out in 1998, after Pokemon. Regular Dragon Quest -- which I have not played -- looks like a normal JRPG like Final Fantasy. Dragon Quest Monsters appears to be a monster collector, but the timeline (as mentioned) is wrong. Care to provide any evidence for this claim? I'm starting to think this is another case of "Kimba the White Lion is a ripoff of The Lion King" and someone is going to have to make a 2.5 hr long YouTube video debunking the Internet's idea that Pokemon is a ripoff of Dragon Quest.
  - rideontime 3y ago
    This is the picture going around that this claim seems to be based on. Not a JRPG guy, so I can't tell you which game those DQ designs are from or when they actually debuted, but that doesn't seem to be stopping people from accepting it at face value. https://twitter.com/kelskiYT/status/1749243751460188233 https://twitter.com/kelskiYT/status/1749243751460188233

rideontime 3y ago

The “looseness” of the copies is up for debate. Comparisons of the 3D models against the latest Pokémon games’ models have raised a lot of suspicion: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/palworld-pokemon-plagiarism-accusations-pile-up-as-ceo-responds/ https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/palworld-pokemon-pl...

HideousKojima 3y ago

In addition to the already mentioned Digimon, there are already several other games with similar styles and ideas, like Yokai Watch or Robopon.

tourmalinetaco 3y ago

Nintendo has no leg to stand on and they know it. Otherwise they would have acted immediately, just as they did for the PalWorld Pokémon mod that was foolishly shown off before being publicly released.