It’s still identifiably distinct, I really hope Nintendo lose because allowing copyright of a concecpt is dystopian especially in the context of our lengthy time frames for copyright.
It reminds me of when Apple wanted to patent the idea of rounded corners.
It’s not even copyright, they’re suing for using things they patented, but their patents are extremely general. I kid you not, they have a patent for MOUNTING CREATURES, something hundreds of games have done.
Abstract: In an example of a game program, a ground boarding target object or an air boarding target objects is selected by a selection operation, and a player character is caused to board the selected boarding target object. If the player character aboard the air boarding target object moves toward the ground player character automatically changed to the state where the player character is aboard the ground boarding target object, and brought into the state where the player character can move on the ground.
I’m no lawyer so I can’t tell you how well this would hold up in court but it’s ridiculous. See more: https://patents.justia.com/assignee/the-pokemon-company
I am positive prior art could be claimed for most if not all of those. Square Enix could cry afoul of the “mounting creatures” one as well as I’m sure many, many other earlier games on a plethora of platforms.
You could mount and ride Chocobos in Final Fantasy 2, i.e. the real “2,” the JDM only one on Famicom, which was released in 1988. The aforementioned patent was only filed on Nintendo’s part in 2024.
They can, to use a technical legal term, get fucked.
Yes but it’s fucking expensive to invalidate a patent. Possibly in the millions of dollars. That’s how patent trolls succeed - it’s far cheaper to own a bad patent than to fight one.
Well it’s a good thing Palworld was a huge sales success.
And now more free advertising from the streisand effect
Blizzard should be paying attention to this, as it perfectly describes their flying mounts.
I really hope Nintendo just picked a fight with Blizzard/Microsoft lol
Bullies tend to pick victims who can’t fight back too effectively, so I doubt they’d go after Microsoft.
All the big tech companies have a bunch of vague patents than in a just world would never exist, and they seldom go after each other, because they know then they’ll be hit with a counter-suit alleging they violate multiple patents too, and in the end everyone except the lawyers will be worse off. It’s sort of like mutually assured destruction. They don’t generally preemptively invalidate each other’s patents, so if Microsoft is not a party to the suit, they’ll likely stay out of it entirely.
However, newer and smaller companies are less likely to be able to counter-sue as effectively, so if they pose a threat of taking revenue from the big companies (e.g. by launching on competitor platforms only), they are ripe targets for patent-based harassment.
While Microsoft is not a target right now, if that patent for ground-flying mounts is used (which I doubt it will, given it’s too recent and widely used by older games), Palworld can just point at World of Warcraft Burning Crusade as prior art and it suddenly becomes MS vs Nintendo.
Yep, and it would be hilarious to watch Nintendo get smacked down.
It’s a little more specific, I think the patent is about:
- mounting either an air or ground mount
- when riding the air mount, going close to the ground transforms it into the ground mount and you keep riding it
But that’s still something multiple games have done in some way I think.
They better sue Microsoft over WoW, then, their IP did that in 2007.
I think Joust did this first. Difference might be that the player is permanently mounted all the time.
Drakengard comes to mind
Holy shit I forgot about Drakengard. That’s the one with the giant sky babies right?
Ya!!! The prequel to nier ❤️
So, just like FFXIV?
IANAL - but I’ve worked for Big Company and have gone through the patent process a few times. A patent isn’t what’s written in the supporting text and abstract. It’s only the exact thing written out in the claims.
First claim from the patent the abstract is from:
-
A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having stored therein a game program causing a computer of an information processing apparatus to provide execution comprising:
controlling a player character in a virtual space based on a first operation input;
in association with selecting, based on a selection operation, a boarding object that the player character can board and providing a boarding instruction, causing the player character to board the boarding object and bringing the player character into a state where the player character can move, wherein the boarding object is selected among a plurality of types of objects that the player character owns;
in association with providing a second operation input when the player character is in the air, causing the player character to board an air boarding object and bringing the player character into a state where the player character can move in the air; and
while the player character is aboard the air boarding object, moving the player character, aboard the air boarding object, in the air based on a third operation input.
Exactly everything described above must be done in that exact same way for there to be an infringement.
That seems a bit more easy to get around. It is still crazy to think that you have to check your whole game design against that many patents 😅
it’s stupid. I’m convinced that people who oversee software patents don’t even know what’s a computer.
Of course they do! It’s those weird white boxes that nerdy nerds nerd about with numbers and shit
More than likely.
And then you have people like Albert Einstein that worked in the patent office.
(Obviously not software)
Which sounds like mount selection based on if onland==True: landmountlist, else: airmountlist. ??? Can you really patent “I used an if statement to change what the mount button does based on a condition”
Boy, better fucking patent that fucking pure genius there’s no way anyone could program that without having copied us.
Like I fucking hope I misread that.
All of the statements in the claim need to be fulfilled - so while that if looks correct it’s only a very small part of the actions described. Example:
in association with selecting, based on a selection operation,[…], wherein the boarding object is selected among a plurality of types of objects that the player character owns;
-
It’s not a copyright suit, it’s a patent suit. So it’s indeed just like the Apple suit, though what patents were infringed upon is still unknown as of now.
Ah, I just assumed, thanks for the correction.
I mean they successfully defended the motion of swiping up or down as distinctly different than left or right for the purpose of activating a device. Which seems insane to me.
That’s a patent, not a copywrite.
Software patents are also terrible, though.
It is all known as intellectual property. This covers copyright, trademarks, and patents all with the same concept of creating artificial scarcity to ensure profits.
And now you have to swipe up to activate the iPhone as well 🤭
Patents and video games huh? We can’t ignore what John Carmack had to say about this:
The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.
–John Carmack
More like he wouldn’t be able to sell his solution to others, but yeah I think Patents on simple processes and mechanisms are dumb, especially certain software and firmware.
Imagine if you had a hammer and decided to use it to hit a nail and then someone came along and said “I see you’re using my method to build a house! Pay up!”
Well, you can’t patent something like that!
Imagine you open up a game engine, any engine, and decide you need to point to an objective so you decide to use an arrow. A game company says “You’re using our method to identify objectives! Pay up!” and that one is a unique mechanic?
How long has humanity been using arrows to point to things? How can you patent it just because it’s a digital arrow?
Jfc this guy
He’s right.
No, the very premise of that user’s analogy is that he isn’t profiting from it. If somebody invented hammering nails literally this year and a company came in selling it as a product without permission, then it would be comparable. It reads as if he failed to read my comment entirely but still replied with multiple paragraphs.
The game development analogy is better, floating arrows about characters heads was actually patented, but it was widely criticized and it expired in 2019. Plus I already took offense to simple mechanisms and especially certain software and firmware solutions.
A patient on hitting a nail with hammer is ridiculous if it’s your framing or theirs.
Countless buildings would never be built if you didnt invent hammer and nails, being paid royalties for a few years by large businesses who make use of it seems pretty fair.
The ludicrousness is the point. “Capture a creature in a ball”… How close is that to Red Dead’s lasso? Could Nintendo patent capturing a creature with a rope? Does anyone hold that patent yet? No, it would be silly to try to patent something like that - yet at one point I’m certain it was someone’s “technique” while everyone else was jumping on the horses back like Breath of the Wild.
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This thread started with a general statement about patent laws with a glaring innacuracy that it applied to noncommercial applications and in perpetuity. That is what I argued against. I fully support PalWorld.
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If that were Nintendo’s justification they would lose instantly. You can patent and/or claim intellectual property for very specific named designs, but you cannot do so for vague narrative concepts. Example: PokeBalls in various colorschemes is a go, but “a ball that capture creatures” is not good enough to patent.
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🪞
Hey man, I’m future you. I here to give past me a warning. You keep looking like a complete fool and when you look for evidence to support your false claims, it turns out you were wrong the whole time, so you built a time machine to stop yourself. Anyway, the warning is to only use 1.11 Jiggawatts, as you miss the return time to stop yourself from looking foolish by about a day. Good luck!
Hey, further future you, due to the nature of paradoxes your specific version doesn’t exist as a result of this timeline; and thank fuck for that because you’re a total loser.
Is this lawsuit deadass about the game mechanics???
I need to out my fucking reading glasses on.
idk, but the user above me made a general statement about patent laws and I responded in kind.
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You are conflating copyright and patents. Copyright is protection for the expression of an idea, like the art design. This is a patent issue, which is a protection of how something works.
If somehow I patent a vague mechanic like “a method of selecting weapons with the directions of an analogue stick or mouse, presented as an 8 direction on screen circle.” Then I could sue Red Dead Redemption and Batman Arkham, despite there being no copyright infringement with whatever game I made with that feature.
Aren’t they suing because of the 3d models?? not the design of them but the fact they took Nintendo models and tweaked them???
If im deadass wrong I will 100% shut tf up and delete my rants.
Aren’t they suing because of the 3d models??
No, they’re not. The word “patent” is used in every single article about this repeatedly. Patents are not the same as copyrights.
A copyright protects a creative work: A work of fiction, a movie, a character.
A patent protects the method in which the way a thing functions: A machine, a chip, an algorithm, or in Nintendo’s assertion certain vague gameplay concepts.
I said this many times before. I was assuming the PATENT they are suing was the base model. Not the design, the base model.
Read the article you fucking spanner
Also wtf is a Spanner???
I FUCKIN DIDDDDDD
according to first sentence of article, it was a patent infringement lawsuit, so you are deadass wrong.
i already admitted to being wrong.
Name calling isnt needed anymoreedit: I LOVE HAVING READING COMPREHENSION ISSUES!!!🩷🩵🩷🩵
Being called wrong is not the same as being called a name.
But respect for admitting being wrong.
I once again am here to admit a loss.
I missread “Deadass” as “Dipshit”
In conclusion I AM WAY TOO FUCKING AUTISTIC FOR THIS POST RN. Reading comprehension got me at an all time low 😭😭😭
I was wrong uwu
> The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.Thats essentially what both an AI does and what ChatGBT does. Are you gonna defend that to?? Just dont take credit for shit someone else made, who cares if its Nintendo. I don’t want my game sprites altered and then sold as though whoever altered them made them by handI was mislead about what the lawsuit was about and Im retracting all my statements thank you :’ )
My cock is not inspired after reading this bad take.
John Carmack is human intelligence and therefore more valuable than artificially generated drivel.
-edit- I mistook inspecting for inspiring for your name. I’m leaving it.
John Carmack is human intelligence
[X] Doubt
John Carmack is many things, but I have my doubts about whether human is one of them. At minimum, he’s some kind of alien. Most days I lean more toward incognito archdevil of the plane of knowledge. I’ve heard someone accuse him of being God, or at least standing in for him on Wednesdays.
At least on Wednesdays.
Well I admit im wrong about everything so, may your cock be inspired by that(?)
I present semi-chub. Carry on fellow meme warrior.
I never said John is an AI. But there are steps Palworld coulda taken to avoid the inevitable. If anything its just sad they did nothing to prevent this. I can see why thousands of people like it a fuckton. But they did nothing to actually avoid this from happening.
The whole game was intended from the very beginning to thumb their nose at Nintendo, just so happens that it got really popular and sold a ton of copies because it isn’t difficult to make a better Pokémon game than The Pokémon Company does, even when the entire game in question is a shitpost.
Im not about to sit here and tout the game that gives Lugia a gun as a game better than Pokemon, fuck no 😭😭😭
I’ve changed my statements (see above) about the lawsuit but this game is DEADASS just a higher quality newgrounds game similar to “Mario with a gun/bazooka/truck”
A shitpost is a better way to describe this. I simply refuse to look past the quirky, cartoony, 3d monsters HOLDING WHOLE ASS GLOCKS n RIFLES, to suspend my disbelief just enough to enjoy whatever this game has to offer. It hits these levels of Uncanniness with me that I severely dont like and bothers me for whatever reason.
And that’s fine, different strokes and all. I personally find it highly goddamn hilarious and enjoy playing it with my gaming group. I just think it’s a little disingenuous to say “palworld devs did nothing to prevent this, sad” when the whole original concept was basically designed around parodying Pokémon. They knew what they were doing.
Why didnt they just file under Parody law then??
I respect your taking action on your comments admitting you were mistaken.
Yea I dont wanna double down on some goofy shit if im wrong. Im a bit of a diagnosed spaz🥴 So being wrong about an opinion for me is a 50/50 and im not afraid to admit that
Eat shit, Nintendo. I hope you lose and experience the Streisand effect.
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Welp, I had no plans of buying Palworld. I’ve been playing Enshrouded instead. But I’ll be picking it up now. Screw you Nintendo and your anticompetitive ways.
If I didn’t have friends who need so much financial help, I’d buy it too.
Thank you for reminding me about Enshrouded. I started playing that a few months ago, but a week into it my gamer friends wanted to start a new Valheim playthrough, and that was that. I should revisit it though
Palworld has to be the most addicted I’ve ever been to a game in years, and that was back at launch in January. I’m not going to spoil anything, but they’ve added a ton of new things since!
Please hurt them.
Nintendo is straight up evil.
Fuck Nintendo. I think Palworld is a stupid game that I wouldn’t ever bother to play but Nintendo is pure evil and they NEED to lose. They do not deserve a monopoly on whatever type of genre that is.
While I think it is a great spin on the genre of collecting monsters to enslave them so they craft bullets for you, I agree with you on Nintendo.
Oh that sounds cool actually
“Multiple patents”
Specifies none
Off to a great start, I see. I know that actual game mechanics cannot be patented or copyrighted (the same principle applies to non digital games), so I’m really curious to what these patents are.
Someone linked a list of all the patents Pokemon Company specifically holds and the very first one was “creature breeding based on good sleep habits.”
- How does that even get a patent?
- What the fuck iteration of Pokemon requires you to have good sleep habits to breed your pokemon? 🤨
- Does it actually help you sleep? 🤔 I might need to start breeding pokemon…
Pokemon Sleep, sleep tracking app
It’s real, folks.
I know for sure that palworld does not promote good sleeping habits in any shape or form, at least not to my addicted ass
Breed me, daddy.
I know that actual game mechanics cannot be patented or copyrighted
In America, sure. But these are two Japanese companies…
I’m not an expert on Japanese copyright and patent law, but I don’t have a great outlook for Palworld.
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Game mechanics can be patented. It’s stupid, but things such as “loading screen mini games” and “overhead arrows pointing to your objective” have been patented. The second I believe even got enforced once.
I think these kind of things have been getting approved less and less, but I wouldn’t be surprised if “balls that contain monsters” was patented back in the early days too.
The game during loading screen isn’t a “game mechanic” per se, which is why I think it was patented back then. Completely ass backwards that it could be patented, but there’s that.
As for the overhead arrow for navigation, I wasn’t aware of that one. Was that from EA? I think it can be argued that’s not a “game mechanic” either, because it’s not “an essential component of the game”
It was crazy taxi and no other game could use the mechanic. And telling you where to go is pretty darn important to a lot of games
Interesting… The Wikipedia page for Crazy Taxi talks about their lawsuit with Simpsons Road Rage in 2001, for using the overhead arrow among other complaints. But makes no mention at all of Midnight Club, who by 2005 when I got Midnight Club 3 DUB Edition was using that same overhead arrow for in-race directions. I don’t see screenshots of Midnight Club 1 or 2 having the arrow but I can guarantee from personal experience that MC3:DUB did have them. I wonder what happened in those four years that made Rockstar not afraid to use that mechanic, especially as this section on the Crazy Taxi page states
The case, Sega of America, Inc. v. Fox Interactive, et al., was settled in private for an unknown amount. The 138 patent is considered to be one of the most important patents in video game development.
“Method for releasing 927 iterations of the same stale game across multiple platform generations.”
It can’t possibly be for “Method of splitting one complete game into two mutually exclusive cartridges with separate rosters to entice whales to buy two copies,” because if it were they’d have already sued Capcom 15 years ago.
You’ve mixed copyright and patents together and confused yourself a bit. Game mechanics cannot be copyrighted, but they can be patented. Some game component designs can be copyrighted as well, and even trademarked.
There are many, many, many game mechanics and features which have been patented, such as in-game chat, minigames on loading screens, arrow pointing to destination, and so on. Game studios have to license those features from the patent holders if they wish to use them.
Some random company even owns a patent for the concept of sending and receiving email on a mobile device. The entire system is a fucking joke.
There is an era of patents from the late 90s through the early-mid-00s that were insanely vague and rarely stand up to scrutiny, but most are expiring at this point, if they haven’t already. Generally, though, patents are not granted on “concepts” but on implementations. That’s a sometimes ambiguous line, but that’s a fundamental principle of modern patents.
Pocketpair is a Japanese company too right? That doesn’t bode well, Japan has some shit laws for defending these sorts of lawsuits. I really like palworld, and don’t want it to go away. Fuck Nintendo.
Copyright only exists for the wealthy to own even more.
This is a patent lawsuit, not copyright
even worse. software patents are just more idiotic copyrights.
Might be about a design patent
Dunno, I think I prefer patents. Unlike copyright, patents usually last a flat twenty years. Copyright expires either after 95 years or 70 years after the death of the author, which is ludicrous. Both are constantly abused, but at least patents expire in a reasonable amount of time.
patents and copyright are pretty different though. IMO both are bad but you can at least make a case for protecting intelectual work from copying. Patents protect replication of ideas and ideas don’t have to be unique at all. If I say it was my idea to call variables a,b,c,d,e in that order that means anyone who wants to do that in their creations needs my permission which is fucking bonkers.
I’m convinced that software patents exist purely for regulatory capture.
No, Copyright exists to protect creators. It’s just been perverted and abused by the wealthy so that they can indefinitely retain IP. Disney holding on to an IP for 70 years after an author dies is messed up, but Disney taking your art and selling it to a mass audience without giving you a dime is worse.
Copyright cannot protect 99% of creators because enforcing it takes enormous amounts of time and money. This isn’t really a big deal though because 99% of people who create don’t need these supposed protections.
That’s right, the amount of writing, art, and music that is created for non-commercial purposes dwarfs what is created for profit.
Your last tidbit is highly accurate. Big business almost exclusively uses copyright to control others work to the detriment of society.
Right, but as I said to someone else in this thread, the fact thar copyright can’t protect 99% of creators is a problem with capitalism, not copyright. The fact that our courts favor the wealthy isn’t the fault of copyright law itself.
Also, you’re correct that most art is created for pleasure, not profit, but that doesn’t mean the need to protect artists’ rights to their creations isn’t necessary, even beyond capitalistic reasons. Bill Waterson, the creator of Calvin & Hobbes, refused to merchandise his art simply because he didn’t want to ruin the image of his characters for a licensing deal. Without copyright law, any company could have slapped his characters on t-shirts and coffee mugs to make a quick buck off of his labor. But because of copyright law, he was able to refuse his publisher’s attempts to franchise his characters (reportedly, he even turned down Spielberg and Lucas’ pitch for an animated series based on the strip).
I think you have bought into the lie about copyright that has been fed to us. It is really hard to look at something objectively when you have been propagandized about it your entire life.
Currently copyright and the bigger category of intellectual property only exist to benefit commercial interests, this is self-evident. It is not a natural right by any means and is a perversion of the way art and science has existed for all of human history.
We have to face the reality that in a world of billions of people nothing is really unique. If you are anything like me you would have had many great thoughts, ideas, and projects and seen many other people throughout your life with similar or sometimes identical concepts.
Who should get to rent seek for these? If I create a very similar painting or song without ever seeing or hearing of another similar one who is the first? Well the current system is first come first serve, but is that really right?
What about teachers. Should not your teacher get a portion of your creation since they inspired you? What about exposure to other art, should you pay a portion of your earnings if you were inspired by other artist?
Even when looking at case law with derivative works, what is or is not okay is hardly settled and constantly changes based on the whims of ill-informed judges.
These questions only begin to scratch the complexity of the situation because of the artificial constraints put on us by intellectual property. I don’t pretend to have the answers except to say there really is no need for any of this.
Even when looking at something you may think is relatively simple like putting a characters likeness on merchandise it is never cut and dry. I have often wondered if Tigger inspired Hobbes. The likeness including even behavior is rather startling.
Who has the rights is sometimes not even the person that created it originally. This is especially evident in productions that require lots of people like movies. This leads to interesting facts like most major recording artist don’t even own their own songs.
Commercial interests love to have it both ways as well. Microsoft used piracy to its advantage to spread its OS across the globe and only cracked down on it after becoming a monopoly.
I am not trying to muddy the waters here but I want to make it clear that intellectual property, including copyright was created by and for monied interests. It was ill-conceived from the start, based on false premises, and has been pushed to the breaking point from years of coordinated legal tactics.
What creator has been protected by copyright?
Holy fuck I see some stupid takes posted here but this might be the stupidest.
Literally everyone who’s ever written a book, recorded a song, painted a painting, or created any other artwork.
Books and song rights go to the publisher. Graphic artists generally dont own their art they make money from, I.E. illustrations or concept art for various things like shows, movies, games.
First of all, no, publishers don’t necessarily own the copyright. Most authors do a licensing deal with a publisher, but they retain the copyright to their work. My understanding is that music industry contracts vary a lot more, since music is usually more collaborative, but lots of artists still own the rights to their songs. But even if that were true, artists being forced to sell their rights to cooperations isn’t an issue with copyright, it’s an issue with capitalism. It’s like blaming America’s shitty healthcare on doctors instead of a for-profit system controlled by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
A licensing deal for rights to make money off an intellectual property. I.E. a way to use their wealth to profit even more off something they didnt make. Music industry has fun examples of musicians having to rerecord songs because an ex-record label still owned rights to the original. So there’s situations where a musician entirely created and recorded a song and isnt allowed to sell that recording. And authors and musicians are the closest to owning their work they make a living off of. Any kind of industry visual artist has no ownership of anything.
Copyright is an issue with capitalism. It only exists for wealthy to profit off of.
I’ve run out of ways to tell you that’s not correct. The explicit purpose of the copyright law in the constitution is to allow creators to profit from their work. If you’re arguing that we should live in a pure communist society, where the products of all labor, including intellectual property, belong to community, fine, but we don’t live in a communist utopia. We live in a capitalist hellscape, and you’re looking at one of the only protections artists have, seeing how it’s been exploited by capitalism, and claiming the protection is the problem. It’s like looking at the minimum wage, seeing how cooperations have lobbied Congress to keep it so low it’s now starvation wage, and coming to the conclusion that the minimum wage needs to be abolished.
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This isn’t about copyright. Is there anybody here that has actually read the article? It’s absolutely insane how everyone just opens their mouths without understanding anything.
Consider it a catch all term for “copying intellectual property”. Patents, copyrights, trademarks, its different words for the same idea.
Idk about that, maybe indefinite copyrights would be but limited term is entirely fair. Like imagine you spend 5 years and $50M to develop something (random numbers here), then the next day someone just copies it and sells it cheaper since they had no overhead in copying your product. There’s no incentive to create if all it does is put you in debt, so we do need copyrights if we want things. However Pokemon came out in 96, that’s 28 years. There’s been very little innovation in their games since. And seeing as Digimon wasn’t sued it’s not about the monsters, it’s about the balls. But those balls haven’t changed in almost three decades so I don’t think the really have a case to complain
The problem is that IP laws eventually are lobbied by the big copyright holders into being excessively long. How long did Steamboat Willie really have to be copyrighted for, and has their release into the public domain really affected Disney?
Eventually after you get back the money you invested, it’s just free money, and people like free money so much they pay lawyers and lobbyists that free money so that they can keep it coming.
Pokemon: The innovative RPG where you couldn’t even walk diagonally until generation 6…
I can see the opposite argument made for copyright that if someone can coast off the success of their first work that in and of itself can de-incentivize them from making anything new, this is why movie companies just remake the same movies and stories every few years, it’s to coast on the success of the old one, and this is even a problem with shorter term copyrights. Their limiting factor is with the technology of the time making the old ones look dated, not so much the copyright expiring. If it didn’t look dated, they would just re-release the same ones over and over and over again.
Copyright was made for Joe, or a small business, but applying that to a big business doesn’t work, and is in fact a bad-faith argument, trying to tug at our heart-strings to make us feel bad for someone that we shouldn’t feel bad for. If Disney couldn’t sue people for copyright infringement they’d still find a way to go after them, they have more than enough money to hire a PI to ruin the person’s life, or you know just hire a hitman. It doesn’t do anyone any favors to Compare Disney, Paramount, Amazon, Facebook, or Google to a small business who needs our help to not be screwed over.
Ironically in this day and age it doesn’t do as much for those small businesses anymore because they don’t have the money needed to fight those claims, you know who does though, the big ones, the ones who don’t need protection at all. They’re free to predate on these smaller people if they choose, and those smaller people will be otherwise powerless to fight back, and even if by some stroke of luck they do, it’ll likely bankrupt them because of it.
However Pokemon came out in 96, that’s 28 years. There’s been very little innovation in their games since.
First, not really, there’s been a LOT of innovation in Pokémon, as much as people want to deny it.
And second, 28 years is really not that much. We’re not in the Disney realm of copyright-hogging, I think 50 years is a fair amount of time. The issue is that it’s often way too broad: it should protect only extremely blatant copies (i.e. the guy who literally rereleased Pokémon Yellow as a mobile game), not concepts or general mechanics. Palworld has a completely different gameplay from any Pokémon game so far, and (most of) the creatures are distinct enough. That should suffice to make it rightfully exist (maybe removing the 4/5 Pals that are absolute ripoffs, sure).
50 years… 5 maybe. If you have not earned back your investment by then you are just squatting on it.
I think 50 is generally too much, but I think it should depend on categories, so that it is based upon the efforts put into an idea to create and how much it value (like in expected ROI).
I fear, that is hard to define
As an artist 20-50 depending on context is where I’m hovering. It is very hard to define.
I agree with you almost entirely, but if we’re being honest, there really hasn’t been a lot of innovation in their games since Gen 4, and that was almost 20 years ago. Once they figured out the physical/special split, nothing really changed in the major mechanics. They have a new gimmick mechanic every game, like Z-Moves or Dynamax, but they’re always dropped by the next game. I guess camping/picnics are evolving into a new feature, but that’s about it.
If we’re talking PvP, battling has constantly evolved through new abilities, even without gimmicks the way the game is played changed a lot through the years.
In single player they also changed a lot of stuff since gen 4, although the positive changes were mostly in gen 5/6 and the later ones like wild areas and the switch to “””open world””” were… not as well received.
Well, I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree. To me, most of the updates have been set dressing, not significant changes to the formula or gameplay. But I guess that’s a matter of opinion, not fact.
50 years is already excessive, dude or dudette. The north american law originally gave 14 years, plus another 14 years if the creators actively sought after and were approved (most did not even ask, and approval was not guaranteed). This is comparable time to patents, which serve the exact same function, but without the absurd time scales (Imagine if Computers were still a private tech of IBM … those sweet mainframes the size of a room). 28 years, or lets put 30 years fixed at once, is more than sufficient time for making profit for the quasi totality of IPs that would make a profit (and creators can invest the money received to gain more, or have 30 years to think of something else). 30 years ago was 1994, think of everything the Star Wars prequels have sold, now remeber the 1st film was from 1999, would star wars prequels ventures really suffer if they started losing the IP from 2029 onwards ?
I still think if copyright laws weren’t so oppressive, 50 years would be fair (And still a huge improvement from the current situation).
Maybe have it in tiers or something? First 10 years: full copyright - until 30: similar products allowed, but no blatant reproduction - until 50: reproduction allowed as long as it’s not for-profit - post 50: public domain?
Humm…, i don’t think this scheme would work out in practice. The definitions of several concepts are fuzzy, and therefore can be circumvented or challenged or abused by all sides of the equation. What is a ‘similar product’ that is allowed after 30 years (and therefore what is a ‘dissimilar product’ that would be forbidden before), how would a non-profit that just pays high salaries to its managers fare between the marks of 30 and 50 years (and just gives some little money to research or charity). And again, why give artists and creative companies so much more time of IP protection than we give STEM inventors and companies time in patents (this random site claims patents last 15 to 20 years only) ?
The definitions of several concepts are fuzzy, and therefore can be circumvented or challenged or abused by all sides of the equation.
They are, but it’s not like they’re very definite nowadays either.
What is a ‘similar product’ that is allowed after 30 years (and therefore what is a ‘dissimilar product’ that would be forbidden before),
I’d say “similar product” is anything that doesn’t try to pass off as the original one, and is mechanically different enough. Palworld for example, or all the other Pokéclones that popped up in recent years.
how would a non-profit that just pays high salaries to its managers fare between the marks of 30 and 50 years (and just gives some little money to research or charity).
They wouldn’t, in that period I’d allow stuff like piracy or free cultural events, stuff like that. Obviously the copyright holder would still be able to profit off of their own products, but everyone else would have to ask them to do so.
And again, why give artists and creative companies so much more time of IP protection than we give STEM inventors and companies time in patents (this random site claims patents last 15 to 20 years only) ?
Because those are things that humanity needs to progress. I do think they could be longer in a different way, like “they can be used by anyone without consent from the inventor, but they need to pay a small percentage in royalties” or something like that, just to ensure they have a permanent source of income that’s enough to live off. I’m not knowledgeable enough about that to talk though, so I can’t really answer that question without going into baseless speculations.
The people spending 5 years to develop something arent the ones that own the rights to the end product. Like I said, copyright exists so rich people can own more. The people that own the rights to pokemon are not game developers, artists, writers, anyone that put actual work into creating the games and other media. Its people that had a lot of money, shareholders and executives. And then they receive the biggest share of the profits off others work and the feedback loop continues.
How about no. Let people create if your only incentive is money fuck you. If someone spent $50 million to develop something the labor has been paid. You will be first to the market and you can make money if your invention isn’t that unique oh well.
Thats a great way to make companies spend 0 on r&d that has longterm benefits and instead focus on squeezing out every penny from current assets.
So you tax the fuck out of them and fund invention though schools and unis. But the fact companies won’t is not a sure thing… it just means they will be more pickey.
Even when it doesn’t, it becomes its eventual outcome.
Seeing a lot of comments on here and it just reminds me of what I have been telling my friends since day one.
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PalWorld is a threat to Pokemon. It has potential to crown Pokemon in a different way and really compete. Nintendo will 100% find a way. I told them and told them. I said the same thing on Reddit. Sure enough, downvoted.
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I love Pokemon, I love Zelda, and Mario but I absolutely love competition. There is no way a billion dollar franchise, multi level marketing, insanept popular game series is going to let something come along and compete against it. If you haven’t watched The Boys on Amazon you are missing out. One of the most redeeming characters, IMO, says it best in two sentences in the boys in one whole episode and it is the premise of everything. "You don’t get it do you? You don’t mess with the money.
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I love seeing games come along and bring something new to the table because it should drive Nintendo to do better for GameFreak to do better. I liked PalWorld and welcomed it as someone who loves Pokemon. While PalWorld didn’t maintain my interest its because Pokemon just does something for me PalWorld doesn’t. However, that being said I have found my self turned away from Pokemon since Gen 7 and 8 semi redeemed 7 and 9 is just sad (performance wise). I have found my self playing the hell out of tjr classic Pokémon games. Point being I welcomed PalWorld in hopes that it would light a fire under Nintendo’s ass to develop a really good next gen Pokemon game. It was wishful thinking though. Nintendo is a “don’t mess with the money” company and that is all it is. Fuck Nintendo. PalWorld was good for the game industry. What Nintendo is going to try to set precedence on is that you can own an idea a simple concept.
I have been telling my friends for literal fucking years and for some reason they just swing the bat for Nintendo. Nintendo makes some great games but holy fuck they are a shit company. They just are. I told them over and over this was coming Nintendo would find something and now here we are.
I sent this too them and they all got silent. They genuinely believed Nintendo couldn’t and wouldn’t.
Well arguably they can’t legally but… Bludgeoning people with lawyers regardless of legality is pretty standard big business behaviour
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Good. Kick Nintendo in the dick.
I’d support anything to see NIntendo get kicked in the nuts for shutting down yuzu, which could have easily continued legally by removing like 2 paragraphs and probably a few lines of code.
Also Citra which was 100% legal.
EDIT:
I also wanna mention that current Pokemon gameplay sucks, and would also kill to see GameFreak’s billion dollar franchising burn. Maybe
1520 years ago when hardware was “limited”, a low asset turn based RPG focused around pocket monsters was a fun game. Ain’t no way a PS1 graphics looking game with practically zero changes to the formula can be considered AAA title in 2024. And even then they’ve somehow made it into an A button press simulator by nuking the difficulty.Being completely honest, the DS hardware was not that limited (had 2 generations on it with significant upgrades despite being the same console). BW2 was probably the golden era with very well done animated sprites, overworld, features, etc. The moment it hit the 3DS, it started showing its cracks with GF continuing to develop the game without expanding the team to meet development demand.
Palworld isn’t even the first challenger. TemTem gained some popularity purely for showing how much of an upgrade it was from Pokemon only a few years ago.
I agree bw/bw2 were the best games
3D was the bane of good gameplay IMO. Tech over fun. “It’s so realustic!” If I want realistic I’d go outside.
The DS (lite) screen was also so good compared to its ancestors.
Maybe it’s time to fire up some DS and GBA games again :-)
No, they could’t just remove a few lines of code and text - if they could, they would have done exactly that. Yuzu was fucked because they sold early access to day one compat with new games. That’s clearly illegal and scummy, even if it’s big bad corporation on the losing end of it. If they hadn’t complied they likely would have lost any litigation and might also get into other legal troubles because of likely pre-release access to games. No judge would have taken any of it lightly.
They’re gonna fight it, but not for the fans. They’re doing it for themselves. They’re a company too.
All the same, I’m glad someone is standing up to those litigious fuckwagons.
I don’t play this game, but would love to donate to help the fight. Nintendo is out of control with their bullshit.
Buy the game.
Kick his ass Pocketpair
