This game is still in early access so I hope this is only temporary and they will retool this to not be similar to Pokemon. There's no way this will be final right...?? No summon animation at all??!
What a sad sad outcome. Patenting game mechanics should not be legal.
It isn't in the US but is in Japan where the companies are based.
It's still somewhat protected in the US. The big one in table top gaming was tap mechanics from Magic. That expired in 2014 though. In video games the Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor/war is also patented.
Loading screen mini games are also patented. That’s why loading screens never have mini games. Less of an issue now that game devs have begun avoiding loading screens, but they were extremely common in older generations and they never had mini games to pass the time.
I remember how impressive that was as a kid, when i played ridge racer on psx the first time.
That patent exired almost a decade ago: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/loading-screen-game-patent-finally-expires
Erm, acktchually! I think Nintendo is pretty cringe here, not based!
(Sorry, I couldn't resist)
Take this vote and leave before I change my mind
Ok, I'm outta here.
All jokes aside, I would like to weigh in and say that I find the whole patenting of game mechanics to be absolutely appalling. I genuinely don't get how this is legal, even in Japan. They filed this patent way too late for it to even make sense.
You could've made an argument if they patented it back in 1996, but even so... Fuck this. Imagine patenting a screen transition or something?
So fucking stupid. I remember a time when Nintendo was constantly losing legal battles like this one.
They probably just learned to pay judges, not lawyers.
Lame. Thanks, Nintendo. Got forbid you actually try to outcompete.
Worried what this means for Nexomon 3
Make it so you launch the ball thing from a sling shot, that's not throwing the object and it fits the universe
This is the answer right here. There’s even a few late game items for this. The just need to readjust the costs for those launchers. Make them available early mid game.
Literally just change the throw animation to use a weaker looking slingshot than whatever the current weakest one is.
These primarily cover throwing an object in a specific direction to either summon a battle character or to capture a creature in the field - mechanics Palworld shared with Pokémon at launch.
sounds like a mechanic found in a number of video games.
That's the weird thing. It doesn't seem to matter. The patent was filed after PalWorld was released. I'm guessing this is some quirk of Japan's patent system I'm unfamiliar with.
make it so you shoot them out with a gun
You already do that eventually anyway.
How do Japanese patents differ from USA/CAN? My general understanding of patents is that they expire after 20 years - Pokemon is older than that. Do Japanese patents have a longer duration? Did Nintendo patent a game later than the originals?
These patents were granted to Nintendo this year.
I'm not patent savvy - of they are only granted this year (as a point of origin for the patents' eventually expiry), wouldn't the years of previous Pokemon games invalidate these patents due to prior art?
If they were related to the original games, yes it would. The patents were about 3d worlds though. I believe the palworld beta was before these patents were filed, so there would be a strong case to invalidate them. It probably won't happen, because Nintendo's proposed damages was basically pocket change compared to a legal battle.
You wouldn't patent the "game" you'd patent the various forms of utility or designs within that game. So throwing a sphere at a life form to then capture it could be one patent, but maybe then you'd also file another patent to cover keeping it alive and caring for it inside the ball habitat. You might file the second off of what is called a continuation filling and in combination, as you need both actions to get the full effect, you might get a bit of extended coverage in practice.
But the bigger thing here would probably be trademark law, which is a whole different beast.
Sure, I hadn't implied that the game was patented, but the mechanics were present in a game that is over 30 years old.
It’s a shame the Wii U didn’t bankrupt Nintendo.
Nintendo could afford to release 10 failed consoles in a row and still keep going, that was the case back when the Wii U released as well
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