Pocketpair has officially responded to Nintendo’s lawsuit of patent infringement over the highly successful game Palworld.
Pocketpair’s response reads,
“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 of the specific patents we are accused of infringing upon, and we have not been notified of such details.
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 surprise success this year, both for gamers and for us. We were blown away by the amazing response to the game and have been working hard to make it even better for our fans. We 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. However, we will do our utmost for our fans, and to ensure that indie game developers are not hindered or discouraged from pursuing their creative ideas.
We apologize to our fans and supporters for any worry or discomfort that this news has caused.
As always, thank you for your continued support of Palworld and Pocketpair.”
Released in January 2024, Palworld sold over 25 million copies and became the second-highest-played game in Steam history before it was knocked into third position by Black Myth: Wukong.
What do you think of Nintendo and The Pokemon Company suing Pocketpair for patent infringement with Palworld? Let us know in the comments, and join the discussion in the official Insider Gaming Forums.
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I saw this coming back when Palworld first came out. Believe or not, the whole premise has been done before, with firearms showing up in the Pokemon anime long before now. The primary difference is prevalence – firearms are far more prevalent in Palworld than they were in the Pokemon anime.
About the only significant difference is the raft of new animals (though there were still some copies) and the base-building mechanic, though even base-building has been a mechanic in the Pokemon games before.
The lore, the style, the premise, it’s all copied. Palworld is Pokemon. Always has been and always will be.
The design seems to be the main problem I’d be fine if they abandoned the modern Pokémon look in favor of something else maybe the 90’s/2000’s look or bring in Mitsuhoshi Shimabukuro to design a new world with you he has sone great ideas like Bulid King and Toriko. Other creators they could do some great work with too like Hiromu Arakawa, Shinobu Ohtaka, Nobuhiro Watsuki, Hiroyuki Takei, Nobuyki Anzai, Yudetamago, Yuya Takahashi, Toshiki Inoue, Shiro Maekawa, Tomokazu Fukushima, Kazunobu Uehara and so many others.
Palworld needs an anime