Nintendo has announced which will sue the developer of the hit monster-taming game Palworld for infringing multiple patents.
In its statement, Nintendo said: “The lawsuit seeks an injunction against the defendants and damages… To protect the valuable intellectual property we have accumulated through many years of hard work, we will continue to take appropriate action against any infringement of our intellectual property.”
This comes nearly eight months after Palworld’s monumental launch in January, which sold over 5 million copies and garnered an average Twitch viewership of 147,264, with 58.3 million hours watched. But Palworld was immediately compared to the third best-selling video game series of all time, thanks to the glaring similarities between its “Pals” and Pokémon. The entire gaming world expected Nintendo’s infamous legal team to quickly punish them, and when that didn’t happen, many people assumed Palworld was safe.
While Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe attempted to preempt the legal troubles earlier this year by saying they had “no intention of infringing other companies’ intellectual property,” just days later, the Pokemon Company said it would begin “investigating and taking appropriate action to address any acts of intellectual property infringement.”
That investigation eventually led Nintendo to file an official lawsuit against Pocketpair, as many predicted almost 8 months ago.
I'm no stranger to throwing legal Poké Balls
This is not the first time that Nintendo has shown off its legal might and cases like this are part of the issue, as it is one of the largest and oldest video game companies in the world.
Nintendo sued video rental chain Blockbuster for copyright infringement after it photocopied manuals for rental games that didn't have guides. It has issued so many cease-and-desist orders for fan-made games that amateur developers now don't even post news until the games are ready to play. And there's no shortage of emulation sites that have been hit with lawsuits for offering Nintendo ROMs.
If you are familiar with Pokémon, One look at Palworld's creatures is enough to tell that Pocketpair may have borrowed a bit too much from the monster-hunting monarch. However, Palworld is also a third-person action-adventure survival game, with combat, exploration, and base-building, and very different from anything you'll find in a Pokémon game.
While it's not surprising that Nintendo is suing the developer, it is curious that it's taken so long for the lawsuit to materialize. Palworld's concurrent player count now typically hovers between 15-30k per day, a significant reduction from its launch month peak of over 2 million, so Nintendo can now at least take on Pocketpair without millions of fans rallying in protest.
