Nintendo is suing Pocketpair, developer of hit Pokémon-style game Palworld, over the alleged infringement of “multiple patent rights”.
In a brief public statement posted to Nintendo’s website in the early hours of this morning, the company confirmed it had filed a patent infringement lawsuit in a Tokyo court yesterday, 18th September.
Nintendo is now seeking “an injunction against infringement and compensation for damages on the grounds that Palworld, a game developed and released by the Defendant, infringes multiple patent rights”.
Palworld has constantly been compared to Pokémon since it was first announced, and has often been referred to as “Pokémon with guns”. The monster collecting and battling game has even come under fire from Pokémon’s own fans, who have said that many of Palworld’s creature designs are similar.
Originally released in January this year for PC and Xbox, including on Xbox Game Pass, Palworld proved to be a hit. In its first month of release, Palworld drove Xbox’s “biggest month ever on console” in terms of play time, with 10 million players giving Palworld a go across Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, and a further 15 million people joining in via Steam.
Palworld’s success did not go unnoticed at the time by The Pokémon Company, of which Nintendo is a key stakeholder. In late January, The Pokémon Company released a rare statement addressing Palworld’s existence, and said it intended to “investigate” for any content it believed may “infringe on intellectual property rights”. Six months later, however, Palworld creator Takuro Mizobe confirmed that threat had not been followed up behind the scenes.
So why now? Much of the hubbub from Palworld’s original launch has died down, but Pocketpair has more recently teased a version of Palworld for PlayStation 5. It seems possible Nintendo is acting now, before any official announcement of the game’s PS5 version materialises.
“Nintendo will continue to take necessary actions against any infringement of its intellectual property rights including the Nintendo brand itself,” the company’s statement today concludes, “to protect the intellectual properties it has worked hard to establish over the years.”
Eurogamer has contacted Pocketpair for comment.