Nintendo has announced that it will be suing the developer of the hit monster-taming game, Palworld, for infringing on multiple patents.
In its statement, Nintendo said, “The lawsuit seeks an injunction against the defendants and compensation for damages… In order to protect the valuable intellectual property that we have built up through many years of hard work, we will continue to take the necessary measures against any infringement of our intellectual property.”
This comes almost eight months after Palworld’s monumental January launch, selling more than 5 million copies and achieving an average viewership on Twitch of 147,264, with 58.3m hours watched. But Palworld instantly drew comparisons to the third-best-selling video game series of all time, thanks to glaringly obvious similarities between its “Pals” and Pokemon. The entire gaming world expected Nintendo’s infamous legal team to speedily come down on their heads, and when that didn’t happen many people assumed that Palworld was safe.
While Pocketpair’s CEO Takuro Mizobe tried to get ahead of legal troubles earlier this year by saying they had “no intention of infringing upon the intellectual property of other companies”, it was only days later that Pokemon Company said it would begin to “investigate and take appropriate measures to address any acts that infringe on intellectual property rights.”
That investigation has finally led Nintendo to officially file suit against Pocketpair, as many predicted nearly 8 months ago.
No stranger to throwing legal Poké Balls
This is far from the first time Nintendo has flexed its legal muscles and instances like this come with the territory, as it’s one of the oldest and biggest video game companies in the world.
Nintendo famously sued video rental chain Blockbuster for copyright infringement after it photocopied game manuals for rental games that were missing guides. It has issued so many cease-and-desist orders to fan-made games that hobbyist developers now don’t even release 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’re at all familiar with Pokémon, one glance at Palworld’s creatures is enough to see that Pocketpair may have borrowed a little too much from the monster-catching monarch. However, Palworld is also a third-person action-adventure survival game, complete with combat, exploration, and base-building – and vastly 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 took this long for the lawsuit to materialize. Palworld’s concurrent player numbers now generally hover between 15 to 30K per day, down significantly versus its launch-month high of over 2 million – so Nintendo can now at least tackle Pocketpair without millions of fans rallying in protest.