The ability to summon a character and letting it fight another is a core staple in many video games over the years from JRPGs to the Pokemon franchise and lots in-between. Now it has been revealed that Nintendo and The Pokemon Company have recently been granted a patent in the United States that covers just this, leading many on social media to utter disbelief that such a common mechanic has now been patented by Nintendo and The Pokemon Company. With Games Fray stating that “The ‘397 patent poses a fundamental threat to creativity and innovation in the games industry. That question is not specific to Palworld, but to a large number of games that already have that mechanic as well as future releases that will have it.”
US: Nintendo and Pokemon Company receive patent on summoning a character and letting it fight another
stay classy, pokemon
Someone ought to let Wizards of the Coast’s lawyers know about this. Summoning creatures to fight for you has been a game mechanic in D&D for longer than Nintendo has made video games.
It is only applicable to video game versions of this mechanic, though I suppose that could impact such versions of D&D
Nintendo and Pokemon are Scum for this along with many other things they’ve tried to get Patents to in the past that entity should have. They’d patten running and jumping in a video game if they could. We need to stop ignoring and isolating all the things Nintendo does like this and see the bigger picture.
This is really really like the most bad that it can be bad. I always have supported Nintendo but I hope like the worst for the company due to this. They deserve to rot. Not the developers are the employees who are human, but the ones who make things like this happen
I don’t know how they could possibly enforce this patent with the literal thousands of examples from other games that already used those mechanics for literal decades, I hope this stunt ends up backfiring hard on Nintendo and see if they stop pulling nonsense like this.
People getting panicked in the comments. Nintendo aren’t going to go after every game that does this. They’re just using it as leverage against Palworld specifically, along with probably future Pokémon clones. It’s not a good thing (quite bizarre actually) but still not as bad as it may seem
“They will not go after every game that does it”
yeah only creature capturing games that get too popular don’t worry nothing serious. as long as you make one that flops you’re in the clear!!!
How do you know that things won’t change in a few years when positions change? All we need for this to become a hellscape is for Nintendo to get people who will bring people to court over any game that has a character summoning something and have them battle. It’s also too vague. You can have a villain like Maleficent “summon” her goons and order them to attack people like she did in the movie, and Nintendo can say “this violates our patent, we’re taking you to court”. They never should’ve been entertained with this patent in the first place. They should’ve been laughed out the court.
I hope pocket pair can get good lawyers like Valefor (FF10) and Stardust Dragon (Yugioh 5d’s) had. I have treasured memories with Yugioh and Final Fantasy 10.
So, just to make sure, this is the first official bogus patent, right? You know, the category of patents that are legally acceptable to ignore? Cool, just double-checking
They somehow made me root for Palworld, A game that I never played cause it looks awful.
I finally played through Palworld. At first glance it looks like a Pokémon clone but it really isn’t. It honnestly feels a lot more like breath of the wild in ways in my opinion.
How could it be “a fundamental threat to creativity and innovation” if it’s already been used countless times before?
I’m not entirely sure if this is a good idea or bad because I seen most games done it before in other platforms.
Trash. They’d rather eliminate competition through the courts than to focus on their own product. Maybe put your energy towards making a game that runs properly and looks like it was made this decade.
Reminds me of when LeBron tried to trademark “Taco Tuesday”. Like, so out of touch.
Why is it even legal for this to happen? Summoning characters and letting it fight another is such a vague description and is a very common trope. This is like patenting a single word like “frozen”. So stupid, courts shouldn’t be allowing this.
There has to be more to this. There’s no way they can patent such general and universal mechanic