After months of silence, Nintendo and The Pokemon Company are finally filing a lawsuit against Palworld
Nintendo has announced that it will sue the developer of the popular monster taming game Palworld for infringing on multiple patents.
Nintendo said in its statement: “The lawsuit seeks an injunction against the defendants and compensation for damages… In order to protect the valuable intellectual property we have built up through many years of hard work, we will continue to take appropriate measures against any infringement of our intellectual property.”
This comes nearly eight months after Palworld’s monumental launch in January, which saw over 5 million copies sold and an average Twitch audience of 147,264, with 58.3 million hours watched. But Palworld immediately drew comparisons to the third best-selling video game series of all time, thanks to the obvious similarities between its “Pals” and Pokemon. The entire gaming world expected Nintendo’s infamous legal team to come down on them quickly, and when that didn’t happen, many people assumed Palworld was safe.
While Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe attempted to head off legal trouble earlier this year by saying they had “no intention of infringing on other companies’ intellectual property rights,” it wasn’t until a few days later that Pokemon Company announced it would “initiate an investigation and take appropriate measures to address acts that infringe on intellectual property rights.”
That investigation ultimately led to Nintendo officially filing a lawsuit against Pocketpair, as many predicted almost 8 months ago.
No stranger to throwing legal Poké Balls
This isn’t the first time Nintendo has flexed its legal muscles. Such cases are par for the course, as it is one of the oldest and largest video game companies in the world.
Nintendo has sued video rental chain Blockbuster for copyright infringement after it copied game manuals for games it rented that were missing the guides. It has issued so many cease and desist orders for fan-made games that hobbyist developers now won’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 are at all familiar with Pokémon, One look at Palworld’s creatures is enough to tell that Pocketpair may have borrowed a little too much from the monster-catching monarch. But Palworld is also a third-person action-adventure survival game, complete with combat, exploration, and base-building – and quite unlike anything you’ll find in a Pokémon game.
While it’s not surprising that Nintendo is suing the developer, it is notable that it’s taken so long for the lawsuit to become a reality. Palworld’s concurrent player counts now typically hover between 15,000 and 30,000 per day, down significantly from its launch month high of over 2 million. So at least Nintendo can now take on Pocketpair without millions of fans protesting.
