I’m not a lawyer, so my knowledge is limited, but from what I understand, you can only make a claim for a patent infringement in the country where the company responsible for the infringement is located.
So they have this patent in Japan, but if I make a Pokémon-like game but I’m from, say, France, where this patent doesn’t exist, Nintendo can only suck it up and cope, because they don’t have a patent for this in France.
Greed. Simple as that. They only care for money. And they used to get a pass because they made good games. Not anymore.
That’s probably true in normal countries. Japanese patent office is… Less than normal if these things can happen.
Emulation exists despite Nintendo trying their best at every chance they have to destroy it. Not thanks to them.
And fan games exist only until Nintendo decides they have to be shut down. Which is frequently.
For the Nintendo future games? Well, what can I say? Again, it’s a video game company. And as Palworld and others are showing, many others can do what Nintendo does in better ways. We won’t have another mario if they close? There will be someone making a new platformer as good. There won’t be a new Pokemon? We already have better alternatives.
But if they disappear, games like Palworld will have a chance without having to risk being sued over all this crap.
Edit: Nintendo is the one hoarding these patents that then they can weaponize against competition, so yeah, if they disappear, competition will get better because they won’t have to be worried about being sued for things as dumb as putting a confirmation window after resuming a game from sleep.
But with Nintendo disappearing, how does that benefit anyone? If you don’t like Nintendo games, you can already just not play them. People buying them buy them because they like them. Them disappearing doesn’t help people who do like Nintendo games, and it doesn’t help people who don’t like Nintendo games.
They have killed tons of fan games just because they have enough money to throw at lawyers so people won’t even try to fight them.
They kill competition with these practices.
They are against emulation and game conservation while actively screwing consumers who try to legally play their games…
And the list goes on and on. They are a bad company that happens to make some good games. Those few good games are not enough to redeem them for the rest of what they do.
Edit: typo
First, they are not overprotective with their games. They are suing for patent infringement over bullshit because in Japan they own patents for things as stupid as “riding a creature in a game”. And this is what’s happening here. They are hampering progress because they want to be the only one in the monster catching genre. They can vigorously fuck off.
If Nintendo disappears, someone else will come. So many companies died and nothing happened. It’s a videogame, they’re not making life-saving devices.
If someone buys a Pokémon game now they are rarely uninformed, they are rewarding a company for their shitty behaviour. It’s not the first Pokémon and it’s not the first time Nintendo acts shitty. But their fanatics will keep defending the company no matter what. At that point, what else can you expect? It’s like buying an EA game and then crying because it’s full of micro transactions and useless dlcs, etc.
Also, yeah, if you’re uninformed and get scammed over stuff that’s been happening for years, it’s all on you. Fool me once and all that.
Nintendo even owns a patent for “riding a creature” in a game. That is such a broad concept that a normal parent system shouldn’t allow because of how broad it is. It’s just dumb. And Nintendo is taking advantage of it.
Edit: temtem is not Japanese, and any other patent office in the world will laugh at Nintendo if they tried to make a claim in their countries, but since Palworld is Japanese as Nintendo, they can make the claim there.
And still, Nintendo can’t sue for copyright (or doesn’t want to) which is interesting, because if it was such an evident rip off as everything says and the case was so clear, why wouldn’t they go that way?
There’s inspiration in the monsters, but what else? Is Pokémon an open world with survival mechanics? Can Pokémon carry weapons?
The problem is still the fact that Nintendo has these patents. That is the issue here. I wouldn’t argue if they made a copyright claim, but they are doing a scummy thing and they are setting a precedent that’s dangerous. Basically they’re telling a new player in Japanese business “hey, we’re the big fish, we own the place, you don’t have business here, go away”.
From the article:
They [Colopl] have, I think, almost 2,000 [employees], nobody but knows them outside Japan but they had a famous mobile game called White Cat Project, not copying Mario, not copying Pokémon, not copying Zelda, nothing at all. Nintendo brought forward six patents […]
One of the patents was for a confirmation screen after sleep mode. […]
And they had five other ones, including one for isometric, pseudo, 3D games, when the character is hidden behind the tree, the game forms a shadow, so you have a kind of sense for where the character is, even though you don’t see the character clearly. Nintendo has a patent on that, […]
Yeah, they are abusing the patent system. And yes, they potentially have a case against basically any game. This is what we should be talking about.
Yeah but that’s not the point.
The point is Nintendo being able to parent troll any threat they see because the Japanese patent system is so dumb and rotten that they are allowed to patent something as stupid as a confirmation window to resume a game.
That is the real problem here. Nintendo is being shitty and has a dangerous capability to literally kill any game they don’t like.
That’s all that matters. They can (and will, let’s not pretend they are a charity) sue potentially any competitors because of this. Nintendo is not a good company and doesn’t act in good will. They want money, and they will do whatever to get more. Shutting down a fan game by simply saying “I have more money than you so even if you’re not doing anything wrong, you can’t afford defending against me” or patent trolling any game that has even a simple confirmation window.
Actually that’s what they are going after. That’s why they are filing a patent infringement and not a copyright infringement cause.
You haven’t read the article, have you?
The problem is not the pals looking like Pokémon. The problem is that Nintendo has an enormous amount of software patents for stuff as dumb as “a confirmation pop-up window after resuming a game from sleep”.
They could literally sue any videogame in the world if they wanted because of their patent trolling in software. And that is dangerous for everyone. They can sue you for patent infringement if you make a game where the players catch a creature with a sphere. Because yeah, they patented that.
Counter counterpoint Ps5 pro is modern hardware. Switch internals were outdated at launch and they still cost the same as 7 years ago.
Ps: I do believe Ps5 pro is stupidly overpriced, but that doesn’t mean Switch isn’t.
Edit: typo
Mario Odyssey is just Mario 64-2. New gimmicks on a traditional platformer. Not saying that it’s bad, but it’s not a masterpiece either.
Breath of the wild, sure. One of the greatest games made by Nintendo, it redefined the open world genre, but tears of the kingdom is just more of the same, now with cars.
They offer something valuable? Sure… Sometimes they do something good, but the amount of bullshit they bring the videogames world is so big that any good thing they make is strongly eclipsed by the rest of what they do.
There’s no doubt they’ve created some very good games in the past. Some of their games have become the standard in their genre, and some others have created a new genre even.
But that can’t justify their shitty behavior. Especially now that they only create crap. Sure, breath of the wild was huge, made some incredible things, etc. But what else? Mario Odyssey is just mario 64 v.2, animal crossing? Let’s not talk about that shit, and I think Pokémon doesn’t even deserve to be mentioned.
Well, I mean, if they are that rich, I’m partial to thinking that it’s their fanatics’ fault buying every shit they release. If a Pokémon game, being as bad as they are, keeps selling in the millions, nobody but their customers is to blame.
Nintendo is one of the worst companies in the videogames world. They need to fail, and I really hope this next switch becomes something worse than WiiU and they disappear from the world.
However, they won’t. Their fanatics won’t let them. So I can only hope they double down in their anti consumer behaviour to screw as many customers as they can. Because honestly? If after all these years you keep buying a Pokémon game, you deserve to be scammed and abused as a customer.
I’m sorry but I don’t understand the correlation.
I mean, let’s, for a brief instant, accept that immigrants are eating pets. For a moment, let’s consider that the nonsense claimed is true and some people are eating dogs or cats.
What are you achieving by making false bomb threats? What’s the logic behind that? What are you solving by calling to say there’s a bomb in the school? Will these threats stop people from eating cats? Will they solve the “problem” in any way?
They are pro-life, just not your life.
I love how they gave a TL;DR right at the beginning of the article, it made me stay and read the rest out of respect for the author.
Google lives of the ads (among the things), of course a browser they develop is going to screw the add-ons that block ads. Solution: avoid google if you want an ad-free internet.
Edit: typo