Palworld developer Pocketpair has discussed the moment it discovered Nintendo had launched legal action against its Pokémon-style game.
It was “a very depressing day”, recalled Pocketpair’s global community manager John Buckley, speaking this week at GDC (thanks PCGamer).
“It changed a lot of things for us. We were just about to release the PlayStation version, we were just about to go to Tokyo Game Show, so obviously we had to scale back a little bit and hire security guards and stuff like that.”
Palworld’s stratospheric launch in January 2024, with more than two million players in 24 hours, might have tailed off throughout the year, but the launch of Nintendo’s legal action in September sent the team crashing down to earth, Buckley said.
“Pretty much everyone at Pocketpair is a huge fan,” Buckley continued, “so it was a very depressing day, everyone heads down and walking in the rain.”
Nintendo has claimed that Palworld infringes on “multiple patent rights” and is currently seeking “an injunction against infringement and compensation for damages” worth 5m yen (around £26k).
The patents in question relate to gameplay mechanics such as throwing a Pokéball-style object to capture monsters, and other abilities to do with your creatures – such as being able to then ride them.
Pocketpair has since adjusted Palworld’s Pokéball-esque mechanics and, for now, Nintendo has not filed any further complaints – which currently are limited in scope to Palworld’s home country of Japan. Pocketpair has said it will contest the lawsuit when it hits court.
“We did legal checks before Palworld released and they were all cleared in Japan,” Buckley said. “So obviously when the lawsuit was announced we were like, ‘What?’ And we went back to the lawyers, and the lawyers contacted the courts and asked, ‘What’s going on?’ and that’s when we realised it was patents they were going for.”
In the meantime, Pocketpair continues to add to Palworld. The studio is currently building an “ending scenario” for the game, alongside an upcoming Terraria crossover.