In the middle of the legal battle with Nintendo, Palworld suddenly changes an animation

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Palworld was a surprising hype title at the beginning of the year that primarily appealed to fans of survival and Pokémon. The developer of Palworld, Pocketpair, is currently in a legal dispute with Nintendo. Now they even changed an animation.

What is the current status at Palworld? Palworld was released as a kind of “Pokémon with weapons” in January 2024 and nothing was heard from Nintendo for a long time – even though the company likes to hire a lawyer and the borrowings from the in-house Pokémon were obvious to everyone. In September 2024, however, a lawsuit was filed.

The lawsuit was about allegedly violated patent rights, which probably revolve around various game mechanics and the design of the monsters. The legal dispute is still ongoing. Pocketpair is fighting the lawsuit. Now they changed an animation quite spontaneously that is strongly reminiscent of Pokémon, but Nintendo is not cited as the reason for the change.

Nintendo files lawsuit against Palworld makers!

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New animation is now reminiscent of the anime

What has been changed? Update v0.3.11 actually didn’t change much. The big main aspect is the throwing animation when the player wants to summon their own Pal. The ball is no longer thrown, but rather the Pal is summoned from the hand.

This is very reminiscent of the Pokémon anime, in which the trainers often summon their Pokémon by just holding the ball forward without throwing it. Interestingly, the catching animation remains the same so far. You still throw a palsphere at the monsters.

The reason given by Pocketpair in the official patch notes on Steam is that the Pal is guaranteed to always be summoned near the player. It is unknown whether the legal dispute will also have an impact.

However, the patents for which Nintendo is filing the lawsuit match the animation, as Forbes reports:

  • One patent involves aiming and throwing objects at a character to create a combat status.
  • Another patent is about the ability to capture wild creatures.
  • The third patent deals with riding creatures in an open world and changing these creatures.

    • Many fans of indie games are looking forward to the possible outcomes of the legal dispute because it could of course also affect other Pokémon-inspired games in the future. It could open the door for some developers to sue smaller mechanical companies. If you’re interested in monster games, a new game might also be something for you: A new game on Steam is like Pokémon, but in a dark world with monsters from horror films

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