Australian company Pokémon Pty Ltd announced a new Pokémon game using NFTs. The developers are said to be working on it together with the Pokémon Company and Nintendo. The company is now being sued.
This game is about: The “game”, which according to an announcement on the official Pokémon Pty Ltd website should go online as early as January 2023, is called PokéWorld. It’s a smartphone game in which you can fight and catch Pokémon as usual.
In battle, your Pokémon, 4 of which are shown on the page, have various abilities that they can use against their opponents: physical attack, two elemental attacks, and an ultimate.
There are also items and talismans to equip and use. And they are all NFTs that players can buy and sell. The game’s internal currency, PokéShards, is linked to the cryptocurrency Ethereum.
Company says: They almost have a deal – but Nintendo doesn’t know about it
Taking to Twitter in November, the company claimed that they were “in contact with Nintendo” and “close to reaching an agreement with them.” But Nintendo and its subsidiary Pokémon Company didn’t seem to know about it.
Instead, they filed a lawsuit in Federal Court in Australia on December 19, 2022. The first hearing followed on December 21, with representatives from Pokémon Pty Ltd absent from the hearing.
Court decides: Game may not be published
What is the lawsuit about? Since Nintendo and Pokémon Company have no connection whatsoever to PokéWorld, the main lawsuit revolves around wanting the project to be shut down. The site is to be taken offline and any use of Nintendo’s assets ceased.
Furthermore, the Pokémon Company stated that they had no connection or contracts with the developer.
Due to the smack, the Australian court ruled directly on December 21st that Pokémon Pty Ltd cannot publish their game or sell Pokémon NFTs. In the future, the amount of the penalty for the damage incurred will also be negotiated.
Pokémon Pty Ltd was originally registered in Melbourne in 2016 but changed its name to “Kotiota Studios”. However, the address of the company headquarters given on the homepage does not seem to exist. According to documents obtained by the court, the entire construct belongs to a person named Xiaoyan Liu.
It’s not surprising, then, that various graphics on the site that claim to be part of the game appear to have been taken from Artstation and tweaked slightly so they don’t look exactly like the originals. Two examples of this are yellow and blue potions created by artists Ksenia Murzina and Olekzandr Zahorulko.
Original graphics and the modified versions on the Pokéworld page
While the PokéWorld site is still online and offering an in-browser demo of the game, it’s only a matter of time before it’s taken offline.
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