Palworld went into Early Access in January 2024. Parallels to Nintendo’s Pokémon were quickly drawn. Six months ago, the company wanted to investigate a lawsuit. Now a Palworld developer has given an update.
Why would Nintendo want to sue Palworld? Palworld is a survival game in which you can build and catch cute creatures called Pals. These look very similar to Nintendo’s well-known Pokémon in terms of design. You also need Pal Spheres to catch them, which look a lot like Nintendo’s Poké Balls.
Pal designs have also been compared to Pokémon on social media. This post was published on Reddit, among others.
Nintendo is also known as a company that is quick to resort to litigation as a means of choice. Here are a few examples:
Nintendo sued an emulator for Switch games. They also took legal action against an artist who collected money for hand-painted guides. They blocked the video of a YouTuber who discovered a secret Zelda game. As of April 2023, Nintendo had even blocked 28 videos with 55 million views from another YouTuber.
Given the high similarity between Palworld and Pokémon, the idea of a copyright lawsuit is not far-fetched for many. In fact, Nintendo released a statement on the matter in January 2024:
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What does the developer say? In an interview with Game File, the lead creator of Palworld, akuro Mizobe, talked about the game. Among other things, he asked whether Nintendo had contacted Palworld developer Pocket Pair.
In fact, Mizobe says: [Wir haben] heard nothing. Nintendo and the Pokémon Company have not said anything to us.
Nintendo had originally announced that it would investigate a lawsuit. Even now, about six months after the release of Palworld, nothing has happened according to the developer – contrary to the expectations of many.
In Palworld you can explore a new island with the Sakurajima update
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What was the situation in January? The topic was still being hotly debated around the game’s release. Pokémon fans were angry because Palworld had stolen their designs.
A mod was also released relatively quickly on Nexusmods that turned the Pals into their Pokémon equivalents. Nintendo quickly blocked an announcement video on YouTube and Tiktok. Nexusmods also removed it from the site and stated that they did not want to host any Pokémon mods for the game.
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Of course, it is still possible that Nintendo will sue Pocket Pair. Palworld is still live and it may take a little longer for Nintendo’s lawyers to examine the lawsuit. MeinMMO asked lawyer Christian Solmecke for an expert opinion on this topic. You can read how he assesses the situation here: Could Nintendo successfully sue the Steam hit Palword? – We ask a lawyer