When Nintendo and The Pokemon Company announced a lawsuit against Palworld and Pocketpair last September, a lot of people were taken aback. It seems that no one was more surprised by the announcement than the developers. Pocketpair global community manager John Buckley spoke briefly about the lawsuit at this year’s Game Developers Conference (via PC Gamer), claiming that the company “did legal checks before Palworld released and they were all cleared in Japan.” That seems to line up with what the company said last year, when Pocketpair initially said it was unaware of what patents it was accused of infringing upon.
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Buckley went on to say that the lawsuit seemed to have a heavy impact on the team. The announcement came right before last year’s Tokyo Game Show, casting a shadow over what would have otherwise been an exciting time for Pocketpair. The game had seen a massive launch earlier that year, and the company was hoping to build on its momentum with the long-awaited announcement of a version for PlayStation 5.
“Pretty much everyone at Pocketpair is a huge fan, so it was a very depressing day, everyone heads down and walking in the rain,” said Buckley. “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.”
While Pocketpair wasn’t aware of the patents behind the lawsuit at first, it’s pretty clear things have changed since then. One of the patents involves the use of Poke Balls to catch Pokemon. The lawsuit alleges that the game’s Pal Spheres were far too similar. Interestingly enough, Pocketpair made a change to this aspect of Palworld last December, seemingly in an attempt to satisfy this part of the lawsuit. It remains to be seen whether the game will see other changes as a result, and if those will satisfy Nintendo and The Pokemon Company. While tensions from the lawsuit remain high, it’s possible things could be improving; Pocketpair released its first game on Nintendo Switch earlier this year. It’s not Palworld, but the fact that Pocketpair and Nintendo are willing to work together could be a good sign.
RELATED: A Pokemon vs. Palworld Timeline Leading Up to the Lawsuit
In that same speech at GDC, Buckley also talked about some of the reception after the game was released, stating that “very few companies could survive a post-Palworld situation like we did.” In the days up to and immediately following that launch, many Pokemon fans accused the developers of directly plagiarizing designs from the franchise, drawing comparisons between Pokemon like Clodsire and Pals such as Dumud. However, it’s worth noting that the current lawsuit only relates to patents, and not the actual character designs.
How do you think the Palworld lawsuit will play out? Do you think the situation between the 3 companies can be resolved amicably? Share your thoughts with me directly on Bluesky at @Marcdachamp, or on Instagram at @Dachampgaming!
