Bad Sign: Pocketpair Updates ‘Palworld’ By Nixxing Pal Spheres

We’re still waiting for the lawsuit in Japan between Nintendo, The Pokémon Co., and Pocketpair to get rolling, but that doesn’t keep the dispute out of the news. The patent lawsuit, itself a surprise as everyone thought it would be a copyright gambit that Nintendo would try, centers around several patents that all relate to familiar video game gameplay mechanics. That mostly consists of the transition process between riding around or dismounting characters in an open world (absurd that this is a patent) and throwing an object to catch a creature (also absurd that this is a patent). As I detailed in our last post on the subject, I would argue, and would want Pocketpair to argue, that there are all kinds of prior art for these mechanics. And while I’m no expert in Japanese patent law, non-inventive things like this generally don’t deserve patents.

While Nintendo and The Pokémon Co. are obviously large entities with impressive legal war chests to boot, I had hoped that the success of Palworld would be such that Pocketpair had the resources to fight this out in Japanese courts. And while there’s still a chance that might happen, it’s a bit worrying to learn that the company updated the game recently, with that update removing the Pal Sphere mechanic that Nintendo is suing over.

Palworld version 0.3.11 featured changes to Pal Spheres, the palm-sized, spherical devices players use to capture and summon their Pals. The changes were first spotted by Niche Gamer, but do appear to be reflected in Palworld’s patch notes via Steam: “Changed the behaviour of summoning player-owned Pals so that they are always summoned near the player.”

In practice, what that means is that when a player summons a Pal, they no longer do so by throwing the Pal Sphere wherever they want them to appear. Instead, the Pal will simply pop up directly next to the player, and can then be commanded to attack other Pals, gather resources, et cetera. While it doesn’t fundamentally change the way the game works, it does have a palpable effect on one of its core mechanics, a change that has some players concerned.

As to why this change to a core mechanic was made, nobody at the publisher has offered any reasoning, leaving everyone instead to speculate. But come on. I can’t think of a single reason, even a hair-brained one, to make this change that doesn’t redound back to Pocketpair is looking to roll over and show its belly on the lawsuit, but I sure don’t think it helps its case if it plan to fight this out in court.

And fight it out it should, I believe. The idea that we are going to set a precedent for Nintendo and The Pokémon Co. to wield these patents for, again, fairly banal game mechanics is not good for the larger industry in Japan.

Look, we all knew that something like this was bound to happen eventually. Palworld was always playing with fire, and Nintendo is notoriously litigious. But regardless of where you land on the accusations levied against Palworld, it’s easy to see how software patent infringement claims could be taken too far. Most infamously, Namco once held a patent on loading screen mini-games that prevented almost any kind of interactivity during these periods of downtime. That patent expired in 2015, but even now, loading screen mini-games still haven’t made the resurgence they deserve.

Something similar could happen as a result of this lawsuit. Beginning combat by aiming and firing with a targeting reticle is all too common a mechanic. To see that disappear entirely would be a huge blow to open-world games with optional combat. There may be more specifics to Nintendo’s patent, and there may be an entirely different reason for the update, but at this point, it’s impossible to say exactly what’s going on behind the scenes. Still, if the rumors are true, this lawsuit could be harmful not only to Palworld specifically, but to the video game industry in general.

So, back to the waiting game, I suppose. We’ll have to see if this is in fact an indication that Pocketpair doesn’t want to fight this in court, or if this portends something else.