Update, Sept. 19: Pocketpair has now responded to Nintendo’s lawsuit.
Nintendo, alongside The Pokémon Company, has officially filed a lawsuit against Palworld’s developer Pocketpair many have expected since the indie game launched in January.
Pocketpair’s in deep water after Nintendo and The Pokémon Company finally took legal action against the Palworld developer by filing a patent infringement lawsuit on Sept. 18. “This lawsuit seeks an injunction against infringement and compensation for damages on the grounds that Palworld, a game developed and released by the Defendant, infringes multiple patent rights,” Nintendo announced in a short statement shared on Sept. 18.
This comes eight months after Palworld released. Despite the game’s massive success, many gamers could not overlook the strong resemblance between certain Pals and Pokémon, calling it out right from the start. For example, one of the biggest offenders in Palworld is Verdash, who looks like a fusion of two Pokémon: Gen VIII Fire Starter Cinderace and the Grass Eeveelution, Leafeon.
Interestingly, Eevee and its evolutions seemed to be a recurring theme among other Palworld Pal designs like Cremis, who looks like a lighter and fluffier Eevee, and Foxcicle, who fans accuse of being a “lazy” fusion of Glaceon and Ninetales. And yes, there are plenty of other Pals that could pass as Pokémon or combinations, and it got to the point where players said they couldn’t defend the designs. Not to mention, Pocketpair’s CEO Takuro Mizobe was also recently put on blast for making comments about AI and alluding to how it can be used to avoid copyright issues.
On the flip side, Palworld very quickly grew a dedicated fanbase that continues to show its support despite the copycat accusations. “This makes me want to go back and play Palworld,” one fan commented in response to the lawsuit news. Other gamers took the opportunity to criticize Nintendo and Game Freak, saying: “Nintendo should put those resources in [Game Freak] instead to make better Pokémon games because they haven’t made a good game in 10 years.” Palworld enjoyers might’ve been able to overlook the similarities to Pokémon and just enjoy the game up until this point, but now it’s pretty hard to ignore with all eyes on this new legal battle.
The Pokémon Company previously announced in January it would be investigating Palworld for possible infringement, and now it’s finally come to a lawsuit. It’s unclear how this will affect Pocketpair and Palworld moving forward, but a giant company like Nintendo isn’t someone you’d want to go to war with in court. The latter sounds committed to cracking down on other Pokémon lookalikes beyond Palworld if necessary.
“Nintendo will continue to take necessary actions against any infringement of its intellectual property rights including the Nintendo brand, to protect the intellectual properties it has worked hard to establish over the years,” the company stated today.
At the time of writing, Pocketpair has yet to respond to the Nintendo lawsuit.
