Today’s guest article is written by Kyle Lantion, a fan of both games featured below, who hopes there someday might be a world where both Pals and Pokemon can live in harmony (preferably in a crossover game).

Yes, you read the title correctly. Nintendo sues Palworld, but not over the monster designs. On September 18, 2024, Nintendo and The Pokemon Company released an official statement that they would be taking Pocketpair, the developers of Palworld, to court. The company released a statement yesterday that they and their legal team will contest these allegations and conduct legal proceedings and investigations. Contrary to what most people think Nintendo would sue them over, Copyright Infringement is not among the complaints filed by Nintendo. Instead, they are bringing Pocketpair to court for Patent Infringement. What does this mean? Basically, Nintendo is suing them for the use of mechanics and gameplay they claim rightfully belong to Nintendo and The Pokemon Company. While this may seem like an open-and-shut case, many factors and possible evidence may give Nintendo more of a headache than they thought.

Nintendo Sues Palworld – The Tail of the Tape

When Palworld was first released in January earlier this year, many players thought this was another Pokemon clone. However, upon further inspection and hours of gameplay, they came to the conclusion that this was something far different than what was expected. While it has been jokingly described as “Pokemon with guns,” Palworld managed to win the hearts of many gamers in the span of a few days by presenting a unique blend of what can be described as Pokemon but a survival game. In Palworld, you use guns to capture monsters known as “Pals,” fight against other players, and build a base to survive, craft, mine, and train. Despite the initial skepticism, Palworld managed to sell eight million units and garner over two million players in the first week. They currently stand as one of the best-selling PC games on Steam, with fifteen million units sold.

Nintendo Sues Palworld – Lawsuit Pokemon Battle

While many players admit that many of the assets, mainly the Pals, look suspiciously close to that of Pokemon, both the environment and gameplay were enough to make them look in the other direction. They believed these were all minor details that could be overlooked. The game was fun for players, and the gameplay outside catching and training the monsters was nothing like Pokemon. Unfortunately for them, Nintendo did not look the other way in this case. While the lawsuit itself wasn’t unexpected (Nintendo is notorious for slinging legal disputes at anything), the contents of the lawsuit were admittedly surprising. The legal battle is still ongoing around the Pal designs and their likeness to Pokemon this time. Nintendo is suing Pocketpair for several patent infringements, although the specific patents have yet to be disclosed. This is a surprising turn of events, but we can see that Nintendo and its lawyers take a relatively safe route in this lawsuit. The company behind Palworld expressed in a public post yesterday that it’s unfortunate that they are being “forced to allocate significant time to matters unrelated to game development due to this lawsuit.”

Pokemon clones are not uncommon, and it’s expected that a game or two that looks like Pokemon will pop up, but none have been as successful as Palworld. While this case could go both ways, it’s too early to explicitly assume who has the upper hand in this battle.

And speaking of Pokemon, check out our article about their collab with 7-11!

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Pokémon Launches Collab and Promo Card with 7-Eleven! – VRSUS