Just yesterday, it was revealed that Nintendo, the publisher of Pokemon, joined together with The Pokemon Company to pursue a patent rights lawsuit against Palworld developer Pocketpair. The studio has since responded.
In a statement on Pocketpair’s website, it notes the lawsuit, claiming to have no idea what patents it’s violated nor has it been informed what patents were violated. It goes on to discuss that it’s a Tokyo-based indie studio with the goal to make games people find fun.
Pocketpair does say that it’s unfortunate that it now has to divide some of its staffers’ time between game development and fighting this lawsuit. It does plan on fighting this to set a precedent and that “indie game developers are not hindered or discouraged from pursuing their creative ideas.”
Palworld was always, since its reveal, brandished as “Pokemon with guns,” but also had a host of other things that made it stand out like survival, open world exploration, base building, and crafting. It’s currently in Early Access on Steam and Xbox, which it currently is sat on Game Pass, too.
Smash Jump’s Julian Barber said in his 8/10 review: “The exploration can feel challenging but fair, and the rewarding feeling you get from leveling up your base or catching a Pal with an extremely low catch rate is amazing. Even with the fairly easy late-game Pal grabbing existing and multiplayer experience not being perfect, I can confidently say that Palworld is definitely shaping up to be something special. The beautiful graphics, along with the satisfying gameplay, make for a very fun experience indeed.”
