Palworld was a surprising hype title at the beginning of the year, especially appealing to fans of survival and Pokémon. Currently, the developer of Palworld, Pocketpair, is in a legal dispute with Nintendo. Now, they even changed an animation.
What is the current status of Palworld? Palworld was released as a kind of “Pokémon with guns” in January 2024 and for a long time, not much was heard from Nintendo regarding this – and this is despite the fact that the company is known to go to court and the similarities to their own Pokémon were obvious to all. However, in September 2024, a lawsuit was filed.
The lawsuit concerns allegedly violated patent rights related to various game mechanics as well as the design of the monsters. The legal dispute is still ongoing. Pocketpair is fighting against the lawsuit. However, they spontaneously changed an animation that strongly resembles Pokémon, but do not cite Nintendo as the reason for the measure.
New animation now resembles the anime
What has changed? The update v0.3.11 didn’t actually change much. The main aspect is the throwing animation when the player wants to summon their own Pal. Now, instead of throwing a ball, the Pal is summoned directly from the player’s hand.
This strongly resembles the Pokémon anime, where trainers often summon their Pokémon by simply holding the ball forward without throwing it. Interestingly, the catching animation remains the same for now. You still throw a Pal sphere at the monsters.
Pocketpair cites in the official patch notes on Steam that this way the Pal is guaranteed to be summoned close to the player. Whether the legal dispute has any influence on this is unknown.
The patents for which Nintendo is filing the lawsuit correspond to the animation, as Forbes reports:
- One patent concerns the aiming and throwing of objects towards a character, which creates a combat status.
- Another patent deals with the ability to catch wild creatures.
- The third patent is about riding creatures in an open world and switching between these creatures.
Many fans of indie games are eagerly watching the potential outcomes of the legal dispute, as it could also affect other Pokémon-inspired games in the future. Some developers could find themselves facing lawsuits from smaller companies over mechanics. If you’re interested in monster games, there might be a new game for you: A new game on Steam is like Pokémon, but set in a dark world with monsters from horror movies
