this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2026
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This whole thing is silly.
Palword isn't a Pokemon competitor. It's an Ark/Valheim-like on PC; it has nothing to do with the Switch, it's nothing like Pokopia or most Pokemon games. Nintendo doesn't sell PC games!
This would be akin to Skyrim being an Xbox exclusive, and BGS suing Stardew Valley for "dynamic NPCs" on the Switch version.
...Why? It's not a competitor at all; what's the business motivation?
Palworld marketing certainly leaned into the controversy, but honestly Nintendo is stupid for starting this, even from a pure business perspective.
I think it's silly to think that this has nothing to do with pokemon. Palworld basically came out of nowhere and made the pokemon game a lot of people have been asking for. I haven't played a Pokémon game in years because they felt held back from modern game design.
I'll admit it has similarities to Ark, but it's a lot more PvE and approachable, not to mention the creature design and capture mechanics.
Yeah in hindsight I worded that a bit extremely.
It is basically Valheim with creatures though, its similar to many survival crafters (albeit well done).
And I'm speaking more from a "strict" business perspective here. Palworld is obviously courting Pokemon fans, but from Nintendo's perspective, Palworld is in a different market; I doubt they're actually losing any sales of Pokemon games to Palworld.
Many of the designs are blatant ripoffs of specific pokemon. Here are a few examples
Nintendo went after patent angle in court because it's easier than proving the ripoffs are a copyright violation. But make no mistake, the ripoffs are the primary reason for the legal action. They really got under Nintendo's skin.
It's not like Pokemon's designs are unique either.
They didn't go that route because they also did the same shit. And that definitely wouldn't be a viable defense in court.
These dont look similar at all, beyond the fact they are fantisized depictions of the same things. Like, its obvious both zubat and its DQ "equivalent" are depictions of bats, but you wouldnt mistake one for the other; the designs highlight completely different features and are often in pretty different colors. Thats not the case for the palworld designs, at least not quite a few of them
A lot of Pokemon are generic tropes, but some really are blatant ripoffs. I think it's pretty scummy of Palworld, actually.
But.
If Nintendo don't think they can prove a copyright violation, they shouldn't try to get them with some tangential thing, especially those crazy software patents of all things.
I just googled and there are over 1000 pokemon. At some point it's easier to rip off a design than not. They themselves seem to struggle to make new pokemon that don't look like absolute shit.