It honestly feels like a very strange world where Palworld isn't investigated by Pokemon for infringement, but DnD is investigated by Nexon. Granted, I don't think either claim has validity.

[–] chaorace@lemmy.sdf.org 17 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

It's a pretty different situation under closer examination. The DnD developers are ex-Nexon employees and they (allegedly) pitched the idea internally before deciding to leave and take the idea with them.

Nexon thought that they had a legal leg to stand on because of how IP laws work (i.e.: employee ideas on company time are company IP). Perhaps more importantly; they probably felt a need to retaliate in order to send a message to other employees who might want to try something similar.

Palworld, on the other hand, is made by a team with no ties whatsoever to GameFreak. If Pokemon were a younger franchise they might possibly have a patent case of some kind, but even the 3D games go back almost 24 years now.

[–] Halosheep@lemm.ee 2 points 9 months ago

It's my understanding that they were in fact working on a very similar game at Nexon that was canceled and will never be released. There's even leaked footage of the game out there.

[–] Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Palworld has no former employees of gamefreak and is a completely different game than Pokemon and a completely different genre. Some of the monsters look kind of similiar to pokemon but they arent copies.

[–] Sheeple@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Honestly, all Palworld has to do is change a few models and they'd be out of the hot water. I do have to say though the few models that are noteworthy are HIGHLY problematic to a point of "X pokemon but color swapped"

[–] PrettyLights@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

And Pokémon did it to Dragon Quest.

There was an image of a Pokémon mesh or framework being very similar to a Pal's, but the author didn't mention they manipulated the size and perspective to make them look closer but other users noticed.

[–] Phegan@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

The palworld devs never worked on Pokemon. The dark and darker devs were, allegedly, employees of Nexon working on a similar game. It's completely different

[–] PrettyLights@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

The DnD claim has a lot of validity, as a fan of DnD. Have you looked into it much?

The DnD devs are accused of working on Nexons game, stealing source code, leaving nexon, and buying the same assets Nexon used to rapidly build DnD from p3's ashes. The main leader who quit nexon directly poached from the p3 team to build the clone game as well.

I'm no Korean law expert, but there's something worth looking into there.

Palworld just has a similar art style, and the idea of catching monsters in balls. There's a lot more mechanics to palworld than Pokémon has, whereas DnD was actually P3 but made by a new team.

[–] drislands@lemmy.world -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

But Palworld is being investigated.

[–] Katana314@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The announcement they made seemed more like a statement of awareness than any foreboding of litigation. They already filed a takedown more specifically for the mod that changes to Pokemon models.

[–] CalicoJack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 9 months ago

And knowing how hawkish their lawyers are, they've probably had their eyes on Palworld since it was announced anyway. If there was anything actionable, they would have jumped on it already.