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Palworld maker vows to fight Nintendo lawsuit on behalf of fans and indie developers (www.eurogamer.net)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 55 points 2 years ago (14 children)

"Multiple patents"

Specifies none

Off to a great start, I see. I know that actual game mechanics cannot be patented or copyrighted (the same principle applies to non digital games), so I'm really curious to what these patents are.

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  • [–] 37 points 2 years ago* (4 children)

    Someone linked a list of all the patents Pokemon Company specifically holds and the very first one was "creature breeding based on good sleep habits."

    1. How does that even get a patent?
    2. What the fuck iteration of Pokemon requires you to have good sleep habits to breed your pokemon? 🤨
    3. Does it actually help you sleep? 🤔 I might need to start breeding pokemon...
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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Game mechanics can be patented. It's stupid, but things such as "loading screen mini games" and "overhead arrows pointing to your objective" have been patented. The second I believe even got enforced once.

    I think these kind of things have been getting approved less and less, but I wouldn't be surprised if "balls that contain monsters" was patented back in the early days too.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    The game during loading screen isn't a "game mechanic" per se, which is why I think it was patented back then. Completely ass backwards that it could be patented, but there's that.

    As for the overhead arrow for navigation, I wasn't aware of that one. Was that from EA? I think it can be argued that's not a "game mechanic" either, because it's not "an essential component of the game"

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It was crazy taxi and no other game could use the mechanic. And telling you where to go is pretty darn important to a lot of games

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    Interesting... The Wikipedia page for Crazy Taxi talks about their lawsuit with Simpsons Road Rage in 2001, for using the overhead arrow among other complaints. But makes no mention at all of Midnight Club, who by 2005 when I got Midnight Club 3 DUB Edition was using that same overhead arrow for in-race directions. I don't see screenshots of Midnight Club 1 or 2 having the arrow but I can guarantee from personal experience that MC3:DUB did have them. I wonder what happened in those four years that made Rockstar not afraid to use that mechanic, especially as this section on the Crazy Taxi page states

    The case, Sega of America, Inc. v. Fox Interactive, et al., was settled in private for an unknown amount. The 138 patent is considered to be one of the most important patents in video game development.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    You’ve mixed copyright and patents together and confused yourself a bit. Game mechanics cannot be copyrighted, but they can be patented. Some game component designs can be copyrighted as well, and even trademarked.

    There are many, many, many game mechanics and features which have been patented, such as in-game chat, minigames on loading screens, arrow pointing to destination, and so on. Game studios have to license those features from the patent holders if they wish to use them.

    Some random company even owns a patent for the concept of sending and receiving email on a mobile device. The entire system is a fucking joke.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    There is an era of patents from the late 90s through the early-mid-00s that were insanely vague and rarely stand up to scrutiny, but most are expiring at this point, if they haven't already. Generally, though, patents are not granted on "concepts" but on implementations. That's a sometimes ambiguous line, but that's a fundamental principle of modern patents.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago*

    "Method for releasing 927 iterations of the same stale game across multiple platform generations."

    It can't possibly be for "Method of splitting one complete game into two mutually exclusive cartridges with separate rosters to entice whales to buy two copies," because if it were they'd have already sued Capcom 15 years ago.

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