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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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[–] 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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