Last week Nintendo sued Pocketpair and claimed the studio’s multiplayer shooter Palworld infringed on several of its patents. According to Serkan Toto, CEO of consulting firm Kantan Games, Nintendo is likely win and might “damage [Pocketpair] financially as much as it can.”
In a 404 Media interview from shortly after the lawsuit’s unveiling Toto explained that Nintendo would not take legal action against a company “without being as sure as they can that they’re going to win this. […] Even apart from the games industry, [it] has a reputation of always winning their lawsuits.”
Toto noted to 404 that the lawsuit could be considered corporate sabotage in some ways, underlined by Palworld’s newly revealed PlayStation 5 version being indefinitely delayed in Japan.
The specific patents Pocketpair is accused of violating are unclear, even to the Tokyo-based studio itself. Even so, Toto believes Nintendo will get the studio on the “highly, highly technical things,” as it previously did in 2021 with mobile developer Colpol.
Shortly after Palworld launched in January to great success, Nintendo said it would determine if it needed to take legal action. Discussions about the shooter have mainly surrounded its character designs being similar to those seen in Pokémon.
What Toto thinks pushed Nintendo’s buttons was Pocketpair teaming with Sony Music and Aniplex to expand Palworld into a multimedia franchise.
“Pocketpair wants to make a big IP out of Palworld,” he reasoned. […] I think that Nintendo just saw these guys are getting too aggressive. In that sense, Pocketpair has become a victim of its own success.”
Palworld may have lit a fire under the Japanese game industry, but that may have made Pocketpair look “too aggressive” in Nintendo’s eyes. With the lawsuit filed, Nintendo is looking at the indie team through a lens of “cold-blooded business.”
404’s full interview with Toto about the Nintendo/Pocketpair lawsuit can be read here.