Palworld vs Nintendo: Lawsuit Could End Well for Pocketpair

In less than a month, on July 10, Palworld will finally conclude its early access period to transition to patch 1.0, with the game's largest update ever. Despite its enormous and unexpected success, the journey of this monster tamer has been anything but smooth, especially due to the lawsuit filed by Nintendo, which jeopardized the very existence of the project. However, the legal dispute could conclude almost painlessly.

A Mini Compensation for Nintendo?

The Tokyo District Court will hold a hearing on the case on October 1 and will rule on November 9, but according to Games Fray, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company might receive at most around 5 million Yen (just under €27,000 at the current exchange rate), a sum that would likely not even cover legal costs. This is because the damage suffered by the house of Mario would be extremely limited.

Meanwhile, it should be noted that the patents on which Nintendo's claims were based have been seriously called into question and were not even released at the time of Palworld's launch (January 2024). Secondly, Palworld has been modified to avoid the risk of violating alleged intellectual property, thereby eliminating the most controversial elements, starting with the throwing of Pal Spheres, which closely resembled that of Poké Balls.

Consequently, if there was a violation, it would only concern past versions of Palworld and not the current one: the damage to Nintendo would be limited to a short period of time and would concern a very small portion of sales, specifically those in Japan. For these reasons, Games Fray speculates that the damages owed by Pocketpair, if any, will be very modest. We just have to wait until November 9 to find out.