Nintendo is no sweetheart on the legal front. Lawsuits surrounding video games are common. Even Nintendo sometimes gets sued.
‘Pokémon, but with guns’. That’s how the popular game Palworld is regularly described. And that description is incredibly accurate. In fact, the game looks so much like “Pokémon, but with guns” that Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against Palworld.
The creatures in Palworld look too much like Pokémons. Nintendo wants the game taken offline and is demanding a hefty sum of many millions of dollars. A tough lawsuit, but this case is nothing compared to these bizarre lawsuits surrounding video games.
Nintendo wants to shoot Pokémon-with-guns
On Sept. 18, The Pokémon Company and Nintendo jointly filed a lawsuit against Pocketpair, the creators of Palworld. Namely, Nintendo believes that the critters in Palworld are too similar to their own little monsters.
(image: Pocketpair)
That’s why Nintendo is now trying to take Pocketpair down legally. They are capitalizing on a possible patent on Pokémon things and anything even remotely resembling a Pokémon: like Palworld, that is. Indeed, Palworld has become enormously popular in a short period of time. The game is not even fully out yet but it already has over 15 million players.
That’s lost money for Nintendo. The lawsuit is still getting underway and consists of a lot of legal wrangling. Such scenes are anything but unusual in the gaming world. Ever since the first video games appeared, people have been trying to turn everything into a lawsuit.
Nintendo is pouty compared to these gaming lawsuits
Nintendo is no stranger to adversaries in the courtroom. Every so often, the company files lawsuits against people who thwart them in one way or another. Yet it is not just Nintendo that likes to make a plea to the courts.
GTA San Andreas was too sexy
Those who know GTA San Andreas well will probably be familiar with the ‘hot coffee mod’. With this mod, you could get a secret minigame in which the main character went to ‘make coffee’ with a woman….
Concerned parents and prudish gamers were very shocked by these images, even though this scene is not even in the original game. The code for this scene was in the game’s storage, but was not used in the final product. By using cheats, you could unlock it.
So basically, you were never supposed to see the scene. That didn’t stop people from filing lawsuits against Rockstar. Rockstar thought itself innocent. The judge in America only partially went along with that. The company had to pay $35 in damages to various plaintiffs. By the way, the game is also available on the Nintendo Switch, which may or may not be without hot coffee.
First game ever made in court
Video game lawsuits are literally as old as video games themselves. That’s way before Nintendo filed cases over Pokémons with guns. The first game lawsuit ever was over the game Pong, which is actually the first game ever.
(Image: Atari)
The very first video game console was the Magnavox Odyssey, invented by Ralph Baer. And Baer had a vision: table tennis, but digitally. He was so excited about introducing ping pong to the Odyssey that he showed a game concept to the founders of Atari. Just a few months later, Atari came out with Pong arcade cabinets
Baer was so adamant that Atari had swiped his idea that he filed a lawsuit. A few years later, the case was settled, but if Baer had made it to trial, Atari probably would have gone under.
Nintendo Switch could have been made better
This time it was not Nintendo that dragged people to court, but a consumer who had a bone to pick with the game company. Namely, a mother of a 10-year-old boy was not at all happy with the Nintendo Switch’s Joy-Cons.
The controllers are known for their joysticks not steering properly after heavy use. This so-called Joy-Con drift struck the mother as an expensive joke considering the price of the Nintendo Switch. She filed a case against Nintendo.
The case lasted no less than three years and in 2023, unfortunately, Nintendo was vindicated. Still, the mother managed to put the problem on the map worldwide and at least be able to cause some image damage for Nintendo. Hopefully, Nintendo will fix the problem with the Switch 2.
