Nintendo DMCAs ‘Palworld’ Mod That Puts Actual Pokémon Into The Game (original) (raw)

from the highlighting-my-point dept

Just days ago, we were talking about the release of PC game Palworld, an open-world monster collecting game that has often been described as “Pokémon, but with guns.” The point of my post was that this game served as a great example of the idea/expression dichotomy in practice. This game, whatever similarities it may have in concept or otherwise to Pokémon and its related video games, is not a direct copy of the actual expression that is the Pokémon Company’s games. Now, as we mentioned in that last post, the Pokémon Company is making noises about reviewing the game to see if it wants to take action. And perhaps it will, but based on everything I’ve seen any such action should fail on the merits, at least in the United States.

And if I wanted to highlight the point illustrated in that first post, I probably couldn’t have asked for a better real world event than Nintendo DMCAing a mod for Palworld that puts actual Pokémon IP into the game.

Nintendo has taken action against the Palworld mod that would have made the “Pokémon With Guns” label much more literal. So if you were hoping to play Pocketpair’s monster-taming survival game as long-time Pokémon anime protagonist Ash Ketchum capturing and enslaving Game Freak’s monsters, you might want to temper your expectations, as the mod seems to be in a more dubious position.

The mod was revealed yesterday, January 22 by one of its creators, YouTuber ToastedShoes, who posted a short clip teasing the mod and a full video that went up on the channel today, January 23. However, the teaser has been hit with a DMCA from Nintendo on X (formerly Twitter). As a result, the mod will not be made publicly available right now as previously planned, as ToastedShoes wants to “tread lightly for the time being.”

Now, I could also pivot to suggesting that there is absolutely no need for Nintendo to take even this action. I refuse to believe that there is some massive group out there that would be out buying Nintendo’s Pokémon games, or hardware, but now won’t due to the existence of this one mod for this one game. That’s just not how this works.

But the fact is that Nintendo is within its rights when it comes to copyright and this particular mod. And for the exact reason why I believe it wouldn’t be within those rights if it took legal action against Palworld in general. The mod injects Nintendo’s expression into the game, which shares only idea similarities with Nintendo’s games.

While the mod that actually uses Pokémon characters may be on Nintendo’s radar, Pocketpair believes the game itself is safe from Mario’s legal team because it doesn’t explicitly use any copyrighted characters.

I agree. I won’t be surprised if Nintendo actually ends up suing Pocketpair over the game, but I will be surprised if any legal action was successful.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, mod, palworld, pokemon, video games
Companies: nintendo, pocketpair, pokemon company