I just found out Nintendo and The Pokemon Company are suing Pocketpair (Palworld). This was kind of expected, but what was not expected was that they would do it over patent infringement.
I had no clue this was even a thing, but it turns out mechanics like the Nemesis System in Shadow of Mordor and the Objective Arrow in Crazy Taxi are also patented.
How do we have entire genres made of games with such similar and obviously inspired mechanics.
Could Live Service and loot boxes be patented as well? Asking partly as a joke, but considering how valuable some companies think these ideas are I am also asking out of confusion and ignorance.
In: Technology
Anything from games over around 20 years old is safe because that’s how long patents last.
Anything from a game who didn’t patent the ideas is safe because that game becomes prior art and other people aren’t allowed to patent stuff that already exists (not that this always stops them, but the older game can be used as defense in court).
So for just the idea of a “live service” or “loot box” those can’t be patented in a general sense because they already exist.
There are two big reasons we aren’t in a giant patent bitchfest in the gaming industry.
One is that a lot of stuff is so old that patents have expired. A lot even goes back to before video games with pencil and paper RPGs. Gaining experience, defeating enemies, collecting rewards, progressing a narrative story, embarking on quests, traveling to new destinations, interacting with NPCs, all of that is so old that it’s free for anyone to use or evolve on. The patent system also requires new inventions be non-obvious, which means building little pieces onto existing stuff generally doesn’t qualify for new patents.
The other thing holding up the gaming industry is that patents need to be net new. You can’t see something unpatented in one game, slap yours together real quick and create a patent on it. A lot of stuff was invented without being patented, often because it’s small independent studios that don’t have the time or resources to patent. Those inventions are open for all to use.
On top of everything stated here already, patenting is a very complicated and expensive process. It is not something you just get automatically for making a thing. For this reason, very few game mechanics are even attempted to be patented.
Mechanics get really tricky and this will be a crazy lawsuit if both sides go to town defending this.
If it gets patented, then that mechanic doesn’t get used. Thankfully most of the industry aren’t assholes so it doesn’t happen most of the time.
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