With the implementation of Patch v0.5.5 this week, we must make yet another compromise. From this patch onward, gliding will be performed using a glider rather than with Pals. Pals in the player’s team will still provide passive buffs to gliding, but players will now need to have a glider in their inventory in order to glide.
How lame. Japan needs to fix its patent laws, it’s ridiculous Nintendo owns the simple concept of using an animal to fly.
Console_Modder@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
This lawsuit is so stupid. In my opinion, patenting, copyrighting, or trademarking concepts or mechanics in video games shouldn’t be allowed at all. The nemesis system in the Shadow of Mordor games was so cool, but we’re never going to see anything like it again. Warner went through the trouble to copyright (or something idk I’m not a lawyer) that system, and then let the series die out.
I’m waiting to see the headlines that any other games with a shooty thing that goes bang is illegal, and the concept of shooting a gun in a video game is going to be owned by either Rockstar/Take Two or the collective mob of Call of Duty developers. If the world is gonna get that stupid, I got my fingers crossed that Bubsy 3D owns the rights to jumping
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’m unconvinced that the Nemesis system would have worked well in too many other settings, but one game patent that had a tangible effect on the industry was Bandai-Namco’s patent on loading screen mini games. Remember how you could make the Soul Calibur II characters yell stuff while the match loaded? Funny that we didn’t see it again until Street Fighter 6, isn’t it? Conveniently after a patent would have expired. We went through an entire era of games with load times that could have benefited from mini games, and by the time the patent expired, we had largely come up with ways to get rid of load screens altogether.
CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Well saying the nemesis system wouldn’t have worked well in other games is almost assuming that it wouldn’t be changed or evolved to fit other genres. People forget that the real damage some patents/copyrights do is not in their explicit existence, it’s the sphere of influence they exert on related concepts entirely. We weren’t just robbed of the nemesis system, we were robbed of anything even slightly resembling it.
And I feel like once you understand that you realize it can be adapted to greater things. Spider Man games could have used it. Assassins creed would have been an amazing place for experimentation with those ideas. Could be adapted to Star Wars games, dragons dogma, yakuza, borderlands. And it doesn’t need to be a central focus of these games like it was with the WB games. But even the concept of having enemies that kill you be leveled up in some way is now tainted.
SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The tried to patent fucking MOUNTS. Someone get square and blizzard on the sue-train and ream Nintendo a new one.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
Who the hell in their right mind would want to buy a switch after seeing this?
Lojcs@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Iirc sony has a patent on an input device having two separate data streams. It seems you write the most general thing you can on patents and patent offices don’t care
Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Amazon has a patent on the “one click purchase” button…
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Unfortunately, at least in the US (and from the sound of it, probably Japan), the patent office has the viewpoint of ‘patent everything and let the courts sort them out.’ The courts, on the other hand, defer to the patent office because ‘it’s they’re job so they must know what they’re doing.’
CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
It’s not allowed at all in board games. There’s a known issue that someone could completly copy the mechanics of a board game, and as long as they don’t copy the art or the exact text of the rulebook there is no legal means to stop it.
Boardgamers are aware of this, and agree that it is better for development of future games than if someone could own the idea of “rolling a dice”, so if knockoffs do come around they tend to quickly get called out and not purchased.
I don’t know how videogames managed to get different rules.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 1 day ago
That’s probably Richard Garfield’s fault for setting precedent with his collectable card game patent.
ICastFist@programming.dev 1 day ago
It’s the using a creature to glide that’s the specific problem this time. Not the “using a creature” per se, but “pressing a button to instantly summon a non-player-controlled game-creature to allow for gliding, which is instantly dismissed once the player touches the ground” or something like that in the patent
NightFantom@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
Which is equally insane, no?
Caesium@lemmy.world 1 day ago
it’s even more stupid because that’s not how the mount works in Pokémon anyway
BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Introduce a .5 second delay before dismissing the creature upon touching the ground.