Nintendo DMCAs ‘Palworld’ Mod That Puts Actual Pokémon Into The Game

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 Pokemon, 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 Pokemon and its related video games, is not a direct copy of the actual expression that is the Pokemon Company's games. Now, as we mentioned in that last post, the Pokemon 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 Pokemon IP into the game.

Nintendo has taken action against thePalworldmod that would have made thePokemonWith Guns" label much more literal. So if you were hoping to play Pocketpair's monster-taming survival game aslong-timePokemonanime protagonist Ash Ketchumcapturing 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 wasrevealed yesterday, January 22by one of its creators, YouTuber ToastedShoes, who posted a short clip teasing the mod and afull video that went up on the channel today, January 23. However, the teaser has beenhit with a DMCA from Nintendoon X (formerly Twitter). As a result, the mod will not be made publicly available right now as previously planned, as ToastedShoeswants 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 Pokemon 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 usesPokemoncharacters may be on Nintendo's radar, Pocketpairbelieves the game itself is safe from Mario's legal teambecause 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.