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Resident Evil and Street Fighter veteran Yoshiki Okamoto, a former Capcom designer and games veteran with a broad history of over 40 years and who now serves as chairman of the Japan Game Culture Foundation, faces blowback following controversial comments regarding Palworld and developer Pocketpair.
Per IGN's translation of a Japanese-only September 27 video on Okamoto's YouTube channel (don't even bother with the terrible and useless AI auto-dub), which has 709 likes to 479 dislikes according to a YouTube plugin, the games veteran wades into the ongoing lawsuit Nintendo has filed against Pocketpair over alleged patent infringement in Palworld.
Okamoto argues Palworld "crossed a line that should not be crossed," and insists he does not "want the world to become a place where this kind of thing is acceptable."
He seems to tie his stance to the court's pending ruling, adding that "if a settlement is reached with Nintendo, then I think [Palworld] will become a game that is officially fine to play. However, it is currently a game that’s being sued so it's unacceptable."
More strongly still, he adds: "By playing the game you are supporting it, so please don’t buy it."
Later in the video, Okamoto admits he has not played Palworld himself, and stresses he has "no intention of playing the game or spending money on it."
It's an odd line to draw, and it's a somewhat difficult stance to parse. Plenty of game developers have been wrongly sued and ended up successfully countering those legal challenges, yet one interpretation of Okamoto's argument would be that anyone currently being sued should be treated as being guilty of whatever they've been sued for.
Okamoto seems to double down on this in comments regarding infringement, suggesting that a legal victory for Pocketpair could make such infringements be seen as more acceptable – unavoidably and tacitly calling Palworld a ripoff in the process. Confusion creeps in, however, as Okamoto apparently specifies copyright infringement, whereas the Palworld lawsuit is over patents. Some (machine translated) comments seem to correct Okamoto on this point.
The nature of the lawsuit came as a surprise, with Pocketpair communications director and publishing manager John Buckley saying earlier this year that patent infringement was "something that no one even considered" during the legal checks Palworld went through pre-release.
"We were pretty vocal before Palworld released that we did legal checks before the game released, and they were all cleared – in Japan," Buckley said at the time. "So obviously, when the lawsuit was announced, we were all like, 'What?'"
It's also unclear if Okamoto is suggesting that Pocketpair will eventually have to settle with Nintendo by conceding ground and/or ponying up some amount of money.
Thus far, the Palworld developer has made minor changes to its survival game to stay comfortably clear of certain elements – which is not an admission of patent infringement, as one Japanese patent attorney said – but staunchly argued that the game does not infringe, and that some or all of Nintendo's related patents are invalid.
Legal and IP experts have also questioned some of the patents orbiting the lawsuit. Additionally, a recent, broad patent separate from the lawsuit covering combat mechanics drew especially sharp criticism: "This Nintendo patent was apparently granted without a patent examiner looking at a single game," IP expert and games veteran Florian Mueller said.
Part of the blowback aimed at Okamoto was seemingly stoked by a partially self-censored comment interpreted by many as calling Pocketpair "anti-social force," IGN reports, or adjacent or similar to groups that may operate in legally gray territory.
In other comments (also machine translated), Japanese viewers argue that some of the games Okamoto worked on himself, and not just those from Capcom, borrowed from or iterated on ideas from plenty of other games with varying degrees of subtlety. Art builds on art, and here again, it's tough to determine where Okamoto has drawn this line, if not at, 'this one drew a lawsuit.'
Proving the universe has a sense of humor, last month The Pokemon Company and Pocketpair both independently announced new creature collector life sims, which have clearly been in development for quite some time, within two weeks of each other. Buckley fired back at absurd accusations that Palworld: Palfarm was slapped together and rushed out by "wizard-level developers able to make a game in 1 week" after the reveal of Pokemon: Pokopia.
