Last Thursday night the bomb dropped, Nintendo sued Pocketpair for patent infringement. Many were surprised that it took eight months for Nintendo to decide to act, but Pocketpair responded shortly after that they are prepared to fight Nintendo in court, and won’t go down without a fight.
Exactly what the fight is about, we don’t know yet. But at least one well-known analyst, Dr. Serkan Toto, has now explained why he believes Nintendo finally chose to react and, more importantly, act. He tells GamesRadar:
“This lawsuit would have never happened if Palworld had 500 users per day on Steam. [Nintendo] would have said, ‘ok, whatever, let’s leave these guys alone; the game will die’.”
As you know, Palworld was a monster success, and although the number of players has been reduced, it has continued to have a solid audience and will soon be coming to Sony’s consoles, which should give it another boost. Toto continues:
“You cannot do this with Nintendo. I understand that Nintendo was foaming at the mouth, saying, ‘Look, these guys are going multi-platform, and they’re making anime and merchandising their Pals.’ And Nintendo felt threatened or disrespected or just angry, and they dropped this bomb on them.”
He also believes that Nintendo is really pissed off and will try to mess with Pocketpair in any way they can, and he concludes:
“It’s like a mafia. They will not kill you instantly. They will let you cook a little bit.”
What do you think, are Nintendo being unreasonable, or are they doing the right thing?