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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
Usually the objection I see people make is that they didn’t like Nintendo going after Pocketpair on the basis of gameplay patents instead of the actual plagiarism of creature designs.
I don’t really care personally, I think Palworld is shamelessly plagiarized trash that I have no interest in, but I genuinely do not care what legal avenues Nintendo do or do not choose to pursue, because how on Earth does that affect me?
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i've always had a suspicion deep down that they were ai-generating at least some of their designs and that's why they look like a bunch of different parts of pokemon slapped together
Doesn't help the art style is incredibly derivative. There have been so many monster collector games out there that all have unique and distinctive designs, even ones that mechanically are very clearly based on Pokémon, and yet with Palworld they at best can be mistaken for fakemon and at worst you can point out what parts from which mons they used. I would believe they used AI for designs if just for that.
They didn't sue because of character design knocking off, and if that was the case Chunsoft can sue Nintendo 1000x over a crap ton of designs being near copies of Dragon Quest designs.
I don't care if Palworld is bad, derivative, and overall unappealing even to me, trying to sue the game over things that are 100% not applicable (better sue Ubisoft for Assassin's Creed also having toggleable mounts) is anti-competitive and should be rightfully punished. Nintendo is not the originator for 90% of its ideas and the fact that Nintendo is actually insane enough to think it is made it the most hated gaming company last year. Oh, also because it kickstarted the $80 price tag, which it also deserved hate for. Nintendo is not a moral gaming company by any means, it's just pushed under the rug because Sony and Rockstar are teaming up to literally end the concept of owning games so they are a higher priority.
I don't care if Palworld is bad, derivative, and overall unappealing even to me, trying to sue the game over things that are 100% not applicable (better sue Ubisoft for Assassin's Creed also having toggleable mounts) is anti-competitive and should be rightfully punished. Nintendo is not the originator for 90% of its ideas and the fact that Nintendo is actually insane enough to think it is made it the most hated gaming company last year. Oh, also because it kickstarted the $80 price tag, which it also deserved hate for. Nintendo is not a moral gaming company by any means, it's just pushed under the rug because Sony and Rockstar are teaming up to literally end the concept of owning games so they are a higher priority.
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Valve already did that years ago for PC. Forgive me for not trusting gamers to be principled and instead to be wildly reactionary.
Not all games on Steam have DRM, and PC naturally has competition. If you don't like Steam, you have the option the switch to other storefronts including GOG, which has all of its games DRM free. You can't do this with consoles, and Sony is fighting tooth and nail to make sure it maintains that monopoly. Nintendo has a much larger physical audience and wouldn't even think about getting rid of it's physical media so quickly, but they are imposing "physical taxes" to try to skew towards digital. They are infinitely more scummy compared to Valve.
If you think GOG is legitimate competition for Steam, I've got a bridge I can sell you. If you think the decline of physical media is because of gaming companies trying to maintain a monopoly, I've got two bridges. It's not even just games. For music and movies physical media has also been declining. Whether it's things like streaming or just not having to bother with physical stores, it's been a trend for a while. The righteous outrage is performative nonsense from people who likely haven't touched a disc of any sort for years, and I say this as someone who does try to support physical media. I just recognize I'm in the minority, and I have no patience for people who refuse to acknowledge their own purchasing decisions have lead to the very thing they're protesting.
Are we making this horse shit argument again? Every time I see this made, people post the shared designs and it's the Bomboulder and Geodude or the Dracky and Golbat.
Like, wow, creature designs with similar real-world bases are definitely the same as weed Cinderace or this sharing a body shape and color scheme (not just Pallet, the same colors on the same spots and features)
Here's an unpopular opinion: however good Palworld is, the only reason more than a niche crowd cares about it is because of the rip off controversy on the designs.
It doesn't matter how close it is, unless it is literally exactly an actual Pokémon design there is no legal grounds for suing for infringement on aesthetics.
I'm in the minority as well. I hate the way the gaming industry is and how much money people are willing to spend on games that, many of the times, they don't even own. The truth is that anyone who care about game ownership is in the minority, and that's why they have to fight extra hard. Sony feels like they are able to get away because gamers, and just modern society as a whole, have gotten to complacent. Your assumption of things being performative is insane, btw. GTA VI will still sell billions and PS5 Pros are being sold out, which obviously indicates that a vast majority of people don't care. Meaning that many of these people are, extremely likely, entirely different crowds.
I can't really argue past this because you've built your entire argument on an assumption that doesn't even make logical sense. I realize you're also assuming that every single person who cares about these antics are even gamers, not realizing that this also bleeds into other crowds including people into politics. given how literal government representatives are on this now.
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I remember originally a lot of the Palworld discussion online was people going "It's pokemon but with guns!" Not just a handful of comments, that was the only reason it got any oxygen whatsoever and the comparison was encouraged by the Palworld devs. In which case, yeah, Nintendo is going to find an excuse to sue. You're using one of their biggest franchises to boost your own game which is a direct competitor while also advertising using knock-offs of their designs? Wave a red flag in front of a bull, and I'm not going to be very sympathetic if you get trampled.
Personally I’m not really all that precious about copyright either (another reason why I don’t really care about the legal drama of it all); I just think plagiarism is lazy. Tons of other people are able to take inspiration from Pokémon and develop those inspirations into their own art, but Pocketpair just took a bunch of existing things and filed the serial numbers off.
Fun fact, as much as I'm pro palworld in general (I think that, regardless of the supposed plagiarism, it *is* one of the better survival crafting games we've had in the last few years), I'm quite confident the lawsuit had the exact opposite effect from what Nintendo hoped.
For 2 reasons.
1) If the lawsuit didn't happen, the game would have probably just been forgotten as the 900th pokemon clone combined with 900th survival crafting game. However, the fact it DID happen brought it to the spotlight with a ton of content creators covering it, and a lot of people going "oh i need to check it out", both the various Nintendo-haters and just curious people in general.
You know that saying "It doesn't matter how people talk about it as long as they talk about it?", well, that ended up being A LOT of free advertising.
And as I said, the game is actually pretty good if you're into the genre, so a lot of potential buyers got exposed to it when normally they wouldn't even have checked it.
2) Sony. Normally whenever Nintendo sues someone, it's small fries that can't fight back. That's how they shut down rom hacks, unofficial pokemon games, and whatever similar. This *would* have been the case for Pocketpair as well... if Sony didn't back them up.
Sony backing Pocketpair ended up in an actual real lawsuit that not only lasted years, but they had to deal with actual lawyers who knew what they were doing rather than just being crushed by Nintendo's army, which actually caused Nintendo to have to backpedal on most of their claims and find new ones.
Now, why Sony opted to back Pocketpair, it's anyone's guess. Maybe they knew Palworld would sell super hard (it did). Maybe they just did it out of spite against Nintendo, regardless, that did backfire epically and brought Nintendo... 30k dollars and a nothingburger as Palworld did hit 1.0 and shown people that Nintendo is not invincible.
bonus: With the fact that Pocketpair pretty much won the lawsuit (*tecnically* they lost it, but if you're telling me that paying 30k dollars and getting away with 7 digits of sales is losing...), now there's other bigger companies that are trying their hand at the "collectible battle monster" genre (or whatever you want to call it), as the lawsuit shown that Nintendo is not invincible and they can't bully you out if you have the money to fight back. So regardless of what one thinks about Palworld, I consider it a win, because "damn brats i'll sue" is and never will be honest competition, it's just power abuse.
well good news AI is forcing everything to go open source, so in like 10 years both pocketpair and tpc will stop or be winding down their business of selling software for money
already successful indie devs are saying right now they arent posting things about their game because they are low scope enough that AI could basically steal their entire game's concept and release it before they can
everything is being decomped, the switch 2 was hacked by Claude like 3 hours ago
and we will be lucky if this is only videogames or frivolous software honestly
turns out the actual logical end of effectively removing copyright was that everyone just steals everybody else's work and regurgitates it out, be it bar for bar in a legal manner, or straight up stealing people's ideas and releasing them before they even get to market. 8,000 demos in steam next fest. who woulda thunk
which, might we add as the kicker; the AI can only be trained to this point with the concept that copyright is stupid and to just steal everybody's work, including mine of course. so happy everything ive posted to the internet is being used as training data. copyright is so lame
enjoy, you won. your ideology has complete cultural victory
if we need any change right now with copyright it is a significantly more militant, stronger, pro-artist copyright that is unabashedly anti theft. more stronger protections and control over the IP by the original creators, and less control to companies, control is given to the creators that worked on it bar none.
anti copyright at this point is insane unless you dont actually care about artists
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i mean yeah thats fair tbh i also dont wanna have like a big thread stink about it
maybe on discord or in dms or some other time
im getting too old for flame wars in threads and while it was a somewhat inflammatory reply and had contempt for your position, i rlly do respect you as a person even if we disagree on this
in general my feeling w palworld is i wish people looked at the actually good monster collectors instead and also a lot of the pro palworld sentiment in the west is rlly weird and lacks some context that only rlly seemed to go viral in japan, probably for ideological reasons
temtem is a good game and its failure is sad, tho the creature designs couldve been better
#LETSGETBEASTIEBALLPILLED2027!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Obviously what we need is a Spectrobes revival. #Spectrobes2027 It will happen. This is probably the first time in maybe a decade I've actually thought about that game aside from remembering it exists.
As for an actual unpopular opinion, I think Umbreon is overrated a bit. I can understand it being popular, but sticking Umbreon's face on something makes demand for it skyrocket out of nowhere. I think the pins for it ran out faster at Pokemon XP than for Charizard. And that's not mentioning the cards.
As for an actual unpopular opinion, I think Umbreon is overrated a bit. I can understand it being popular, but sticking Umbreon's face on something makes demand for it skyrocket out of nowhere. I think the pins for it ran out faster at Pokemon XP than for Charizard. And that's not mentioning the cards.
On a fundamental level, even though I prefer Espeon, I feel like a lot of Umbreon’s appeal comes from two things. It has probably the most popular Shiny of any Eeveelution besides maybe Sylveon and it was also a cool new Dark-Type in the generation that debuted the Type in the first place. In fact, Umbreon’s emblematic of a lot of Gen 2’s history- the Special Defense stat, bring a Dark-Type, friendship evolutions and the day-night cycle were all added here, and that’s in addition to being a Johto evolution of a Kanto Pokémon.
In part because of these reasons, I’m going to have to disagree with an opinion I’ve seen circled around a few times that Espeon, Umbreon and Sylveon should use Evolution stones like the others can. Leafeon and Glaceon gained this in Sword & Shield, but the problem here comes from the fact that this takes away from their novelty in their home region. Gale of Darkness on the GameCube is able to get away with Espeon and Umbreon being obtained with evolution items because of the circumstances of that specific game’s Eevee starter, but in the core series this would cause more in-universe complications than it would solve. If Espeon and Umbreon could use Evolution stones in a Johto game, or any game for that matter, that would de-incentive players from wanting to experiment with mechanics the Pokémon were designed in mind with. Sylveon is in a similar boat, and I could see an argument in favor of the Shiny Stone because Togetic became a Fairy-Type in Gen 6 and is also friendship-adjacent, but to be honest, I like my head-canon that the only reason we don’t have a Dragon Eeveelution is because Eevee doesn’t learn any Dragon moves but can learn some Fairy moves.
In part because of these reasons, I’m going to have to disagree with an opinion I’ve seen circled around a few times that Espeon, Umbreon and Sylveon should use Evolution stones like the others can. Leafeon and Glaceon gained this in Sword & Shield, but the problem here comes from the fact that this takes away from their novelty in their home region. Gale of Darkness on the GameCube is able to get away with Espeon and Umbreon being obtained with evolution items because of the circumstances of that specific game’s Eevee starter, but in the core series this would cause more in-universe complications than it would solve. If Espeon and Umbreon could use Evolution stones in a Johto game, or any game for that matter, that would de-incentive players from wanting to experiment with mechanics the Pokémon were designed in mind with. Sylveon is in a similar boat, and I could see an argument in favor of the Shiny Stone because Togetic became a Fairy-Type in Gen 6 and is also friendship-adjacent, but to be honest, I like my head-canon that the only reason we don’t have a Dragon Eeveelution is because Eevee doesn’t learn any Dragon moves but can learn some Fairy moves.
Espeon, Umbreon, and Sylveon are fundamentally tied to friendship in different ways to begin with, and I think the folks at GF understand this.
Sylveon was originally tied to Amie which is fundamentally about bonding with your Pokémon, and the two Gen 2 Eeveelutions are tied to the friendship mechanic as well. That's their thing compared to the other Eeveelutions: much like how building a true bond of friendship requires work and investment, Espeon, Umbreon, and Sylveon are tied to Eevee and a Trainer building up a strong bond of friendship, albeit with different factors involved. Sylveon was introduced in Gen 6 for that matter, and Kalos has Mega Evolution which requires a strong bond between Trainer and Pokémon to achieve.
Leafeon and Glaceon are tied more to something natural which is why making them stone evolutions in SwSh and SV worked fine. The locations in the older games involved them being near some kind of rock to begin with.
Sylveon was originally tied to Amie which is fundamentally about bonding with your Pokémon, and the two Gen 2 Eeveelutions are tied to the friendship mechanic as well. That's their thing compared to the other Eeveelutions: much like how building a true bond of friendship requires work and investment, Espeon, Umbreon, and Sylveon are tied to Eevee and a Trainer building up a strong bond of friendship, albeit with different factors involved. Sylveon was introduced in Gen 6 for that matter, and Kalos has Mega Evolution which requires a strong bond between Trainer and Pokémon to achieve.
Leafeon and Glaceon are tied more to something natural which is why making them stone evolutions in SwSh and SV worked fine. The locations in the older games involved them being near some kind of rock to begin with.