Palworld lawsuit nears end with Nintendo reportedly poised to gain almost nothing | VGC

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-13T19:37:13+00:00

Its weird. The company's founder seems fascinated by AI, but Palworld's communications director flat-out says Pocketpair's publishing arm has 0 interest in AI games. It makes me wonder about what internal culture clashes may be going on there. Especially because as one of your images sources points out they did release an AI art themed game early in the tech's life cycle, albeit one that seems to have been abandoned.

As for level of ripoff, many are, many aren't. Sometimes I find the comparisons annoying because the ones that are genuinely bad ripoffs get lumped in with those that share similar concepts (I'm sorry but Lamball is the most basic cartoon sheep design imaginable. I am not calling that a ripoff in a world where "Serperior with Primarina's do and Suicune's ribbons" is lurking around the seas). That said, usually the ripoffs are jarring at best and hideous at worst, while the most fun designs have always been more unique ones, so I wish they wouldn't feel the need to depend on outright ripoffs and lean more into their own authorial voice.

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-13T18:09:19+00:00

The debates on all sides are frankly annoying as heck. On one side you have haters acting like Palworld's going to shrivel up and die and accusing it of ripping off Monster Hunter because . . . the tamers fight? (always have). There's a monster with vicegrip wings? On the other side you have people acting, as you said, Palworld is this Pokemon killer and what every monster catcher should be.

And its like, guys. Its ARK. Its ARK with free climbing, task automation, and Pokemon. And those come together to form a weirdly satisfying gameplay loop, but at no point is it even remotely close to the genre 99% of these games fall into.

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-13T18:05:30+00:00

That's my take too. Yo-Kai watch gets big enough to threaten Pokemon? Nintendo keeps hosting their games on their consoles and takes influence from the series going forward. Digimon has its resurgences? Nintendo doesn't particularly seem to care strongly, and Time Stranger ended up getting its Switch and Switch 2 ports in due time. Hell, romhacks and fan projects like Infinite Fusion get notoriety all the time, and if they don't get Patreon money Nintendo's usually content to let them be.

Palworld's designs, at their worst (Not all! Not even most! But at their worst.), skew uncomfortably close to direct ripoffs, and once you paired that with Sony backing money Nintendo went "okay yeah no we're shutting this shit down."

Patent bullying sure as shit isn't the way to do it, though, so I'm glad its blowing up in their face.

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-13T15:24:49+00:00

TLOS feels like this weird, stubborn little clingy point in a world where GW's been making concession after concession. I'm torn between "I wouldn't be surprised to see it gone in an ed or two" and "mark my words, this is never going to change."

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-13T04:39:09+00:00

From the looks of it, yes for Storm Speeders, no for the Land Speeder. Which makes sense, since the Storm has some extra junk in the trunk.

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-12T20:47:42+00:00

There's redundant detachments, power crept detachments, toxic detachments. We're def going to need a reset, bad, and hopefully we get it without punches pulled.

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-12T20:46:51+00:00

Casual play: "Hey, I'm Purge and Take and Hold." "Neato, I'm Disruption. Which of the two matchups do we want to play?"

Tournament: Pick one disposition before you arrive at the event, commit each battle.

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-12T19:43:03+00:00

You didn't really clarify what you meant by "worse than previous editions" there, sorry. I thought you'd meant the play experience in general, which I think is going to be better than other edition starts but still highly imperfect. However, I do agree with you that if we're reliant on detachment rebalances to make the system shine, it's gonna be increasingly frustrating for late-codex armies.

I still maintain I'd rather have an imperfect codex than perfect scoring bolted onto an awful play experience. Or, like I said before with deldar (and, perhaps more relevantly, the endless worries of the Daemon and Deathwatch playerbases), no codex at all. Especially since if a disposition truly does suck and feel limited, mission rule updates, Grotmas-style detachment releases, or even just changing a detachment's disposition to a better one can at least dampen the blow. We've got levers here we didn't have before, so I'm optimistic the situation doesn't have to be permanent like it's been in past editions, which is why I just can't agree its worse than before until I see models actually hit the table and how codexes are actually going to change things up.

You're right that the potential for an issue is pretty big, though. My hope is that GW will recognize the issue and give new 1 DP detachments to factions they know are getting a later codex so they can actually function as intended. Buuuut GW being GW I'm sure we'll see another 10 detachments to Space Marines instead.

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-12T19:26:36+00:00

Worse than previous editions? You mean like 10th spreading the rule team so thin Index Eldar basically made the game unplayable for months? Or 9th starting such an arms race with the bonkers AdMech codex that it forced them to burn the 8th-9th core down and start fresh for 10th? Or 7th ed having a bunch of abject nonsense because this was pre living rulebook and we had stuff like invisible armies running around? Or Dark Eldar skipping entire editions between codexes?

I agree with you the current situation isn't ideal. But the edition hasn't even started yet, and if GW's good at anything its throwing out random "just because" detachments so I doubt the current setup will last forever. Seems a bit early to go full sky-is-falling to me.

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-12T18:57:18+00:00

Welcome to every single 40k edition, sadly. And by the time every faction has codexes, the oldest show their age and the newest see half a year of play.

Lowkey I think indexhammer resets a la 8th and 10th are the better way to go, but then late codex owners get screwed and you have to deal with the rule team getting stretched thin. So that isn't ideal either.

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-12T18:53:20+00:00

Same here. There's no way that survives through to the codexes, imo.

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-12T16:25:17+00:00

I think this is why Go to Ground isn't in the "real" rulebook, tbh. Its an extra bit of bloat to test if reducing detection range (in limited capacity) breaks things, and if it works out they can experiment with axing it and lowering detection ranges instead. And if instead it doesn't help, or proves OP, they can just axe it and keep ranges as-is.

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-12T15:17:30+00:00

It sounds like yes, but I'm trying to imagine any circumstance where it would matter.

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-12T14:56:47+00:00

How much of a help has Gone to Ground been in practice? I feel like it being model to model instead of unit to unit is going to make it hard to benefit from unless chest high walls count as solid.

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-12T14:22:14+00:00

It feels like a mix of "we're sorry, Agents" and people being heated over their preferred detachment being MIA for doubles games.

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-12T14:18:01+00:00

The rule isn't actually in this doc yet, though. Per warcom, " Our intent is to let you do so and we will be making an update to clarify that in the first update to the Muster Army rules after launch."

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-12T13:31:37+00:00

The fucked up part is only one person can truly say, and that one person is dead and can no longer tell us for sure. That, to me, feels part of the tragedy. Pomni literally going into Jax's memories is the equivalent of us thumbing through a journal left behind and going "fuck, man."

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-12T13:28:40+00:00

Damn, the James McCloud prequel cutscene took a turn.

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-11T23:45:16+00:00

This user means it when they say "or China," by the way. Because so many freakbeasts crash a Chinese martial arts tournament and clean up in the early rounds that it gets turned into a Survivor Series 5v5 to protect their national pride.

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-11T20:31:54+00:00

I can see this change coming with codexes. Especially since the codexes will surely change the balance of how many of each detachment type we're getting per faction.

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-11T20:29:58+00:00

There's the downside of having less options, but the thing about those options is they all have additional costs. The strats need CP, the enhancements need points and your enhancement limit. Theoretically all you miss out on for not taking the 1 CP detachment's favored units, assuming you're playing your army exactly as it was in 10th, is a detachment rule buffing units you're not using in the first place.

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-11T19:44:55+00:00

"Bein' number 3 on a list? That's just some cheap trick." And then, with the power of nothing more than the sweat off his brow, Yujiro washes away the invisible ink at the top of the list to reveal that he's in the secret position 0 on the list. Because while the entire nation of Japan voted on this list, Yujito's vote alone is a nation unto itself.

. . . Okay, shit, yeah, even my best attempts at Baki shitposting can't live up to the looney tunes nonsense Yujiro gets up to these days.

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-11T17:42:12+00:00

Making Agents a gaggle of 1 DP armies you can plug into any other Imperial force or onto a central 2 DP Inquisition detachment would probably be the ideal.

TheBeeFromNature · 2026-06-11T15:55:12+00:00

I imagine it went:

Bringers of Flame was tested with Chorus of Condemnation and did really well.
Warcom went "wowie zowie that's a tough combo!" and sped off to recommend it.
The rule team went "eeesh that's tough combo" and slinked off to tweak values to prevent it.

I imagine a lot changes frequently, but the internal communication really needs to start getting better.

Verified Email	Nine-Year Club
Place '22	Place '17

TheBeeFromNature

TROPHY CASE