Picture September 2024. Nintendo and The Pokémon Company, two of the most feared legal operations in entertainment, file a patent lawsuit against a roughly 60-person Tokyo studio whose game had just sold 15 million copies in a month. Everyone I gamed with had the same reaction: well, it was fun before Palworld gets deleted.
Fast forward to this weekend. Palworld 1.0 just launched on every platform at once, free for everyone who owns it, with 27 pages of patch notes and the biggest content drop in the game’s history. And the lawsuit that was supposed to end it all? Patent analysts now say the absolute best case for Nintendo is around $30,000.
Thirty grand. Nintendo has probably spent more than that on catering for the legal team.
How the Case Fell Apart
Quick recap for anyone who tuned out. Nintendo and The Pokémon Company sued Pocketpair in Japan over patents covering creature-capture and riding mechanics, seeking damages plus an injunction that would have blocked Palworld in Japan. The scary part was never the money. It was the injunction.
Then the case started shrinking. Pocketpair patched the disputed mechanics out of the game, changing how gliding and Pal-summoning worked. In November 2025, Nintendo amended its claims to target only the older versions of Palworld that existed before those patches. Read that again. Nintendo narrowed its own lawsuit to versions of the game that no longer exist.
Patent analyst Florian Mueller, who has tracked this case closely at Games Fray, laid out the math. Several of the patents were filed after Palworld had already launched, so the game’s monster early sales don’t count toward damages. Japanese patents only cover Japanese sales, so the global revenue is untouchable. And once Pocketpair patched the mechanics, the clock stopped. What’s left is a narrow window of Japan-only sales, with maximum damages around ¥5 million from Nintendo, plus an identical claim from The Pokémon Company, roughly $62,000 combined at current rates. Mueller called the figure chump change and sees no path for Nintendo against any current version of the game, 1.0 included.
The Tokyo District Court hears evidence on October 1 and is expected to signal its view on November 9. To be clear, no verdict exists yet. But whatever happens in that room, it cannot touch the game you’re playing right now.
It Gets Worse for Nintendo
The lawsuit is only half the story. Nintendo has been trying to stockpile new patents to use as ammunition, and the patent offices keep saying no.
In October 2025, the Japan Patent Office rejected a key Nintendo application in the creature-capture family, citing prior art that included Monster Hunter 4, ARK: Survival Evolved, and even Pocketpair’s own Craftopia. Then this spring, the US Patent Office issued a rejection covering all 26 claims of Nintendo’s summon-and-battle patent. Nintendo’s own annual report disclosed a $40 million loss from patent litigation this fiscal year.
Suing over game mechanics that dozens of games have used for a decade turns out to be a hard sell, even for Nintendo.
But Let’s Be Honest About the Cost
I don’t want to write a pure victory lap, since that wouldn’t be the truth. Pocketpair paid real costs here.
They changed their game under legal pressure. Twice. Gliding works differently now. Summoning works differently now. Pocketpair’s own statement at the time admitted the changes would disappoint players. Communications lead John Buckley has said the lawsuit shocked the team and dragged on morale, since patent infringement was never flagged in the legal review the game went through before launch.
And that might have been the actual point. Mueller’s read is that Nintendo doesn’t litigate for profit. It litigates to make the next studio think twice before building anything adjacent to Pokémon. A $30K payout looks like a loss, but two forced mechanic changes and two years of a small studio’s legal budget? That’s the chilling effect working as intended.
Why This Matters Beyond Palworld
Here’s the part I keep coming back to as someone who cares about where this industry goes.
Palworld hit an all-time peak of over 2.1 million concurrent Steam players in January 2024, one of the highest peaks in the platform’s history. It became the target of the most aggressive IP enforcer in gaming. And it survived by doing two things: patching fast and refusing to blink. Buckley put it plainly in the aftermath: survival crafting is their genre and they’re going to keep making the game they love.
For every small studio watching, the lesson isn’t “you can safely clone Pokémon.” The lesson is that game mechanics belong to everyone, patent offices are increasingly saying so out loud, and a legal threat from a giant is not automatically a death sentence. That’s a healthier industry than the one we thought we had in September 2024.
Meanwhile Pocketpair spent the lawsuit years shipping updates, announcing a trading card game, and building toward the 1.0 that dropped this weekend. The best revenge is a good patch.
The Game Outlived the Lawsuit, and It’s Free If You Own It
Nintendo wanted an injunction and got a rounding error. Pocketpair wanted to finish its game and finished it. If you bounced off Palworld in 2024 and assumed the lawsuit would quietly kill it, this weekend is your sign: the game outlived the threat, and the full release is free if you already own it.
Sometimes David doesn’t even need the slingshot. Sometimes David just keeps shipping.
Think Nintendo had a point, or was this a bully swing that missed? The debate is already going in the TAG Discord.
📌 Save Palworld Won: A $30K Lawsuit and a Free 1.0 Beat Nintendo to your backlog
Track every game you play, rate what's worth finishing, skip the overhyped ones.
