Pocketpair announces new changes to Palworld following the lawsuit with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company

The Palworld we met last year continues to change. The Pocketpair studio has announced that upcoming patches will begin tweaking the game after being forced to do so by the ongoing legal battle with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company.

Palworld’s first changes in response to infringed patents

At the end of September last year, Pocketpair received a lawsuit from Nintendo and The Pokémon Company. While many expected that they would be accused of copying certain Pokémon designs to create certain Pals, this lawsuit focused on the use of certain patents related to mechanics that exist in the Pokémon games.

In November 2024, Pocketpair confirmed this lawsuit, which cited three infringed patents in Japan. One of them was the use of throwing objects (such as the Pal Sphere) to catch Pals, which resulted in the first patch to the game, v0.3.11.

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Recently, Pocketpair released a statement clarifying the company’s current situation, stating that “we have had to make certain compromises in order to avoid disruptions to the development and distribution of Palworld.”

“On November 30th, 2024, we released Patch v0.3.11 for Palworld. As many have speculated, these changes were indeed a result of the ongoing litigation,” commented the studio. “We regret to inform our players that with the implementation of Patch v0.5.5, we must make yet another compromise. From this patch onward, gliding will be performed using a glider rather than with Pals.”

Pocketpair said that if it hadn’t made these changes to Palworld, “the alternative would have led to an even greater deterioration of the gameplay experience for players.”

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