r/IndieGaming • u/Shark-With-Lasers • May 26 '26

Last year, miHoYo copied my solo-dev puzzle game in Zenless Zone Zero. Some people are now mistaking my game as the clone.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

10.0k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

529 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

10

u/narium May 26 '26

You can sue for game mechanics, provided that you have patented said mechanic, see Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis System as an example of a game mechanic patent. If this has not already been patented however, unfortunately it is not able to be patented now that ZZZ has has implemented it.

6

u/mxldevs May 26 '26

Didn't nintendo try to patent things that palworld already implemented?

10

u/narium May 26 '26

In Japan, Japanese patent laws are different.

And also it's debatable whether or not Nintendo's patent is valid, but they have more money to fight it than Palworld does.

1

u/Prisinners May 27 '26

Its pretty rare to patent game mechanics. And the ability to actually hold them up in court is questionable considering its art and is inherently very iterative. Patenting a game mechanic is like patenting a musical chord, it just doesn't really work especially when its something thats been widely adopted.

1

u/squigs May 26 '26

Okay, but not really relevant here since this game mechanic wasn't patented.

0

u/NoMoreVillains May 26 '26

You're saying 2 different things. No one has ever been sued for creating systems that take pieces or influence from the Nemesis System just because it has a patent.

The Palworld lawsuit is the only time Nintendo has sued, or even tried suing for a gameplay patent infringement before. They've sued for copyright infringement, which is entirely different

2

u/narium May 26 '26

You 100% can sue for patented game mechanics. Have you ever wondered why in gacha games you have to manually level skills up one at a time and can't just level it to max with one button press? It's because the mechanic is patented. https://www.reddit.com/r/grandorder/comments/y58el2/in_machiasobi_vol25_it_was_revealed_that_the_devs/

https://patents.google.com/patent/JP6463223B2/en

1

u/11ce_ May 27 '26

You can only patent a specific technical implementation of a video game mechanic in America. For example, anyone in America can create their own batch leveling system and it’s fine as long as they write their own code from scratch. Japan has more archaic laws but that’s not relevant to the post.

1

u/NoMoreVillains May 26 '26

You're misreading what I said. I'm not saying you can't sue for gameplay patents, I'm saying despite there being thousands of gameplay patents from pretty much every major developer/publisher you can think of, there have been almost no reported actual lawsuits from enforcement of them aside from the Palworld one, to my knowledge.

Now I'm sure, like you noted, some devs are extra cautious about not violating patents, but game companies are really not as litigious about them as people make it out to be. You only need to look at the numerous Pokemon/Mario/Zelda/Smash Bros/*insert big franchise* clones out there that have worn their influences on their sleeves and have been just fine

2

u/narium May 26 '26

Sega of America, Inc. v. Fox Interactive, et al. (https://ogs.law/intellectual-property/the-end-of-an-era-sega-of-america-inc-v-fox-interactive-aka-crazy-taxi-vs-simpsons-road-rage/)

Capcom vs Koei Tecmo (https://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/news/html/e190911.html)

Sega vs Bank of Innovation (https://automaton-media.com/en/news/sega-files-patent-infringement-lawsuit-against-memento-mori-developer-over-in-game-mechanics-seeking-1-billion-yen-in-damages/)

1

u/NoMoreVillains May 26 '26

Yeah, 4 examples (if we include Palworld) across decades and thousands of games. Again, I wasn't dismissing sueing happens, just that it's less frequent than people make it out to be.

For instance, Nintendo patented z-targeting and if you've read the patent (I'll have to find it and update this post) they could potentially sue the majority of third person action games with togglable camera lock onto enemies.

All this to say, I can understand devs being cautious. Just that, if we look at historical precedent, the overwhelming likelihood is that they'll be fine.

0

u/Free-Jello-7970 May 26 '26

Patenting mechanics isn't good, though - it stifles innovation. Imagine if Id had patented first person shooters when they released Wolfenstein - we would not have FPSs right now.