Nintendo reportedly look set to net so little from their Palworld lawsuit you'll wonder why they bothered

As with most suits of this nature, the one Nintendo filed against Palworld developer Pocketpair has been going on for a while now. Almost two years, in fact, specifically over infringement of patent rights related to specific mechanics, as opposed to anything like copyright. Nintendo suffered a bit of a loss earlier this year, and now it sounds like the whole thing might only net them what is essentially pocket change (for a billion dollar company, anyway).

According to Gamefray, all parties involved have finished their written pleadings and submission of evidence ahead of a court presentation scheduled for October 1st, with an opinion on all of this coming November 9th. Nintendo had initially been targeting every version of Palworld, but last year they and The Pokemon Company specified that they would focus only on older versions of the game (in time since the suit began, Pocketpair have removed mechanics related to the supposed patent infringement).

Based on this, Gamefray note that this narrowed scope means it is unlikely Nintendo will see a major victory over Palworld, as no injunctions will be put into place to prevent Pocketpair from certain actions. At most, because of the focus on older versions of the game, and the fact that there was only a short window of time where Palworld supposedly infringed on these patent rights in Japan, where the suit is taking place, Nintendo only stand to gain JPY 5 million, or around $30,000. Like I said, pocket change!

In any case, Palworld is surely set for some more immediate success as a release date for its 1.0 version was announced last week at Summer Geoff Fest with a cinematic trailer that presents a gravitas I'm not sure can actually be found in a game that, one again, is sort of just Pokemon with guns.