@chriss_m: So that begs the question of: What editorial standards do you think they SHOULD have, or that were violated here?

It's easy to call for "editorial consistency" in reviewing art, when you're not the one who has to deliver it. I pointed out the pitfalls of using things like mechanics based evaluations because you can have a technically sound game that is terrible to play, and vice versa, having a janky as all hell game that is ridiculously fun to play (Goat Simulator for instance).

So what standard would you put in place?

Live action will never do justice for Avatar. Even if they get everything pitch perfect, it will still be sub par compared to its original animated counterpart. One Piece live action proved this. It was well done with proper respect to the source material, and it was still just meh.

Seriously it's like trying to make live action Looney Tunes, it simply does not work.

@chriss_m: To be fair, there is no real cut and dry way to review a piece of art. They tried using strict formulas for determining the rating in the past, and they just ended up focusing primarily on the technical aspects of the game. This caused them to end up giving scores that ultimately don't really match the average player's experience.

For example, a game like Forspoken is a good game from a technical perspective. The controls are tight, the animations are good, the sound design is fine, etc etc. Based on all of those aspects, the game would get high marks (7 or 8) despite being a garbage tier experience for most players.

Then there's the problem of a divided audience like with the FF7 Remake. Some people love the remake, but others hate it. It's incredibly polarizing, so how do you rate something like that as a "professional" reviewer that doesn't ultimately come down to opinion or a technical breakdown of the game itself?

Being an art critic is not a hard science. I will never understand why someone thinks duct taping a banana to a wall is "art", but some people go wild for that stuff, so how do you give it a score as a critic? It's basically impossible, which is why I never really trust critic reviews and always look to aggregate user reviews instead. At the end of the day it's all just opinions after all.

@Keivz_basic: Even if we go with your argument, it's undeniable that these "perks" were part of the calculus for many subscribers when deciding if they wanted the subscription plan. It was advertised as "ad free" viewing when people paid for it, so that means that they MUST deliver on that or it is definitively false advertising.

D+ had an issue with this, but they handled it correctly. For people who paid prior to them going with an ad model got ad free for the remaining duration of their current subscription, because that is what they paid for. Amazon could have easily done the same, and gave a pre-paid credit to give the customers who buy yearly plans X months of ad free tied to their next renewal payment.

@esqueejy: >>"None of that is the legal analysis. Man it gets tiring listening to laypeople pontificate on what they think "sounds good" as if it's the law."

Then maybe you should stop speaking, because as I pointed out in my big reply to you above there is no way you are a practicing attorney, even a legal student for that matter.

>>"At the end of the day, what will really motivate a suit will be whether they view every $1 (or portion thereof) that Pal-e-Mon generates as a $1 (or portion thereof) that they won't be making. If they decide that "meh, there's dollars aplenty and people will still give us our dollars" then they may not even bother, regardless or in spite of the legal analysis."

And here's another reason why you are definitely not an attorney. The sales made by Palworld are the LEAST important reason to bring a Copyright lawsuit. Gamefreak already basically prints money as it is. No, their greatest concern right now is whether or not Palworld could damage their BRAND if it is indeed infringing on their Copyright. This is why they jumped all over the guy that made the mod turning the models into ACTUAL pokemon, because they DO NOT WANT a game with Pikachu shooting a gun to be on the market, PERIOD, let alone one where he is killing other pokemon and PEOPLE and eating them. They know that they will lose a HUGE market share if their IP is associated with violence and killing. The amount of money they would lose if such a thing were to happen would be STAGGERING in comparison to the paltry amount of money that Palworld has made, or even will make. We're talking BILLIONS vs low millions.

Compare how they jumped on the mod creator and how they haven't yet jumped on Palworld creators themselves and you will understand the difference and why I say that they don't think they can win this one.

Please you're making my head hurt with your utter naivete when it comes to these issues. Just stop already.

@esqueejy: >>"They literally just snatched the images and the reports that they are proportionally 1-to-1 representations really damages the parody argument."

If true, then yes they would have a case potentially even through the Parody defense. The problem is that this has to be proven, and the fact that Nintendo hasn't launched a massive lawsuit for outright IP THEFT, means you're just bloviating more. Citation needed.

Also again you're proving yourself an incompetent "attorney" if you think "exaggeration or distortion" are necessary elements of parody in design beyond what we already see. Changing the shape of horns, angle of feet and eyes, coloration changes, etc etc are all present in every example I've seen. Also for very simple designs, ie a Blue Penguin, or a black faced sheep in a big white curly ball, well that design is likely uncopyrightable because there are so many examples of it online and in common 3D asset libraries from BEFORE pokemon went 3D.

Finally, you literally strap a fire fox to your body and use it like a flamethrower, and yet you don't see that as humor/satire. You enslave pokemon AND PEOPLE to do menial tasks for you by capturing them, and you don't see the criticism? REALLY? You don't see that as a straight up satirical criticism of the whole concept of capturing wild animals and forcing them to fight for you and do your bidding that is seen to be widely acceptable in a kids game like Pokemon despite the incredibly dark and frankly immoral connotations....REALLY?

Come off it man. There is no way to NOT see this as a parody game, with even the most basic of analyses.

@esqueejy: First off I don't believe for a second you're an attorney, for several reasons. One, no attorney just says "I'm an attorney" when talking about a specific legal issue, especially when talking to someone else with legal experience or knowledge because the obvious follow up question is "specializing in what?". This is why I pointed out my father in law is a Patent Lawyer, not just "a lawyer" or "attorney" because a Criminal Prosecutor/Defender, or a Land Management Lawyer, or Contract Lawyer, or Constitutional Lawyer, or Family Lawyer, and so on would know essentially NOTHING about copyright law beyond what they had to learn in school, which is basically nothing for the purposes of this discussion.

Second you misuse legal concepts all over the place. Latches and Statute of Limitation are notably NOT at issue here. You are confusing these concepts with the actual issue I presented, which is a Duty to Protect, which is a COMPLETELY different legal concept. Failure of a Duty to Protect means that the Copyright holder didn't take any reasonable measure to stop a third party from violating your Copyright, ie send a cease and desist notice immediately after becoming aware of the purported infringement. This is necessary to prevent confusion about whether or not the Copyright holder is choosing to invoke their right to prevent infringement on the Copyright. Remember, a Copyright holder is not duty bound to prevent anyone else from using their Copyright, they can give their consent, even if the infringement was not cleared with them beforehand.

To put it another way, Copyright is analogous to Trespassing. If I come home and I find you sitting on my couch watching TV, having let yourself in (no breaking, so not a B&E). Instead of asking who you are, why you're there, or telling you to get out, I just sit down and watch a show with you. After the show, I call the cops and tell them you were trespassing the entire time and I want you charged as such, the cops would ask you if I ever told you to leave, and you'd truthfully say no and the cops would tell you to leave and should not arrest you because you were never given proper notice of trespass. Even if it went to court, the judge would almost certainly throw it out because at no point did I notify you that your presence/actions were at issue with me, despite having ample opportunity to tell you to get out of my house or call the cops as soon as I found you on my couch. In fact my demonstrable INACTION means that I was tacitly giving permission for you to be there even if it was never said outright. This is why you have to notify a person of Trespass and give them a chance to vacate the property before you can have them arrested for trespassing. It's not a perfect analogy because it's presumed that the Copyright holder doesn't want anyone infringing on their rights without express permission to do so, but it's illustrative of the point that the Duty to Protect can be determinative of whether or not the Copyright holder consents to the use of their copyrighted materials.

Third, your example is completely backwards legally speaking. No one is saying that you must pre-emptively send a cease and desist letter if you THINK a third party is going to violate your copyright lest you surrender your rights to remedies as Copyright holder. You are only ever required to take action AFTER the violation has occurred. This is of course because at any point in time Party B could change their mind and NOT violate it. Copyright law (and most law in general) is not proactive, it's reactive out of necessity. In any case, the very fact that you would confuse my argument so much that you would even bring up such an onerous standard in conversation says that you don't have any legal training at all. Finally, yes of course selective enforcement is a right of the Copyright holder, which is my point. If the Copyright holder does not issue a cease and desist notice (or equivalent) to the infringing party after being made aware of the potential infringement, then they are de facto assenting to the use of their copyrighted materials legally speaking.

>>"Really? So you'd like to explain the difference between the Pattern Test and the Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison Test versus the Inverse Ratio Rule versus the Total Concept Feel Test?"

Oh look someone discovered Wikipedia. You even kept the order of the tests the same, how cute. Which leads me to the fourth reason why I know you're not an attorney, because you'd know that each of those tests are ALSO simple tests or not applicable in this case whatsoever.

Pattern Test: Does it have the substantially similar plot and characters, ie Duke Landwalker is a Schmedi who is secretly the child of Marth Shrader, a Spith Lord. They could potentially have a case here, except that there are HUNDREDS of pokemon clones out on the market. As such the capture mechanics, gym master concepts, etc are very common and not solely cognizable as an asset exclusive to the Pokemon copyright. Further, the ability to capture people, and to KILL Pals to cook and eat their meat is decidedly NOT present in Pokemon games, so the pattern really wouldn't hold here.

Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison Test: While more complex is not applicable here because it is a test to see if a Computer Program is a copy of another one with only superficial changes. This is closer to Patent infringement validation than Copyright in many respects. Regardless it is not applicable here because no one would confuse the gameplay of Palworld to Pokemon and no one is alleging that they stole the game engine or anything else. The 3D models are almost certainly created in Blender. You might have a case if you can prove they imported models from Pokemon, but even that is a stretch for Copyright infringement, but could open a separate lawsuit for cracking their game code to take assets out of it. We're really only concerned with one abstraction layer, the Presentation Layer, ie what you see on the screen, as opposed to the underlying code that drives it.

Inverse Ratio Rule: Having direct and repeated access to copyrighted materials lowers the threshold for infringement. This doesn't apply because the devs for Palworld didn't have prior contact with Nintendo or Pokemon developers. Thus they never had access to direct assets. If Palworld hacked a Pokemon game to steal assets, then this still wouldn't apply because that is a separate Criminal statute, not a Civil one under the Criminal Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

The fifth reason why I don't believe you are a lawyer is because you demand that I provide case law to back up my arguments, while providing none of your own to back up your argument. This is a major faux pas in legal discussions. You cite no case law refuting my arguments, so I don't have to refute yours with case law citations either. Also, if you were more familiar with Copyright law, you'd know that citing case law as precedent in this sector can be extremely dubious because court opinions vary rather wildly due to the fairly subjective matter at hand.

The final reason I know you're not a lawyer is because you are citing "plausible deniability" as a potential defense for Copyright infringement. Even a law student would know that plausible deniability is NO DEFENSE for copyright infringement. The only entity that could possibly leverage plausible deniability in this case would be Nintendo if they were questioned on why they failed in their duty to protect by stating they were unaware of Palworld, but even that is no longer viable because they acknowledged them publicaly already. Regardless, in Copyright law It doesn't matter whether the third party intended to violate copyright or not, only whether or not they did. If they did then the owner is entitled to compensatory damages, period.

The Ordinary Observer test is the MOST important test, because of the Jury if this were to go to trial. At the end of the trial they will be asked to determine whether or not Palworld copied Pokemon. You can make all the legal cases on other tests that you want, but if the Jury looks at A and then at B and sees them as completely different, then you are going to lose the case, and Appellate courts are extremely reticent to overturn a jury trial, especially for something like Copyright infringement. Nintendo could try for a bench trial, but the Palworld devs would be foolish to agree to that as defendants. I still think the judge would rule in their favor, but even then, they have a WAY better chance with a jury.

So yeah, maybe stop trying to convince us you're more knowledgeable than you are, because you're just embarrassing yourself.

@Cikatriz_ESP: Huh? I don't see how that is a virtue signal, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth thinking that this is the VA's last words as Batman literally. And how they treat him in those last moments, no it's just not how I want my memory of Kevin Conroy's Batman to end. I'm not judging anyone else for playing it or not playing it, I just don't want to go through that scene because I won't have fun with it.

@esqueejy: Pal is literally a parody. They sold themselves as Pokemon but with guns and violence. THAT is the definition of parody.

It's not a "dumbass risk" just look how much they're raking in and the fact that Nintendo didn't issue a cease and desist immediately actually would hurt them legally if they tried to sue. This is because copyright holders have what's called a "duty to protect" meaning that you can't just sit back when you believe that someone is stealing your IP, you have to act in a reasonable period of time. The fact that no such letter has been sent, despite them being keenly aware of the existence of Palworld, means that Nintendo knows they're screwed here.

>>"No, it doesn't need to be "nearly exact" or something they would confuse for the other thing."

It literally does. The purpose of copyright is to protect IP one person sells from being confused with another person's product. As such the two have to be substantially identical to the point where an reasonable person who is familiar with one product, say Pikachu, would be confused by the copycat. They don't have to be perfect matches, but if you have Pikachu and I independently invented Plussle, then you couldn't sue me for copyright infringement even though they are both electric rats with similar body shapes. You wouldn't even be able to sue me if I can up with Pichu's design prior to Nintendo copyrighting it, because it is significantly different looking that Pikachu.

I'm not a Pal "fanboy" I don't even own the game. I'm tired of open world crafters to be honest, they get so boring after a while. It's funny that you accuse me of LARPing as a lawyer, when you're doing just that. I think you are projecting my friend. No, I'm also not "engaging in lawyer LARPing", but my father in law is a patent lawyer with over 30 years experience and I asked him about this situation and he's sitting here with me laughing at all you armchair lawyers saying that Nintendo has any reasonable path to success in suing Palworld developers (in the US at least) from what I have shown him of the similar pokemon and pals.

At the end of the day, what will determine if they will sue is whether or not they can find a legally cognizable violation of their copyrights. If they can't then they won't. If they CAN then they WILL sue, even if they don't think it would impact their sales, because they're NINTENDO. Do you even pay attention to their legal stance on protecting their IP? They're absolutely vicious with cease and desist and takedown notices. Seriously how out of touch are you if you think that Nintendo is just biding their time or w/e if they thought their copyright was infringed. What a joke.

While you're correct that I technically do not know if a cease and desist letter was sent, I do know that if they did send one and it was ignored, then Nintendo would not be quiet about it. Also Palworld creators would have no reason NOT to post the letter, there is no legal punishment that could be meted out for doing so. Seeing as Palworld is still on sale and no one is saying they sent or got a cease and desist letter, it is safe to presume that one was not sent. There's your basic logic lesson for the day.

>>"ANSWER: BECAUSE THE LEGAL STANDARD IS "SUBSTANTIAL SIMILARITY" AND IT IS THE LEGAL STANDARD THAT DRIVES WHETHER YOU FILE SUIT, NOT "ANY REASONABLE LAYMAN'S DEFINITION." It's an incredibly complicated analysis with many factors and nuances."

You realize I was pointing out that YOU were the one using the layman definition when claiming that pokemon and pals were "substantially similar", right? I was pointing out that you don't know what the difference between a regular definition and a legal definition is, because they are two totally different things.

Also, no there literally cannot be a "complicated analysis with many factors and nuance" when talking about copyright of a character. It's a very simple test really. You take a person, sit them down and show them one character, then show them the other. If they are not able to tell the difference between the two, then you have a legally cognizable case. You can use wire frame models, color design, whatever you want, but if you cannot present a situation where the two could plausibly be confused for the each other, then you have no cognizable case. Period.

@jimg81: Also the way they still chose to just end batman, when the VA died and this was his last work just screams bad taste to me, from a human perspective. Not going to buy it now.