I am not a lawyer so can only say so much in this. Rather than sue the thirty app games that use their licensed characters Nintendo sued Pocket Pair the studio behind Palworld. The two games really only have being a Creature Capture game in common. Palworld has characters similar to Pokemon, but most if not all of them are original. Now one way to look at this is Nintendo has felt threatened by Palworlds growing popularity and wanted to be as malicious as possible. Which they wouldn’t need to feel threatened if they made good games. Pokemon has good titles like Legends Arceus and the Mystery Dungeon games, but outside of that their last good game was a remake of Gen 3 so not exactly good. Pokemon also fails to grow with its audience, Mario is a good example of growing with the audience yes anyone can beat a Mario game, but extra challenges open up for those who have a desire to take on harder levels.

Palworld and Pokemon also come from two totally different genre as mentioned they are Creature Capture games, but the differences lie in the details. Palworld is an open world, survival game, with crafting, and shooting elements. Pokemon is a mostly linear RPG with little to no difficulty. Let’s not forget the biggest obstacle to Pokemon is Pokemon itself. When Sword and Shield destroyed the Pokedex Temtem became popular and now when Pokemon released Violet and Scarlet which is still a broken buggy mess of a game Palworld became popular. People also see the difference in price for Pokemon games $60 is needed for a mostly average game. I can get Temtem, The Nexomon Collection, and Palworld for around the same price and get more stable gameplay, better challenges, more fun and get four games. I’m wondering how gamers will react either by voicing discontent on twitter or taking advantage of Metacritic and IGNs review system and making sure Nintendo know they messed up with fans.

Realistically, Nintendo will just throw money at a lawsuit till Pocket Pair run out of money or they lose due to corruption. People have crunched the numbers and Nintendo hasn’t lost any lawsuits they put forward. As unfair to Palworld as this is and as much as people will complain nothing will change.