Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have filed a legal case against the maker of survival adventure game Palworld over alleged patent infringement.

The game, created by Tokyo-based developer Pocketpair, was quickly dubbed ‘Pokémon with guns’ after being unveiled in mid-January, attracting more than 25 million players within a month of its release.

Despite a drop off in the number of players since then the open-world multiplayer has remained popular, averaging over 1.7 million players in July and over 800,000 in August, according to the ActivePlayer website.

In the game, players, known as ‘Pal-tamers’, travel around a map to catch and collect monsters by ‘strategically throwing a sphere’, which they can then train to fight and work in order to collect more pals.

Pocketpair’s website describes the game as a blend of “battle, monster capturing, training, and base building.” 

As many have pointed out, the format is strikingly similar to the hugely popular Pokémon gameplay, which was first released back in February 1996.

In a statement on the lawsuit, Nintendo said it was taking action to stop the ‘infringement of its intellectual property rights’. 

The Pokémon Company said in January it would investigate and take action over any infringement of those intellectual property rights, but didn’t specify what spurred them to bring a lawsuit at this time.

Some have speculated that it might be down in part to the announcement in July that Pocketpair was to join with Sony Music Entertainment and Aniplex Inc to create a joint venture called Palworld Entertainment, set to promote the game globally.

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Pushing back on the announcement, Palworld said in its own statement: “We have received notice of this lawsuit and will begin the appropriate legal proceedings and investigations into the claims of patent infringement. At this moment, we are unaware of the specific patents we are accused of infringing upon, and we have not been notified of such details.”

The statement continued, “Our goal as a company has always been to create fun games. We will continue to pursue this goal because we know that our games bring joy to millions of gamers around the world. We will continue improving Palworld and strive to create a game that our fans can be proud of.”