Palworld removes Pal Sphere summons amidst lawsuit over Nintendo patents
Japanese developer Pocket Pair has released a new update for Palworld that effectively removes the Pal Spheres from the game. The new v0.3.11 update for the game has removed the ability to summon Pals…
The basis for the patents issued stems from Pokemon Legends: Arceus, which is the 2022 open world Pokemon game developed in 2021.
That said, 'Pokemon with guns' was done in GTA V by a pokemon go mod in 2016. There's an argument to be made that Nintendo can't hold patents on something someone else did first.
(Of course, the GTA mod isn't japanese, but my point stands.)