A Palworld Mechanic Removed Due To Nintendo Lawsuit Brought Back By A Mod

As the lawsuit from Nintendo against the developer of the hit 2024 creature collector game Palworld continues, we've seen a few cases where, due to "prolonged legal proceedings regarding alleged patent infringement," Pocketpair had to make changes to create a safer environment for their game to stay and continue being enjoyed by the fans. The last case of this was the removal of the feature that let players use certain Pals as gliders.

Such an update, similar to the change in how players summon owned Pals by throwing Pal Spheres — the mechanic that has been considered a patent infringement of Pokémon by Nintendo — has been more or less a disappointment for some fans. Some were upset by all these deteriorations and left negative reviews on Steam, saying the game got "killed" with all these updates. 

A loyal fan has decided to take action to bring back the enjoyable mechanic. The Glider Restoration mod was uploaded to Nexus on May 10 (spotted by Dexerto), just two days after version v0.5.5 was released.

"For those of you who love flying with your pals, this mod uses sleight of hand to reverse the sleight-of-hand 'removal' of gliding pals," creator Primarinabee described the mod's function. So far, it has been downloaded 670+ times. 

In the ongoing litigation, besides making changes to reduce the legal risk, Pocketpair has also defended itself. Last month, a Japanese lawyer who accessed the case file said that Pocketpair argues that Nintendo's patents, which the company filed after the game's release, are invalid because other famous titles released earlier, such as Zelda, FF14, and Tomb Raider, already used them.