The Pokémon Company International (TPCi) works pretty hard to keep their monsters in their proper enclosures and is assiduously rooting out any attempts to use pocket monsters without an existing licensing agreement. We only saw the company a few months ago pursue six Chinese companies who had crossed the line with their own Pokemon-like, and now they’re back in court with a new target. Except this time it’s NFTs, the digital JPGs that crypto bros pretend to own.
Australian side Vooks noted papers filed in the Federal Court of Australia showing how The Pokémon Company is taking action against a company called Pokémon Pty Ltd, which claimed to be developing a mobile game called PokéWorld. Because when it comes to crypto, there is no reason for the fool.
Pokémon Pty Ltd, apparently based in Melbourne Registered as a business in 2016and appears to be operating under the name Kotiota Studios. All of these units boil down to one person, Xiaoyan Liu, according to court records. Kotiota, who doesn’t appear to exist at the address provided, then created a website for PokéWorld, a tenuous mobile game in which you battle Pokemon like Charmander and Pikachu to win Etherium-linked currency “$POKESHARD”. All in-game items that you buy are of course minted as NFTs, so anyone can trade them down to their core value of zero.
Vooks reports that the company then brazenly sent out press releases to gaming sites while they made ridiculous claims of collaborating with TPCi to produce their NFT junk. On NFT calendar, it claims that “the first Pokemon P2E NFT collection brought to you by The Pokemon Company International and Kotiota: brings the spirit of your 2000s nostalgia to WEB3”. This amazing lie pops up on the game’s page:
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During the twitter account was exposed to the The game’s website is still online, which is brave of them in the face of the court proceedings. It’s packed with Pokémon characters, even with annotated animated videos showing the uncomfortably shiny 3D monsters attacking each other in front of a lame 2D background.
However, the entire project is breathtaking to examine. Given the repeated claims that TPCi are involved, it doesn’t even try to disguise the complete cancellation of a world-famous IP, just plastering the website in the franchise.s most famous characters. what was the plan; how did you see them getting away with it? It reminds me of the group who thought they could create originals dune Works and NFTs because they bought a bookbut somehow even more stupid.
However, the group has now been ordered by a court to stop claiming any development rights immediately Pokemon Games, stop using Pokemon Properties, and most importantly, no longer claim that its Pokemon NFTs have everything to do with TPCi.
The court documents said that The Pokémon Company became aware of the project in November this year, hired a cybercrime investigation team to investigate it, and then tried to deliver papers to Xiaoyan Liu or the companies involved, but failed. The verdict was passed with no response from Kotiota, Liu, or Pokémon Pty Ltd. The court has asked for more details before it is ready to rule on damages, but it has made it abundantly clear who is in the right here.
It’s worth noting that, confusingly, this isn’t the only PokéWorld in existence. There are a very different NFT grip under the same name, although his website is dead and the twitter account has not been updated since last November. And then, something more legal, there is a very popular fringe world mod called Poke Worldwhich only makes disassembling it even more confusing.
We’ve reached out to Pokémon Pty Ltd and Kotiota and we really hope everyone involved responds because that would be it fascinating to find out where else they could have thought this was going in the direction.
