Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment, publishers of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and its 2017 sequel, Shadow of War (both developed by Monolith Entertainment), eventually managed to obtain a patent for the franchise’s Nemesis System.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a notice on February 3, 2021 stating that the patent would take effect on February 23 this year. Warner Bros. have the option to maintain the patent until 2035, provided they keep the necessary fees.The patent, filed as ‘Nemesis characters, nemesis forts, social vendettas and followers in computer games’, codifies the functions of Monolith’s Nemesis system and the sum of the parts effectively as the property of WB.
Although the language in the application is rather dumb – as most patent claims usually are – the ‘short’ version is that the patent covers a system that contains procedure-generated NPCs that exist in a hierarchy and with the action of players will remember and remember. , their appearance / behavior must be changed by players, and whose place in that hierarchy can change and influence the position of other NPCs in said hierarchy (and yes, that’s the simplified version).
From WB’s 2016 patent application.
It also covers the Social Conquest battles of Shadow of War, in which players can fortify or attack each other’s fortresses to see how their army orcs perform against their friends.
Warner Bros. tried since 2015 to obtain the patent on the system, but had to review and re-submit the application repeatedly. Initial rejections claim that there were too many similarities with other patents – including those held by Square Enix, the mobile game QONQR and even Webkinz – although recent patent rejections have focused more on the specificity of language.Although it is unclear what would happen, a game with its own Nemesis system would be released until February 23, but after that date, any developer wants to build a feature with all the aspects set out in the patent (or at least enough to be considered infringement) will need to secure a license from WB.
However, developers can still create similar systems that are not a 1: 1 recreation of Monolith’s program – the Mercenaries in AC Odyssey or Watch Dogs Legion’s fascinating census system are recent examples of dynamically generated NPCs and social networks that are unlikely to reach does not come with a legal challenge – although members of the Mordor Games and the Ubisoft teams have said, such systems are a great collaborative effort that requires a lot of resources and development time.
Rumors late last year suggested that WB Games might be acquired by Microsoft after reports that Time Warner was interested in selling its interactive division, although any talk of sales seems to have gone the way of an unfortunate captain of the orc.
JR is a Senior Editor at IGN and will always remember when a Nemesis Orc became full of Turbo and escaped its save file. You can follow him on Twitter.