Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment, editors of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and its 2017 sequel, Shadow of War (both developed by Monolith Entertainment), have finally managed to secure a patent for the franchise’s Nemesis System subscription.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office issued a notice of issue on February 3, 2021, declaring that the patent would go into effect on February 23 this year. Warner Bros. has the option to keep the patent until 2035, as long as it maintains the necessary fees.The patent, registered as “Nemesis characters, nemesis forts, social revenge and followers in computer games”, effectively encodes the functions of Monolith’s Nemesis system and the sum of its parts as the property of WB.
Although the language in the application is quite obtuse – as most patent claims tend to be – the “short” version is that the patent covers a system with NPCs generated by procedures that exist in a hierarchy and interact with the actions of the players. , have their appearance / behavior altered by the players, and whose place in that hierarchy can change and affect the position of other NPCs in that hierarchy (and yes, this is the simplified version).
From the WB’s 2016 patent application.
It also covers Shadow of War’s Social Conquest battles, where players can strengthen or attack each other’s strongholds to see how their army of orcs fares against that of their friends.
Warner Bros. has been trying to secure the system’s patent since 2015, but has had to review and resubmit the application several times. The initial rejections claimed that there were many similarities in the application with other patents – including those held by Square Enix, the QONQR mobile game and even Webkinz – although the recent rejections were more focused on the specificity of the language throughout the patent.Although it is unclear what would happen if a game was released with its own Nemesis system between now and February 23, after that date, any developer who wishes to build a resource with all aspects detailed in the patent (or at least enough to be considered a violation) will have to obtain a license from WB.
Developers can still create similar systems that are not a 1: 1 recreation of the Monolith program, however – the Mercenaries in AC Odyssey or the Watch Dogs Legion’s fascinating census system are recent examples of dynamically generated NPCs and social networks that are likely to would not be met with a legal challenge – although as members of the Mordor games and Ubisoft teams have said, such systems are a huge collaborative effort that requires considerable resources and development time.
Rumors at the end of last year indicated that WB Games would potentially be acquired by Microsoft after reports that Time Warner was interested in selling its interactive division, although any sales talk appears to have followed the path of an unhappy orc captain.
JR is a Senior Editor at IGN and will always remember when an orc Nemesis went completely turbo and escaped his saved file. You can follow him on twitter.