I was today years old when I learned that Kojima patented so much of Death Stranding that simply making a game about carrying cargo on foot from A to B is risking a potential lawsuit.
What the fuck, man.
@Deiru Patent portal is not working for me at the moment so I can't check, but various sources seem to suggest that the patent was filed by Sony, rather than Kojima?
@joepie91 Kojima is credited as the one who came up with the tech being patented.
So he at very least had part in filing them or condoning them.
@Deiru Right, but it is very possible that Sony set this (transferring patent rights) as a requirement to fund the game's development at all.
That doesn't mean there's no ethical implications of saying yes to that, of course, but it is very different from "Kojima patented this thing" - and given how common these sorts of clauses are, you can't necessarily assume that Kojima was aware of the *extent* of the patents that would be filed, for example.
