PlayStation’s patent on Death Stranding’s path-building mechanic could do more bad than good

Another day with more sore news from gaming, this time in the form of a patent filed by PlayStation being approved.

First reported by VGC, the patent aims to protect a feature that sounds pretty similar to Death Stranding’s feature of building roads and the ability to improve them based on players’ direct interaction with them. Interestingly, the patent was filed four months before Death Stranding’s PlayStation 4 release.

Historically, we have seen patents filed by gaming companies doing more harm than good to the game development space. It would be interesting to see if this patent filed by PlayStation affects the development scenario.

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What Playstation’s patent aims to protect

On Tuesday, a patent filed by Playstation named “terrain radar and gradual building of a route in a virtual environment of a video game” got approved. The patent aims to “improve the first path based on the number of times the first path has been traversed by one or more characters”.

Building roads in Death Stranding (Image via Death Stranding)

People who play Death Stranding will find that it sounds very similar, as it points to a feature in the game where paths traveled by players can be improved upon by depositing materials to it and building the roads completely.

Co-Incidentially, the inventor of the patent seems to be addressed to Hideo Kojima, the creator of Death Stranding.

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The history of game patents and how it has been a headache for game development

Historically, game features being patented by developers and publishers have never been helpful to the gaming circle. Bandai Namco is notoriously known for patenting various gameplay features back in the old days.

For example, in 1998, Bandai Namco, which was called Namco at that point, would patent the feature where game developers could put smaller games in the loading screen to keep players preoccupied while the game loaded. Until 2015, there wasn't a single game that had this feature, as incorporating it would potentially land the developers in hot waters with lawyers.

Similarly, the entire game mechanic of rolling things into a ball (and the ball growing gradually) was patented and is still under patent till 2026, meaning no developers out there can make something similar to this feature.

Katamari Damacy (Image via Katamari Damacy: Reroll)

In recent years, Warner Bros patented the nemesis system of Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, effectively not letting any other developer make anything similar to that system until allowed by the company in 2025.

The Nemesis System (Image via Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor)

Patenting of game features essentially leads to the killing of innovation, as developers are pretty much not allowed to use these features in their own games and make something memorable or magical. After all, no one likes getting sued by big companies for thousands of dollars.

It is no surprise then that people are not really happy about the PlayStation patent being approved, as it very much means that maybe Death Stranding and future games by PlayStation might be the only ones to have those features.

Only time can tell what this patent by PlayStation brings, and whether it will benefit the game development circle or not. After all, patents can be shared, like EA sharing their five protected patents regarding accessibility back in August.