Played any of the WB Games Middle-earth titles like Shadow of Mordor or Shadow of War? In case you haven’t you’ll be glad to know that these are fantastic open world titles that employ an equally fantastic feature called the Nemesis System, which was one of the strongest features of the game, allowing you to form certain interactions with various foes in the game depending on your actions. Think of it as something similar to the recent Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Order of the Ancients feature.

As per IGN’s report, after multiple attempts since 2015, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment have finally secured the patent for the Nemesis System, which will take effect starting February 23, 2021 until 2035. Simply put, the now patented system cannot be used by other games, and in the event that they do, will need clearance from Warner Bros.

While patents usually indicate very specific systems, some games like Assassin’s Creed have successfully recreated it to fit their own titles, side-stepping any legal implications, but this was also done prior to the patent taking effect. We’ll have to see if any title after the patent goes live later in the month will change the efforts of other studios.

A system like this is obviously something that is not simple to do, and would take dedicated teams to complete, so it would not be surprising if any legal battles would actually be fought over it in the years to come. As for WB Games, it would be interesting to see if some semblance of the system makes its way into their future releases like Gotham Knights or Suicide Squad.