Mario Bautista
The plaintiff has voluntarily dismissed two lawsuits regarding game addiction. These lawsuits were against some of the biggest companies in the game industry, and the cases were filed in Arkansas and Ohio, respectively. Game File has reviewed the court records, but the summary is not available unless you subscribe to the website. The court cases were filed against companies such as Epic, Activision Blizzard, Take Two Interactive, Rockstar Games, Roblox, Microsoft, and Sony.
The lawyers representing the companies involved used protections under the First Amendment to defend themselves, saying that “the plaintiffs should be bound by user agreements that mandate arbitration, not lawsuits.”
This isn’t the first time that game addiction lawsuits have been filed, as a dozen video game addiction lawsuits were voluntarily dismissed in June. For example, one woman sued companies in East Saint Louis federal court last fall, alleging that the defendants’ “intentional, negligent, deceptive, fraudulent, willful, immoral, reckless and unlawful acts” caused her grandchild to become addicted to video games. Her complaint was written out in a 161-page complaint, stating that their grandchild became addicted at the age of seven and gets angry when told to stop playing games.
According to the lawsuit, the grandchild allegedly needed “medication therapy, outpatient counseling, and an Individualized Education Plan” at school. However, after Epic looked through their files for the supposed account, it was found that the supposed account the child was playing on was only used to play games for one hour.
Many more of these lawsuits are continuing to come forward, and the latest suits to be thrown out of court were filed by a mother on behalf of her child, saying that the child would play video games for 12 to 14 hours a day and spent approximately $3,000 on in-game transactions and downloadable content.
It isn’t the first time that stories have been released speaking about children spending an unprecedented amount of money on in-game currencies, typically using their parents’ payment methods without them knowing. One of the most common games in which this happens is Roblox, alongside Fortnite.
Roblox is a controversial game as it is, but it has currently been banned in Turkey for potential child exploitation, and other countries may begin to follow suit.
