There has been a rise of lawsuits against video game companies or developers in recent months. Today another has been thrown on the pile as a mother in Cuyahoga County is suing a number of software companies over her son’s video game addiction. Apparently the idea behind the case is that video games are designed to be addictive to individuals, and that this harmful intent is working against, in this case, minors. It is unclear what stage of schooling the child in question falls into, and how that might impact the case. The head of the prosecution legal team has spoken about the case to some degree.
According to an interview with Fox News, Ed Kelley, the head of the prosecution team is aware that large population enjoys video games in a perfectly healthy way. On the other hand, he instead hopes to help parents know how to “protect their children” and navigate dealing with “such a vulnerable population.” Kelley is aware of the struggle to redefine the gaming industry’s supposed methods, and based on the response from the Entertainment Software Association they aren’t that worried.
However, this is just the latest in a slew of lawsuits that seek to address video game addiction. In an article from Polygon, last updated on April 25th with a statement from the ESA that probably reflects similar sentiments to the one they sent to Fox. One of the biggest targets for legal teams in these cases is predatory microtransactions. These transactions happen in game after purchase or download, and that ask for players to use money for some form of in-game currency such as pulls in gacha games. Often the things purchased in microtransactions are used to procure the things in the game players actually want. Using money to get the necessary currency is just often easier than attempting to hoard enough of the necessary currency.
While that prong of their argument holds some weight, the other is a bit more challenging to believe. There have been claims that developing companies have departments with dedicated psychologists that are used to design games to be addictive. Many of the plaintiffs involved in the cases covered in Polygon’s article were hoping to bring them all together under one multi-district lawsuit. However, there is not a lot of precedence for these lawsuits moving beyond the initial phases before being shut down in some way. Whether this larger one, or the one recently filed in Cuyahoga County, will be the one to finally succeed still remains to be seen.