Welcome back to another roundup of MMO and online games industry news.
There’s a new class action in town, and EA is the target. Plaintiff Kevin Ramirez’s suit claims that the Ultima Team Packs in the FIFA and Madden franchise titles are “predatory and designed to entice gamers to gamble” and “nothing more than a gambling bet” that are “simply wagers on completely randomized chances within the game to win valuable professional players and other items for the EA gamer’s virtual sports team.” The suit was filed in California, presumably to take advantage of the specific verbiage of gambling laws in the state. The suit seeks $5M in damages.
In other business news…
The Australian ratings board is apparently moving forward with its plan to require video games with microtransactions to prominently feature that fact on the game’s actual packaging.
No news sites have reported this, so let’s discuss: Australia now requires in-game purchases to be disclosed on the front covers of physical video games starting with games submitted in May this year onwards. from Games
And finally, Kotaku has a report on the openly racist Overwatch team participating in the Open Division tournament that was only recently banned after a fellow player noticed the racist acronym, website, recruiting, and team chat. Blizzard nuked them all, in spite of claims that they were just running an “experiment” to challenge Blizzard. Sure they were. Good riddance.
