Lawful Neutral is a column focused on law and business in the online gaming world; it’s written by Andy McAdams. [Follow this column’s RSS feed]
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Lawful Neutral: Reverse engineering World of Warcraft’s subscriber numbers
Do you know what time it is? It's almost quarterly financial report time! We probably won't see a full quarterly report from Activision-Blizzard as...
Lawful Neutral: Assessing the privacy policies governing World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV
It never fails to surprise me just what some people will say in general chat in an MMO. They'll say things they would never...
Lawful Neutral: Freedom of speech in MMOs
I don't think a day goes by without gamers ranting on Reddit or Twitter or forums or comment sections about how their freedom of...
Lawful Neutral: How might the so-called AI revolution affect the MMO genre?
This article has been rolling around in my head since ChatGPT rocketed into the public awareness a few months ago, and just in the...
Lawful Neutral: What if Activision-Blizzard just… sold Blizzard?
Last week, Activision-Blizzard and Bobby Kotick got a bad surprise: The UK moved to block the acquisition of ABK by Microsoft, citing concerns over...
Lawful Neutral: What MMO gamers need to know about Section 230
You might have seen something in the news last week about a thing called Section 230 and lots of panic over the "end of...
Lawful Neutral: Recapping 2022’s MMO and gaming law dramas
Fam, it's been a year. I know we've been saying that pretty much every year since 2016, but we'll stop saying it when it...
Lawful Neutral: How extremism and terrorism slither into online gaming
Back in 2014, something happened in the gaming space, something whose impact was so damaging that even almost 10 years later, I realize that...
Lawful Neutral: How is an NFT MMO even supposed to work?
Recently, MassivelyOP hit a milestone: We received our quadrabajillionth email announcing that Scammy-scammers-now-with-NFTs-and-also-metaverse-because-reasons Inc. was a proven market leader with a new scamming game...
Lawful Neutral: Recapping the MMO industry’s legal dramas, 2021 edition
With meatspace commitments causing no-end of stress and herculean amounts of work for me, Lawful Neutral had a bit of a slow year that...
Lawful Neutral: Managing toxicity in the MMO industry
When I'm playing games, I make a lot of use of the reporting function. If I see a moonkin zerg farming a spot in...
Lawful Neutral: Defining toxicity in the MMO industry
One of my earliest memories from World of Warcraft isn't really a positive one. It was in back in the Wrath days. My guild...
Lawful Neutral: The bizarre corporate effort to buy RuneScape studio Jagex
Would it really be a new year without Runescape developer Jagex being involved in some sort of weird corporate sale only to be blocked...
Lawful Neutral: 2020 was the year that wasn’t for MMO legal news
It seems surreal, but it is that time of the year again when we wax nostalgic about the year that was. Well, maybe this...
Lawful Neutral: The Epic vs. Apple lawsuit – when titans are tweens
The MassivelyOP Golden Yacht was anchored someplace off the coast of Maine when the first news about Epic suing Apple hit. We had sailed...
Lawful Neutral: No really, who owns Jagex and RuneScape?
RuneScape is one of those games that always seems to fly under my radar. It's not intentional, and I don't have anything especially against...
Lawful Neutral: Leakers, trade secrets, and lawsuits in the online gaming world
In recent years, you might have noticed a new type of lawsuit coming out of game companies, as some of the more litigation-happy studios...
Lawful Neutral: Cheating, copyright law, and the WoW Glider lawsuit
I have fond memories of using the Game Genie on my NES. To my seven-year-old self, it was a godsend. So many Nintendo games...
Lawful Neutral: Examining the infamous MMO lockbox, 2020 edition
I have a soft spot for paranormal horror. I love movies about demons, ghosts, hauntings, possessions. There's one particular movie from the early aughts...
Lawful Neutral: Examining DDoS attacks and their impact on MMOs
When I was younger, used to play with LEGOs with my cousins all the time. We'd spend time creating huge houses and vehicles that...
