legal
Former Guild Wars 2 cinematic animator calls out NCsoft for withholding owed back pay
Apparently, NCSoft has a policy in place that withholds owed back pay even if an employee has the courtesy to put in a notice...
Alleged stalker of a World of Warcraft streamer is arrested and faces five years of federal prison time
A two year-long hell for one streamer of World of Warcraft is hopefully coming to an end. Evan Baltierra, a former Los Angeles World...
Four Winds: Remembering TERA’s wild start and in-game politics
Well, the TERA sunset thing caught me off guard. I don't play TERA, but I was always under the impression that the game was...
Hearthstone class action lawsuit targets ‘deceitful’ marketing practices
Behind the jaunty art designs and goofy voice quips of Hearthstone lies another headache-in-the-making for Blizzard Entertainment. Polygon reports that the studio is getting...
MMO Business Roundup: China’s gaming crackdown, NetEase Connect, Wild Rift plagiarism, and Valve’s anti-trust lawsuit
Welcome back to another roundup of MMO and MMO-adjacent business and industry news.
China: The Chinese government is continuing to widen its long-running crackdown on...
Gravity is apparently cracking down on Ragnarok’s rogue server community
The Ragnarok Online rogue server community is in uproar this week as Ragnarok's Korean developer and publisher, Gravity Co., has filed at least one...
New York City just lodged a new lawsuit against Activision-Blizzard
A new lawsuit filed in Delaware by multiple New York City retirement and pension funds alleges in court something that's seemed like an open...
CWA says Activision-Blizzard management threatened workers for discussing labor rights
If a complaint filed to the National Labor Relations Board has any merit, the management of Activision-Blizzard has been working behind the scenes as...
ABK shareholders approve Microsoft buyout, World of Warcraft gets new executive producer
We've got some hefty Activision Blizzard news for you today, so buckle up and let's go for a ride.
Shareholders approve Microsoft buyout: On our...
Activision-Blizzard’s Raven Software gets green light to vote for a union by National Labor Relations Board
This past Friday saw a major step forward for the QA workers of Activision-Blizzard studio Raven Software, as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)...
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...
The FBI says it was a North Korean hacker gang that crimed Axie Infinity for $620M
At the tail end of March, we reported on a massive hack of exploitative play-to-earn blockchain job/game Axie Infinity. At the time, the hackers...
Disney has quashed another Club Penguin emulator, this time with arrests in the UK
Remember way back in 2017, when Disney shut down the long-running Club Penguin MMO in order to replace it with Club Penguin Island? And...
DFEH attorney accuses California governor of interfering in the Activision-Blizzard lawsuit
The Activision-Blizzard scandal just keeps on scandaling - and drawing more people and agencies into its ugly orbit. Bloomberg has a piece up today...
MMO Business Roundup: China’s freeze, ABK’s new diversity officer, and Sony and Epic’s metaverse
Welcome back to another roundup of MMO and MMO-adjacent industry news.
China has ended its latest gaming-approval freeze after nine months of regulators locking out...
Activision-Blizzard promotes over a thousand QA testers and bumps their pay – but not the ones unionizing
Last night, Activision-Blizzard announced that it is converting 1100 quality assurance testers from contract work to full-time with pay starting at a minimum of...
Don’t worry, Apple, Roblox likes you instead of Epic in the appeals process
So back when Epic appealed against the ruling in the Epic vs. Apple case - you know, the case that you thought was over...
GDC 2022: Control, revenue, scarcity, ethics, and the human challenges of the gaming ‘metaverse’
While some panels at GDC 2022 have been deeply disappointing, the panel titled "A Brave New (Virtual) World: Ethics and Governance of XR and...
Activision-Blizzard’s $18M settlement with the EEOC is officially finalized
Yesterday saw the long fight among the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing, and Activision-Blizzard over an $18M...
Bungie files a lawsuit against 10 people allegedly responsible for recent DMCA video strikes
Last week there were reports that fans of Destiny and even developer Bungie itself were on the receiving end of DMCA-led video takedowns. At...
