legal
Kids these days: Fortnite fights a 14-year-old in court, signs 13-year-old to e-sports team
Epic Games is still doggedly pursuing supposed Fortnite cheaters. As we reported back in November, one of the defendants in Epic's many lawsuits is...
Belgium orders Overwatch, CSGO, and FIFA 18 to remove lockboxes or face criminal penalties
Back in 2017, at the height of mainstream outrage over lockbox shenanigans, Belgium became one of the very first countries to take the problem...
Roblox takes down popular Pokemon-themed MMO
One of the big dangers of granting content creation tools to the community -- especially in a game that swings some game revenue back...
Go down gamblin’: The Big Fish Casino game ruling in Washington spawns more lawsuits
So here's an interesting case that could impact online game development in the US. Apparently, a few weeks ago the Ninth Circuit of U.S....
Australian courts deny Valve’s final appeal in Steam consumer protection case
Looks like Valve is really going to have to pony up in that four-year Australia consumer protection case, which finally drew to a close...
Dutch Gaming Authority calls out four games as violating its lootbox policies
If you had expected the Netherlands to be leading the fight against lootboxes, you may be more clairvoyant than the rest of the population....
Bot-maker Bossland’s legit game flops, Germany rejects Blizzard’s US court victory and won’t enforce damages
Are you surprised to be hearing about Bossland again? We're surprised to be reporting on it. The German-based botmaker made headlines for the last...
Police who killed innocent man during Call of Duty swatting incident won’t be charged
At the tail end of 2017, a Call of Duty swatting incident in Kansas took the life of a completely innocent man after police killed him...
The Daily Grind: What’s the biggest scandal the MMORPG genre has ever seen?
Over the weekend in the Guild Wars 2 spyware article comments, a commenter remarked that Blizzard's Warden spyware was "the biggest scandal in MMOs"...
PUBG Corp’s infringement lawsuit against NetEase may not be completely ridiculous after all
Last week, we wrote about how PUBG Corp is suing NetEase (and NetEase is threatening to sue everyone) over alleged copyright infringement in regard...
The 2015 ArcheAge class action lawsuit continues, snarled in arbitration appeals
Waaaay back in 2015, a group of ArcheAge players filed a lawsuit against Trion Worlds over the Patron perk mess. Veteran MMO players will...
NetEase threatens to sue everybody who cloned its battle royale clones
On Friday, we covered PUBG Corp's lawsuit against NetEase, which alleges that the Chinese company has infringed PUBG's copyrights in its overt battle royale...
South Korea continues to hand out fines for deceptive lootbox practices
Nexon isn't the only Korean studio that has been targeted by the government and fined for dishonest practices with its online games and lockboxes. The...
The war on toxicity: Overwatch League and Rainbow Six Siege crack down
Are studios starting to wake up and take action against particularly odious instances of gaming toxicity in their products? Blizzard, at least, is working...
Nexon is fined for using shady lootbox ‘gachapon’ techniques in South Korea
If you've ever been frustrated over online games refusing to disclose the odds of winning anything in lockboxes, then get ready to do a...
PUBG Corp sues Netease for cloning PUBG in Knives Out and Rules of Survival
Let the battle royale lawsuits begin! TorrentFreak caught wind of a new lawsuit in California that ought to set all the cloners on edge:...
Pokemon Go developer Niantic to pay out $1.5 million for its disastrous festival
Remember when Pokemon Go had a big live festival for player in Chicago? Considering how quickly the event devolved into a nightmare, Niantic is...
A man reportedly attacked other men over Pokemon Go
It's been nearly two years since the release of Pokemon Go, and on its initial release it seemed like we were always hearing about...
Here’s how Netmarble’s fighting crunch after multiple developer deaths
Last year, Netmarble came under fire from South Korean authorities following the death of a game developer under its banner. Korea Workers' Compensation and...
MMO business roundup: Steam, toxicity, Kartridge, contracts, dopamine, and guns
What's going on in the online video games business this week? Let's dig in.
Steam, toxicity, and Kartridge
The Center for Investigative Reporting (via Motherboard) has a...
