legal
A look back at the MMO industry’s law dramas of 2017
In all our many roundups at the turn of the year, we've never done one on the legal dramas that have affected the MMO...
Call of Duty swatting incident leads to man’s death in Kansas
A case of gamer "swatting" in the U.S. has led to the death of an innocent father of two in Kansas earlier this week.
According...
Crytek sues Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium, alleging copyright infringement
Update: We've updated with CIG's official statement to us below.
Crytek is suing Cloud Imperium Games and Roberts Space Industries, the companies behind the sprawling...
New Zealand declares lootboxes not gambling under the law
Are lootboxes gambling? It seems like such a simple question, but it really isn't simple from a legal or ethical standpoint, and the answer...
Hawaii state rep Chris Lee urges gamers to contact their local governments about lockboxes
Say you were a legislator concerned about the lootbox/lockbox gambling issues in gaming. How would you actually go about drafting a law that targets...
Fortnite settles one of its anti-cheater lawsuits out of court
If you'd forgotten, Fortnite wound up bringing a lawsuit against two people for cheating software being used in the game. One such suit hit...
Milwaukee settles lawsuit over Pokemon Go-inspired park ordinance
The Milwaukee lawsuit sparked by Pokemon Go is finally over.
Back in February, Milwaukee County in Wisconsin issued an ordinance requiring video game developers like...
Mother of Fortnite cheater claims that her 14-year-old son is being used as a scapegoat
Last month, Fortnite developer Epic sued two alleged associates of a cheating software site as part of the studio's hard-line approach to cheaters. Makes...
UK Gambling Commission hints it may fight lootboxes with age ratings
While you were eating turkey and buying loot this past weekend, the lockbox saga was trundling onward.
The UK Gambling Commission has formally stated that...
The Netherlands joins Belgium in investigating lockboxes as games of chance
Earlier this week, we reported on a move by the Belgian Gaming Commission to investigate lockboxes/lootboxes in games like Star Wars Battlefront 2 to...
Bossland gives up on WoW’s Honorbuddy cheat following Blizzard’s 2017 court victories
If you weren't convinced that Blizzard defeated Bossland in its string of lawsuits already, you will be today. As The Nosy Gamer noticed, Bossland...
Black Desert devs responds to datamining dust-up with stat transparency and apologies
Remember a week ago when Black Desert dataminers dug up dirt on the game's so-called hidden stats, only to be booted off the subreddit...
Black Desert’s Reddit community erupts over Pearl Abyss’ datamining suppression
So how do you feel about dataminers? One player apparently datamined a significant chunk of info about Black Desert's so-called hidden stats, posting everything...
EA has put the kibosh on a player-run Battlefield emulator – are MMOs next?
We don't cover the Battlefield games much on Massively OP, but this particular story caught my attention anyway because of the company and subject...
The US government is considering DMCA exceptions for archived online games after all
Back in 2015, an exception was made to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to allow for archival of aging video games that were otherwise...
Survival sandbox ROKH got bogged down in a ‘legal dispute,’ but it’s been resolved
It's been a few weeks since ROKH's last developer update, but there's a reason for that: a legal dispute.
"Two teams were investigating the source...
Blizzard sues alleged Overwatch clone, bans World of Warcraft cheaters
Gone are the days when Chinese companies could get away with ripping off games left and right: Blizzard is going after another one of...
CNN alleges that Russia used Pokemon Go to try to spread dissent in the USA
It always gets a bit bumpy when politics, international intrigue, and video games collide, so hold on for this one.
According to CNN, Russia's Internet...
Fortnite patches battle royale, adds BattlEye anti-cheat measures, and sues cheaters
Are you one of the 10M people who've dipped into Fortnite's battle royal mode? Or perhaps one of the 500K who played concurrently this...
Asheron’s Call emulator lead explains what went down with the cease-and-desist
What are lawyers good for? Pouring lemon juice on the open wounds of an MMO community desperately trying to hold on to the remnant...
