Lawsuits against video game companies and developers have been on the rise in recent months. Today, a new lawsuit piled up: a Cuyahoga County mother is suing multiple software companies over her son's video game addiction. Apparently, the idea behind the lawsuit is that video games are designed to make people addicted, and this harmful intent has a negative impact on minors, in this case. It is unclear what grade the child in question is in and how that will affect the case. The head of the prosecuting attorney has spoken at some length about the case:
According to an interview with Fox News, Ed Kelly, the head of the prosecution team, recognizes that many people enjoy video games in a healthy way. However, he would rather help parents learn how to “protect their kids” and how to deal with “these vulnerable people.” Kelly is aware of the struggle to redefine the expected way of doing things in the gaming industry, and given the Entertainment Software Association's response, he doesn't seem too worried.
But this is just the latest in a string of lawsuits attempting to address video game addiction. A Polygon article features a statement from the ESA on April 25th that likely echoes similar sentiments to the one sent to Fox. The legal team's primary target in these lawsuits is predatory microtransactions. These transactions take place within a game after purchase or download and ask players to spend money to purchase some sort of in-game currency, such as a draw in a gacha game. Microtransaction purchases are often used to procure in-game items that players actually want. Getting the currency you need with money is often easier than trying to save up enough of the currency you need.
While that part of their argument is somewhat persuasive, the other part is hard to believe: the allegation that game developers have departments with psychologists dedicated to designing addictive games. Many of the plaintiffs in the cases profiled in the Polygon article had wanted to combine all of the cases into a single multidistrict litigation; however, there isn't much precedent for these cases to be terminated in any way beyond the early stages. It remains to be seen whether this larger lawsuit, or the one recently filed in Cuyahoga County, will ultimately be successful.
