Blizzard, EA, Epic Games, Ubisoft, and more have been accused of predatory monetization and purposefully addictive practices by the father of a minor who is allegedly addicted to games.
The lawsuit, brought forward by one Casey Dunn, alleges that Dunn’s 13-year-old minor has been playing Fortnite, Rainbow Six, Battlefield, and Call of Duty, and that their gaming addiction has caused “mental anguish, pain, suffering, emotional distress, actual financial loss, and other economic injuries and losses.”
The complaint argues that video games have little regulatory guidance outside of the ESRB, which is mostly used for content, not practices. In-game purchases have incentivized the industry to use addictive practices to keep impressionable gamers online for longer periods of time, and therefore more likely to purchase content, according to the complaint. The target, explicitly, is minors, the plaintiff argues.
Everyone in the industry benefits from this practice, including Google, Apple, and Steam (all defendants) because they take a cut from purchases on their platforms. The psychological tactics that game developers use have little to no regulation, and that has adversely affected the plaintiff’s relationship with their gaming-addicted child, according to the lawsuit.
Lawsuits and regulation have been brought against multiple game developers for predatory monetization practices in the past, but most lawsuits center around loot boxes. This lawsuit attacks the root of the problem: the practices that make loot boxes enticing.
The lawsuit also argues a different point: Games linked to players’ social media pages can and are being used to mine data. This data is used to further target monetization, playing on gamers’ behavior to a greater degree. The lawsuit’s argument further asserts this focused monetization further harms minors, whose spending behavior is virtually unrestricted by the platforms.
While the lawsuit may seem frivolous or the product of overprotective parents, the allegations are serious. Microtransactions can keep a game’s shelf life far beyond what it normally would be, and many argue that’s due to psychological, addiction-forming practices in live service games.
