The Microsoft-FTC hearing may have stolen the show in recent weeks, but it’s far from the only legal dispute the video game industry has faced in its history. In this editorial, I will show you some of the most curious cases in which the courts have decided the fate of a company.
Brace yourself, as we’ll see several names that continue to battle it out in court to this day.
Odyssey and its fight with… Activision
We start with this for two curiosities, the first, that this is one of the first legal disputes in the industry, and the second, because Its protagonist is a name that is on everyone’s lips today: Activision. Long before Xbox, Playstation and many others, there was the Magnavox Odyssey which had the rights to several games with their corresponding commands, very popular thanks to the success of the famous Pong.
The company had the license for the ice hockey and tennis games and this caused Activision to sue it over licensing issues. It seems, the Magnavox patent was too broadbut the judge eventually ruled in his favor and awarded the rights to the company responsible for Oddysey in 1988.
World of Warcraft in bot danger
We leave with another acquaintance in the present. Already in 2010, Blizzard had taken the floor to unleash its judicial fury against the MDY company. But let’s get to the heart of the matter to understand what it is. In 1998, in the United States, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, was approved, which asserts copyrights against potential infringers who seek a way around different technological measures in order to modify the intellectual property.
In December of this year marked by the world championship in the hands of Europe, the developers of World of Warcraft and the leaders of MDY, a company which had programmed robots who made a kind of agriculture in the early levels of WoW for those who subscribe to their service. To avoid this kind of situation, Blizzard Warden technology established which prevented third-party software from connecting to WoW, causing MDY to create another robot to hide the first Guardian. The decision was in favor of Blizzard. understand that MDY technology affected the dynamic player experience.
There is no life after Splinter Cell
In October 2003, the Quebec Court of Appeal arbitrated between two industry titans: Ubisoft and EA. The French had placed an injunction to prevent 5 key members of the Tom Clancy: Splinter Cell development team from being hired by EA. Notably The Civil Code of Canada allows employers to prohibit their employees from competing with the company in the futurefor which the Canadian court ended up giving reason to Ubisoft and thus creating a precedent for the future.
EA would need lawyers again this year, in 2023, when an Austrian court ruled the nullity of a contract between Sony and various FIFA players who had spent over $85,000 on player card packs. The judgment was supported by the possibility of these packs being marketed outside of the EA platform, which constitutes a “financial gain”, according to Austrian betting law, since the dealers obtain an income. Thus, the court ruled that the infamous loot boxes were considered illegal bets, because although they can be marketed on Austrian territory, they must do so under license.
misleading similarities
Ten years earlier, in 2013, EA’s attorneys were already sitting in the courts of the third US Court of Appeals by the pardon of Ryan Hart. Most likely, if you’re not from the United States, you don’t know who this boy is, so I’ll explain: Hart was a college football player who played at Rutgers University in New Jersey between 2002 and 2005. In an absurd move, EA decided to use the university’s image without its permission in its NCAA Football, although, of course, from the company, they denied that it was the player in question.
The court initially decided that the resemblance was not enough to compel the company to compensate the victim, which had happened in the past, although the case was reopened a year later and obtained a different outcome.
Reverse engineering on the side of the law
Fast forward to October 1992. Sega is riding the crest of the wave, licensing here and there to developers who wanted to port their titles to the awesome Mega Drive. Accolade, for its part, wanted to avoid the red tape (and the fees that go with it) and decided to reverse engineer the first model of the console and the third to achieve compatibility of its games with the hardware, without the associated cost. . Sega decided to sue the company for fraud, but paradoxically the judge decided to rule in favor of the offenders since reverse engineering was considered a valid method. The case has served as an example in similar disputes involving different types of technology.
Gauchos sin Carmageddon
The case of Carmaggedon continues to be one of the most curious in South America, and it is that in 1998 the legislators of Buenos Aires prohibited the distribution of the title, as well as its marketing, sale, rental and advertising promotion in the Argentine territory. . The law also applied to other similar games “aimed at killing people while driving a vehicle or that contravene behaviors typical of the traffic laws in force in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires”. This ban is still in effect today. and interestingly, it was never applied to other similar titles like GTA.
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