Lawyer Fears Rise in Gamer Litigation
Will new gaming technology lead to new problems?
Lawyering Up: Adds to sneak skills, rogue class only.
We all know how big game companies love to throw money at their lawyers over the slightest thing, but it's not all big stories about contractual fun and games. With law firms setting up divisions to specifically handle cases involving gaming, the legal industry is more than happy to take its slice of the cash.
Most cases involve privacy issues or virtual currencies in online games and, as these are played by people from all over the world, there's a raft of potential problems that lawyers are more than happy to take on. The rate of progress in gaming can also cause issues as James Gatto, head of Pilsbury LLC's Virtual Worlds and Video Games Team, is well aware of.
"Video game developers who switch over to cloud-based hosting could leave themselves open to patent lawsuits," says Gatto. "If a user's Internet connection lags, they could miss an important fight/game event and potentially have grounds for a lawsuit. Cloud-hosted games are especially likely to be the subject of data breaches and information theft."
Not a very positive outlook, then. But there's more. The monitoring of communications between players could be subject to government investigations. The use of player information to target advertising while in-game. The subject of paid endorsments. All are potential minefields and, of course, potentially lucrative if you've got the law degree.
It's a big old world out there that most of us don't have a clue about. The lawyers will pick over every single word in the T&Cs, fight for whatever side pays them and keep themselves in high-end PCs that are more than capable of running Crytek's games at top resolution. We may not know much but it's good to keep abreast of the situation.
Source: fastcompany.com
Most cases involve privacy issues or virtual currencies in online games and, as these are played by people from all over the world, there's a raft of potential problems that lawyers are more than happy to take on. The rate of progress in gaming can also cause issues as James Gatto, head of Pilsbury LLC's Virtual Worlds and Video Games Team, is well aware of.
"Video game developers who switch over to cloud-based hosting could leave themselves open to patent lawsuits," says Gatto. "If a user's Internet connection lags, they could miss an important fight/game event and potentially have grounds for a lawsuit. Cloud-hosted games are especially likely to be the subject of data breaches and information theft."
Not a very positive outlook, then. But there's more. The monitoring of communications between players could be subject to government investigations. The use of player information to target advertising while in-game. The subject of paid endorsments. All are potential minefields and, of course, potentially lucrative if you've got the law degree.
It's a big old world out there that most of us don't have a clue about. The lawyers will pick over every single word in the T&Cs, fight for whatever side pays them and keep themselves in high-end PCs that are more than capable of running Crytek's games at top resolution. We may not know much but it's good to keep abreast of the situation.
Source: fastcompany.com
Games:
World of Warcraft
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