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Presentation Outline – November 6th
As the Gaming industry has grown and developed, the level of interconnectivity and involvement has changed. Far from the simple days of “Pong” flashing on screens, Video Games are driving technological advancements and innovation while at the same time representing a trigger point for social impacts and consumption of entertainment. While gaming has had a […]
Money Laundering Using Video Game Loot Boxes
Valve has shut down the ability for players to buy and re-sell keys to access in-game loot boxes in the popular game Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) in a bid to combat money laundering. Only recently, the company announced in a blog post that the online marketplace has been taken over by large fraud networks […]
Presentation Outline: Legal Issues of Valve (Digital Game Reselling + Geoblocking)
Dear Class, We would like to briefly inform you about the topic of our presentation next Wednesday. We will discuss the very current and important decision from France in the matter of UFC Que Choisir v. S.A.R.L. Valve. The topic is the resale of digital video games by customers of the Steam platform. According […]
Advertising in Video Games
I’ll be presenting on legal issues arising from advertising in video games, which include the aspects of video game advertising, in-game advertisements and “advergames”. I’ll begin with an overview of the three, then I’ll examine the issues of protection of vulnerable audiences, disclosure and false advertising by looking at Canadian, the U.S. and the U.K. […]
Better Protection from Loot Boxes?
There has been much talk regarding Fortnite in recent weeks, particularly given the recent class-action lawsuit by a Montreal legal firm on behalf of two minors, to sue the company for producing such an addictive game. Now, a new report in the UK has been released, investigating the relationship young people in the UK have […]
He played for 72 hours straight: South Korea wrestles with video game addiction
His bedroom door was always locked, and when his grandmother stood on the veranda and peered through his window, he was invariably engrossed in an on-screen gunfight. He eventually began disappearing to play at internet cafes. Night after night, she would search for him, and he would try to evade her. Now he is 21 […]
Presentation Outline – 23 October 2019
Hello all, On Wednesday 23rd October, I’ll be presenting on the application of copyright law to video game livestreams and recorded playthroughs (“Let’s Plays”), which are commonly uploaded on internet platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. I’ll be covering the following points: Overview of Let’s Plays and livestreams on YouTube and Twitch; Applying copyright law […]
Settlement between YouTube and ‘DMCA Extortion Scammer’
YouTube recently settled a dispute with a man who abused the platform’s DMCA takedown system. The defendant in the lawsuit had been repeatedly making false copyright infringement claims to harass and extort money from content creators, threatening them with DMCA takedown notices for content that wasn’t his. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (‘DMCA’) is a […]
Nintendo’s War on ROMs
A ROM (“Read Only Memory”), as described by Nintendo refers to the “process of copying the software that constitutes a video game from the read-only memory found in a game cartridge or disk”, which can be played on various devices including non-Nintendo devices such as PCs and mobile phones through emulators, “a piece of software […]
Moderating Video Game Streaming Services
The attacker who killed two people in a shooting at a German synagogue livestreamed the assault on Twitch, a video service owned by Amazon. It was one of the first violent attacks streamed on the service, which is best known for letting people watch others play competitive video games. Twitch said it found and took […]