Issues/Your Take

Hot Off the Press! Panic!

Hot Off the Press! Panic!

This month, a new article was published in Computers in Human Behavior called “The relationship between loot box buying, gambling, internet gaming, and mental health: Investigating the moderating effect of impulsivity, depression, anxiety, and stress.”[1] This research confirms already established correlational relationships between loot box spending, problem gambling symptoms and internet gaming disorder. However, it […]

The Pokémon Company’s Legal Battle Against ‘Copycat’ Game Developers Ends in Settlement

The Pokémon Company’s Legal Battle Against ‘Copycat’ Game Developers Ends in Settlement

Hello friends, I hope you all had a restful reading break! I wanted to highlight a major update in a long-running legal battle in the video game law world. If you haven’t been following, The Pokémon Company has been involved in a lawsuit with ‘copycat’ game developers for years, and they recently announced that the […]

Rated C for Censorship: Legal Discussions Around Video Game Censorship

Rated C for Censorship: Legal Discussions Around Video Game Censorship

Hi everyone! We hope everyone is having a fantastic and restful reading week! Next Tuesday, we will be discussing topics around the censorship of video games around the world. The outline for our presentation is as follows: Pre-censorship Video Games Introduction of Censorship Video Game Ratings & Sales Censorship Content Censorship Sociopolitical Issues & Developments […]

How Modders Fixed a Broken Sonic Game

How Modders Fixed a Broken Sonic Game

Hi everyone, In light of this week’s presentation on modding, I thought I would make a discussion post about a Japanese developer that is receptive to mods and an example of modding where modders essentially fixed a broken game (similar to Grand Prix Legends). While it is true that Japanese developers in general do not […]

Purple animated loot box with a glowing square on its side.

Loot Boxes: The World of Microgambling in Video Games

Hello friends! 🤖 We (Samuel, Eva, & Cléa) are looking forward to presenting to you all on Tuesday!  We will be discussing the legal and psychological world of loot boxes (such a cool topic, we know – you snooze, you lose!). In preparation for Tuesday, here is an outline of our presentation, and a spoiler […]

Epic Games To Pay $520 Milllion: A Win For The Rights of Gamers

Epic Games To Pay $520 Milllion: A Win For The Rights of Gamers

As this class comes to an end and I reflect on the course, I realize that I was most intrigued by the perspective of the rights of the gamer. I expected this class to focus on the rights of the developers and if the gamer rights would be discussed it would mostly be in the […]

Thoughts on the representation of Law in video games

Thoughts on the representation of Law in video games

Throughout the semester, we have learned about video game law, in other words, how the law regulates and hinge on video games. The name of the course could then have been “Video Games and Law”. But what happens if we reverse those two words? Does the meaning remain intact? Does “Law and Video Games” mean […]

TMRW Sports and The Golf League: The New Age of Sports & Gaming

TMRW Sports and The Golf League: The New Age of Sports & Gaming

As someone who loves to Golf, I was eagerly waiting to see how the PGA Tour and its players would respond to the new LIV Golf League. While LIV Golf is not without its controversy given its funding from the Saudi Arabia sovereign wealth fund, there is no denying that LIV golf has deep pockets […]

Montreal Video Game Company Gets the Rights to Charlie Chaplin

Montreal Video Game Company Gets the Rights to Charlie Chaplin

Hey Y,all, Came across this article today and thought it was interesting. A Montreal video game company just got the exclusive rights to Charlie Chaplin and intends to make a game based around the individual. For those of you who are unaware who Charlie Chaplin is, he was a major silent film movie star throughout […]

Video – Nintendo: Rights Protection or Fan Alienation?

Video – Nintendo: Rights Protection or Fan Alienation?

Hi everyone, I hope you’re doing well as we move closer to the end of the semester! Following in the footsteps of a few of you, my presentation is now (finally) ready to show off! It’s about Nintendo, all the ways they’ve tried to protect their IP rights, and how it has affected their fanbase. […]