In August 2020, gaming giant Electronic Arts released EA Sports UFC 4, the latest iteration of its popular MMA video game franchise. The game was highly successful, being ranked as the month’s “second best-selling game” in the US and “se[tting] a new franchise launch month sales record.” Unsurprisingly, the buzz around EA Sports UFC 4 […]

I came across this article and thought it would be interesting to share. With the anonymity of video games, like that of social media comes recruitment. We have seen terrorist groups connect and grow anonymously online, recruiting people who are in mutual threads and have the same “goals” or “passions” as them. We have also […]

My presentation is on Netflix’s Black Mirror episode Playtest (season 3 episode 2), a haunting portrayal of augmented reality gone wrong. If you have not seen this episode, I would highly recommend watching it. Playtest touches on many of the issues relevant to concepts discussed in our video game law class and raises questions about […]

Hi everyone, Hope you all had a wonderful reading week! For our presentation on Wednesday, we will aim to tackle the questions below. Please have a look at the following articles addressing each question: Playing video games as a professional: Who is a video game streamer? Gaming – Athletes vs Entertainers What is the relationship […]

Hi everybody, I hope you are all enjoying your reading break. Please take a quick look through these articles in advance of my presentation on Wednesday. https://www.businessinsider.com/classifying-video-game-loot-boxes-as-gambling-2020-7 https://www.fasken.com/en/knowledge/2020/11/3-opening-pandoras-loot-box ‘Loot boxes’: Blurring the lines between gaming and gambling?

Introduction On the 28th of October 2021 a pixelated digital artwork of a cartoonish character called “Cryptopunk 9998” was reported to have been sold on Ethereum blockchain as a Non-fungible Token (NFT) for 124,457 Ether — valued at more than half a billion US Dollars at the time of execution of the transaction.[1] On the […]

Video & slides below… Jon

Slides below. Video to come… Huge thanks to Perry Bahniwal of EA for joining us for the second part of the class. The lecture-capture of that part of the class will not be posted for understandable reasons. Jon

Hey all, Wanted to share this article I came across which discusses how much of what Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing as the promise of Meta has existed to some degree within video games for years. Experiences like virtual hangouts, avatars and exploring virtual worlds exist in games from Roblox to Assasin’s Creed. Here’s a […]

Hi All, Please read or have a brief overview of the below material for our presentation on Wednesday. Our presentation will focus on questions such as: What is the relationship between video games and the professional athletes themselves? What about the relationship between video game law and esports athletes or popular streamers? Can player ratings […]

Earlier this week, Sony Pictures released the first full trailer for their upcoming movie Uncharted, which is based on a wildly successful video game franchise that included four games and has sold over 40 million copies worldwide. At first glance, this project would seem to be almost guaranteed to succeed. The Uncharted games have a huge fanbase and feature […]

Hi Everyone (and especially those of you who, like me, never left their MTV’s Jersey Shore phase), I recently came across a bit of news that I thought you all might find interesting in the context of our recent Video Game Law lectures. Last week, a news article came out titled “Why ViacomCBS could turn […]

Video & slides below… Jon

The NHL’s 2021-2022 season kicked off last week, and for the first time in 16 years, a network other than NBC was behind the broadcast. Disney’s ESPN is now the NHL’s lead TV partner in the US, paying a hefty price of $400 million a year to serve that role. Not far behind is Turner […]

Video & slides below… Jon