Legal Issues in the Games Industry

Legal Issues

Legal issues in the Games Industry are these a problem? Yes, they are a BIG problem!

38 studios (founded by Curt ‘bloody sock’ Schilling) were formed in 2006 in Massachusetts. It was given $75 million by the state of Rhode Island to move states and created 450 jobs for their new state. It has 2 projects; the RPG Kingdoms of Amalur and an MMO named Copernicus. After Amalurs disappointing release sales 38 studios defaulted (Couldn’t pay) their next loan repayment, so basically they were screwed. Within a month of this company had shut down and the 150-plus members who moved states where left on Rhode Island with no job.

Infinity ward are the developers behind the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series. This includes MW3, the highest-grossing entertainment release in history. The studio heads were fired by activision (Their owners) because they were discovered to be holding meetings with other publishers. The whole fiasco of what happened with Infinity ward and EA was settled outside of court, almost-all of the Infinity Ward staff quit to form Respawn Entertainment. EA will be publishing their first game in 2013.

Most people have heard of SOPA and PIPA previously. This is legislation (law) designed to prevent piracy and ensure the validity and enforcement of copyrights. Even though not all off the members of the ESA were in favour of doing this, the whole thing with SOPA and PIPA closed down some massive sites which people used for backing up work, and other things. Just because people were using to to pirate and illegally download things off of the internet, but that was stupid because a lot of people lost some of their life’s work that they had on there.

Law360, New York (November 26, 2008) when you start playing games on your Nintendo Wii, your Xbox 360 or even your computer, you won’t realise the legal and business issues behind the amazing graphics and score. Digital gaming is one of the world’s fastest growing industries of today’s society up to 26% in 2011 even with the economic slowdown and it is no surprise that where there is money there are lawsuits. One of the trickiest areas in this is the intersection of intellectual property law and virtual worlds. An example of this is the $6 Million agreement between Blizzard Entertainment and MDY industries. Blizzard Entertainment are the popular game makers of World of Warcaft.