Top 10 Video Games That Caused Huge Lawsuits
Top 10 Video Games That Let to Huge Lawsuits
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Welcome to WatchMojo and today we’ll be counting down our picks for the top 10 video games that led to huge lawsuits. For this list, we’re looking at giant lawsuits caused by video games or levied against video game companies. Let us know in the comments which one would leave you calling a lawyer.
#10: Unreleased “Fallout” MMO
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Roughly a decade before the release of the monstrous game that would become “Fallout 76”, Interplay, the creators and original owners of the “Fallout” IP, began building a “Fallout” MMO of its own. Dubbed “Project V13”, not much is known about the game, only that Bethesda wasn’t happy with the progress it was making. Interplay had a set deadline for when the game was supposed to enter full development, which the company let expire, and Bethesda took them to court. The resulting lawsuit, settled in 2012, made it clear that Bethesda was now the sole owner of “Fallout” and had the rights to eventually make a “Fallout Online” of their own.
#9: “Donkey Kong” (1981)
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Way back in 1981, Donkey Kong made his first video game appearance – and Universal Studios wasn’t happy. Universal was insistent that the existence of Donkey Kong was infringing on their copyright over the character of King Kong, cinema’s most iconic gorilla. However, people have been arguing about who owns King Kong since the 1930s. Five decades on and little had changed; it wasn’t clear whether Universal Studios – which also tried to sue RKO, distributor of the 1933 movie – had a leg to stand on. Ultimately, the courts ruled that King Kong was in the public domain once again, so Nintendo was free to continue making “Donkey Kong” games.
#8: “Pac-Man” (1980) & “K.C. Munchkin!” (1981)
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Even in the early days of gaming, video game companies were still pretty litigious, and Atari was no exception when they believed Philips Electronics and Magnavox were trying to release a clear “Pac-Man” knock-off. Hard at work on its own port of the arcade classic for the 2600, Atari wasn’t happy about “K.C. Munchkin!” showing up on rival consoles. Featuring a small character with a large mouth roaming around a maze, eating pellets, and avoiding monsters, the similarities were clear – and the courts agreed, ruling in favor of Atari. But then after all that, the 2600 “Pac-Man” port turned out to be complete garbage.
#7: “Lineage II” (2004)
In 2010, South Korean game developer NCsoft found itself in hot water when one player brought a lawsuit against “Lineage II” for being “too addictive”. They claimed to the courts that his total 20,000 hours in the game had destroyed his life, saying the fact it didn’t have a warning on it was “negligence” on NCsoft’s part. It wasn’t the only time people tried to take “Lineage II” to court, either. In 2013, a 64-year-old woman tried to sue the company for the fact that while trying to enchant an incredibly rare sword supposedly worth $28,000 in real life, the sword broke. She said NCsoft was liable because she’d done it by accident, which lawyers proved was a lie.
#6: Joy-Con Drift
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Though the Switch has been a wildly successful console, one issue has plagued Nintendo ever since its release: Joy-Con drift. After a fair amount of use, the Joy-Cons on the launch Switch, improved Switch, the Switch Lite, and the Pro controllers begin to drift, meaning the sticks don’t read your inputs properly and the controls simply won’t work. Numerous lawsuits have been brought against Nintendo for both failing to fix the problem and repeatedly denying that Joy-Con drift even exists. In 2020, news broke that a 10-year-old boy and his mom were even suing the company. These lawsuits are still ongoing, so it’s not clear whether they’ll be successful.
#5: “World of Warcraft” (2004)
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One particularly notorious private server in “World of Warcraft” caught Blizzard’s attention and in 2009 the company filed a lawsuit against the server’s owner. But Alyson Reeves, the person behind the “Scapegaming” server that allowed people to play “WoW” without interference from Blizzard, apparently wasn’t too fazed by the suit. When her court date came they did not appear, nor did they even acknowledge the case brought against them – maybe they knew that they couldn’t win against Blizzard regardless. But because they were a no-show, Blizzard was given a default judgment and Reeves was ordered to pay damages to the tune of $88 million.
#4: “Pong” (1972)
The first-ever video game console was the Magnavox Odyssey, invented by Ralph Baer. And Baer had a vision: table tennis, but digital. He was so excited about bringing ping-pong to the Odyssey that he showed off a game concept to Atari’s founders – and just a few months later Atari came out with “Pong” arcade cabinets. But Baer was so insistent that Atari had ripped-off his own idea of a virtual tennis game that he filed a lawsuit. A few years later and the case was settled, but had Baer taken it all the way to trial it’s likely that Atari wouldn’t have survived. Who knows what the games industry would be like today if Atari had gone bust in the 70s?
#3: “Fortnite” (2017)
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Since going free-to-play, “Fortnite” has maintained its position as one of the biggest games in the world – but Epic still wasn’t happy and implemented a way to buy V-Bucks from them directly, completely circumventing the App Store and Apple’s 30% cut on microtransactions. Apple removed “Fortnite” in retaliation, leading to Epic filing a lawsuit against both Apple and Google, which had also removed “Fortnite”. Countersuits were filed against Epic by Apple for breach of contract and by September 2020, a judge ruled in favor of Apple – after all, practically every retailer takes a 30% cut on sales. With a trial set for May 2021, only time will tell whether these lawsuits will be good for players.
#2: “Cyberpunk 2077” (2020)
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CD Projekt Red, once the most lauded developer in the games industry, is facing multiple lawsuits from both consumers and investors over “Cyberpunk’s” infamously poor performance on last-gen consoles. The company’s investors and shareholders are disappointed by CDPR’s shares falling in the wake of “Cyberpunk’s” release, while consumers want to see CDPR held to account for false advertising by constantly claiming the game was going to be optimized for the PS4 and Xbox One S. The fact refunds were issued without question and the game was removed from PS Store speaks volumes to how poorly it performed on older hardware - hardware that runs other intense games, like “Red Dead Redemption II”, with relative ease. Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few Dishonorable Mentions:
“The Simpsons: Road Rage” (2001)
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“Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” (2004)
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“New Super Mario Bros. Wii” (2009)
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James Burt Would Be Fined $1.3 Million for Uploading an Early Copy of This Game.
Unlicensed NES Games
Atari Was Sued by Nintendo for Trying to Release Unauthorized Games in the 90s.
#1: “Too Human” (2008)
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As well as “Fortnite”, Epic Games is also the creator of the Unreal Engine, one of the most widely used game engines in the business. But you don’t just get to pick up Unreal Engine and make a game, you’ve got to pay a licensing fee – which studio Silicon Knights didn’t do. After struggling to license the engine to make “Too Human”, Silicon Knights decided to make their own game engine; Epic later found that enormous parts of this “new” engine were actually lifted straight from Unreal 3. Epic took Silicon Knights to court and ended up winning, but the $9 million in damages was small fry compared to the developers being ordered to destroy all unsold copies of the game.
