legal
Fortnite faces a proposed class action lawsuit over alleged use of FOMO-inducing item shop timers
Fortnite has been found to utilize dark patterns to get money out of its players previously, so the allegations that its developer Epic Games...
Dark and Darker was yeeted from the Epic Games Store following Nexon lawsuit
Last month, we covered what appeared to be the messy middle of the ongoing legal saga between Nexon and Ironmace over the Dark and...
MMOs You’ve Never Heard Of: QANGA, Urban Dead, Voxile, and Cyborg Immortal
Welcome back to another roundup of MMOs and MMO-adjacent multiplayer games you've never heard of!
QANGA
QANGA is a new-to-us multiplayer sci-fi survivalbox from iolaCorp Studio...
Epic successfully sued a Fortnite cheater – and forced him to post a public apology video
Ten years ago, then-Daybreak-president John Smedley created some fun MMO drama when he went on Twitter and ranted his heart out over the nearly...
Palworld celebrates over 32M players as Nintendo continues to push for patents against the game
The full year of early access life for Palworld has hit yet another big milestone, as developer Pocketpair recently announced that the critter-capturing survival...
Korean court finds Dark and Darker studio infringed Nexon’s trade secrets
Over the last couple of years, we've been covering the seemingly endless lawsuit drama between Nexon and Ironmace over Dark and Darker. Nexon accused...
Roblox stock dips after the company misses earnings projections for the fiscal year
Apparently a game company missing earnings forecasts by what looks like a rounding error is enough to cause its stock to drop now. That's...
MMO Business Roundup: ESA’s tariff statement, the LA wildfires, and EA’s Battlefield Labs
Welcome back to another roundup of MMO and MMO-adjacent industry news. Business business business.
LA wildfires: If you followed the LA wildfires closely last month,...
UK rebuffs game preservationists’ petition to make retroactively breaking old games unlawful
One of the big industry-wide narratives that emerged from the wreckage of 2024 was player-initiated efforts to center game preservation - indeed, even to...
Following painful layoffs, Camelot Unchained is apparently still planning to resurface in Q1 2025
Earlier this month, we expressed serious concern over the fate of Camelot Unchained when it became clear that studio Unchained Entertainment had laid off...
Final Fantasy XIV is considering taking legal action against a stalker-empowering game mod
If you're a part of the Final Fantasy XIV community beyond a certain level of engagement, you are no doubt aware of the game's...
Genshin Impact agrees to pay a $20M fine to the FTC and halt gacha sales to players under 16
Regular players of Genshin Impact already know that in order to add characters to the roster, they're going to have to buy currency to...
Lawful Neutral: All the big MMO-related law stories from 2024, from Palworld to Blizzard
2024 was another quiet year on the gaming legal front. I think various AI dramas and associated legislative hand-wringing sucked all the air out...
Square Enix puts abusive fans on notice with threats of bans or legal action in new harassment policy
No matter how "passionate" you might feel about a game, it's never OK to directly abuse, harass, or threaten the people responsible for making...
US government agency is hoping to extend consumer protections to virtual currencies in games like Roblox
It's fairly well known by now that most governments and the laws they enact do not do a good job of keeping pace with...
Tencent pushes back against its classification as a Chinese military company by the US government
Supposedly the Chinese megacorp Tencent is up to more than just working in video games if the US Department of Defense is to be...
One Shots: Pretty please give me those pretty spaceships
It's a new year of community screenshots here at One Shots Incorporated (that's right, we're now a soulless corporation with algorithms and AI and...
Fortnite has refunded $72M to gamers so far thanks to ‘dark patterns’ settlements
Last year, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) hit Epic Games with a $245M fine as the government body found that the company was...
Tencent removes its Epic Games board inserts after US Justice Department gives it the stinkeye
If this news story were a Discord conversation, the US Justice Department would have posted the Futurama Frye squint animated gif and Tencent would...
End-of-Year Eleven: The biggest MMO stories of 2024
So here's the disclaimer I put in front of this column every year when I do it (we alternate them): The biggest surprises list...
