History of Videogame Lawsuits

Lawsuit, a word that is uttered as frequently as a player receives the ball in ping pong. This occurrence is more visible in North America with United States leading the way. There are many cases that border on total madness. Consider suing a cheese making factory just because you have consumed the cheese produced by it for more than a decade and its only crime is that you get fat. Or suing a ladder making company just because they forgot to paste a label on their product stating that falling from the ladder may injure you. With people getting sued for such frivolous excuses, it is not surprising that the long road of evolution of the next generation videogames has been littered rather generously with lawsuits.

The first ever video game was developed by a nuclear scientist to relax the residents of his area at the height of the cold war who were nervous with anything or anybody associated with atoms. Willy Higenbotham, that was the scientist’s name, created a tennis simulation, which had even implemented wind resistance and gravity into the game that he called as “Tennis for Two”. One foolish thing that he did or forgot to do was to patent the game as he thought it to be “so obvious”. That was in 1958. Eight years later a German-born American engineer, Ralph Baer, who was bored with working on third-party military projects, thought of doing something new with TV. He hit upon the idea of making electronic games and with the help of his colleague, Bill Rusch, he developed different types of games that included a two-player chase through a maze, and a tennis game very similar to that of Higenbotham’s.

However he was smart enough to obtain a patent for the game and when faced with financial difficulties decided to sell off the games to Magnavox, which in 1972, displayed them at a trade show. There among various spectators was a youth by the name of Nolan Bushnell, who later went on to build a successful videogame company known as Atari. Soon after the show, Bushnell designed a game called “Pong” which totally revolutionalized the outlook of the videogame industry. However when Baer saw the game he was very surprised to see that it was nearly an exact copy of the game he had sold to Magnavox. Thus this gave birth to the first ever lawsuit in the history of the videogame industry when Magnavox sued Atari for patent infringement and won the case hands down.

Shrugging off the initial setback, Atari went on to rule the 1970s where almost every game designed by them went on to be a hit so much so that they began to get complacent with the notion that any game carrying their label would be a sure shot money earner. In those days Atari employed programmers on a meagre salary with no substantial bonuses. A group of programmers concluded that they were the people who made the games while the bosses just sucked on the profits and decided to move away from the company and open a new one bearing the name Activision. With four super hit games developed by the new company, Atari got hit where it mattered the most, in sales. They decided to take Activision to court reason being that they were producing games that were Atari’s. However Atari once again lost the case and had to lick its wounds and try to build more consumer friendly games.

This would not be the last time that the company would be seen in the court grounds. Atari had obtained exclusive rights to a game called Pac-man, in which the player had to eat all the stationary dots on the screen. However this game was not to be released until 1982. Meanwhile, Philips developed a game titled K.C. Munchkin! in which the player had to chase 12 dots and eat them. As their number decreased, the speed of the dots increased. The design of the game was very similar to Pac-man. Atari took Philips to court suing and made them stop the production of Munchkin.

As the years passed, Atari lost interest in hardware consoles, and a Japanese company Nintendo, released its own console known as Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). NES soon took over the market from Atari’s 2600. Unable to compete with Nintendo, Atari decided to join the NES revolution renaming itself as Tengen. Since Nintendo soon realized the main reason for the downfall of the 2600s was the fact that anybody could develop games for the console. Most of the games resembled each other with minor differences and different names. Unwilling to fall in the same trap, Nintendo set stringent rules that all the games that would be developed for NES would have to be licensed. Also a company could only produce 5 games in a year, which will be under the exclusive control of Nintendo. In order to make the companies play by the rules, Nintendo developed a lockout program that would keep out the games that were not accepted by the company.

Unlike some companies that spilt their resources to start sub-companies, Tengen played along with the rules for sometime. But they were actively seeking new ways to go round the rules. Tengen contacted the government for the copy of the lock-out program citing the reason of a lawsuit and engineered games that bypassed the program. Nintendo took Tengen to court and alleged that the sole reason for the creation of the new company by Atari was to defraud Nintendo and win the case.
Even before squaring off with Tengen, Nintendo had already experienced the court when its barrel chucking game, Donkey Kong became a hit with the American public. However, MCA Universal alleged that the game was an exact copy of their own King Kong. However Universal lost the case after Nintendo’s lawyer pointed out that Universal had won a court case in which it declared that King Kong was a public domain. He also said that Universal did not even own the rights of the game. Predictably, Universal lost the case and instead had to pay Nintendo for legal reparations.

Atari and Nintendo fought once again when both the companies released different versions of Tetris, a puzzle game that was soon becoming a rage with gamers. However only Nintendo had possessed the rights to develop the game for consoles and all the other versions were illegal. Nintendo once again dragged Tengen to court, the verdict ordering Tengen to call back all its cartridges of the game. Nintendo again forced the issue warning the retailers that it would stop their supply of games if they were found possessing the illegal games. This was a fatal blow to Tengen, which after producing some Genesis games, ceased to exist.

Meanwhile, Atari joined hands with Sega and started an anti-trust lawsuit against Nintendo. By this time the Japanese company was in control of almost 80% of the home gaming industry. Both the companies alleged that the strict rules framed by Nintendo were infact a way of smothering its competition. The Judge handling the case concurred and established a penalty of issuing $25 million in coupons to anyone who had bought an NES between June 1, 1988 and December 31 1990. It also ordered that customers were to receive a $5 discount for their next game purchase. This verdict was a blessing in disguise for Nintendo, which saw their sales rise to record levels.
The first major lawsuit of modern times was filed by Capcom Japanese developer Data East against Japanese developer Data East. Data East had designed a game called Fighter’s History, a side-view hand-to-hand combat game. This game looked to be almost a carbon copy of Capcom’s Street Fighter II. Even the fighters’ roster was similar to that of Capcom. However Street Fighter II was more than inspired by Data East’s 1984 game titled The Way of Karate. Capcom lost the case.

With the advent of Internet and computers, many companies developed programs called as “emulators”. As the name suggests, an emulator is a program that emulates consoles on computers. Many argued for the emulators saying that the chances of buying Atari’s 2600 or playing every game in the NES’ library was not possible without these programs. However there were many emulators developed which converted present day consoles like Nintendo DS, which allowed users to play the games without paying any money. When Connectix Corp. developed an emulator using which Mac users could play PlayStation games on their computers, Sony decided to take action to stop it. However Sony lost the case as U.S. copyright law allows emulators provided they mimic the function of hardware through reverse engineering.

Though companies filing lawsuits on each other sounded interesting, personal lawsuits are more eagerly awaited, as they can be a big money spinner. In 2001, US saw one Esther Walker filing a case against Nintendo alleging that the N64 was responsible in the death of her son. Benjamin bought his N64 in 1999 along with 11 games. He played for 8 hours a day, six days a week. His passion for these games did not ebb even after experiencing seizures. However in 2001, when he had his sixth seizure, Benjamin fell on a table edge and died due to internal injuries. Mrs. Walker claimed that Nintendo had not given adequate warning about the health risks associated with playing video games and that they had supplied a defective piece. However this was not true as Nintendo along with other companies have always given out warnings saying that some players may experience seizures and playing videogames after that is not a good idea.

The next types were the liability lawsuits. In 1999 two kids, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, shot dead 12 students and wounded 23 others in Colorado’s Columbine High School after which they shot themselves. Both the kids were known to be under intense bullying pressure. However the blame for the shooting shifted on to the video games after newspapers printed that one of the games played by the assassins was Doom, developed by id Software. Goaded by the papers, the relatives of the victims filed suit against id software and 25 other companies. However the case was dismissed, as video games were not subject to product liability laws.

One of the most interesting persons in the history of all the lawsuits against video games is Jack Thompson. Famous for his run-ins with nearly all the major game developing companies, Thompson has obsessively tried to link Rockstar Games to many crimes. Time and again he has publicly declared that studies indicate that video games are damaging to children’s’ brain. However in a study conducted by a parenting group campaigning against media violence, no concrete evidence was found linking brain activity to exposure to violent games.

Thompson was presented his five minutes of fame when a modder brought forward an erotic mini-game embedded in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Soon after the incident, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) changed the rating of GTA to Adults Only. When Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was released, Thompson claimed that this too contained an unlockable sexual minigame set in a strip club. However even with the best of hackers working on this allegation, no such content was found.

However Thompson’s credibility in courts and in media has been steadily decreasing due to his unaccounted allegations against video games. He was stripped off his license to practice law in Alabama due to his unacceptable behaviour. But as long as there is the presence of huge money in the gaming industry lawsuits will continue to be filed, some genuine, but many as a way to pocket big money.

Vinay Mallabadi