Legal Issues in the Games Industry

Due to the size of the games industry has grown in popularity and the large amounts of money that companies make from creating video games, laws and requirements are put in place, companies and people also patent their design and copyright names so other people and companies can’t use them for their own profit. Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of original work exclusive rights to it, companies who breach these rights and use the copyrighted material can be sued, and can end up owing sometimes millions of pounds worth of money if they lose the case. In the game industry video game and console clones are sometimes made by smaller companies. These clones generally break copyright laws, enabling the larger company to take court action, which likely leave the smaller company in legal trouble.

Although video game clones could be seen as an issue, it is clear the biggest legal issue is piracy as it has gotten the attention of nearly every major video game publisher. This issue has become a more prevalent issue in recent years due to the rise of file sharing websites and services such as UTorrent and Pirate Bay. For example the BBC reported that “Video game piracy in the United Kingdom led to 1.45 Billion British Pounds in losses in 2010 due to pirated games being played on modified consoles.” This shows that piracy presents a serious threat to the revenue and growth of video game companies economically. In response to piracy, many video game publishers such as EA and Ubisoft implement DRM (Digital-Rights Management) into their online gaming services. The main form of DRM is referred to as ‘always online in which users have to be connected to the official online service in order to play the game they purchased, an example of this is Blizzard Entertainments Diablo 3, which sparked some controversy because the online services were not working for most people for the first week, rendering them unable to play the game.

However Piracy is being tackled, an example of this is the downfall of LimeWire in 2010, the owner of lime wire was sued for 75 trillion dollars of damage to copyright holders, and this stopped a lot of copyright infringement but most people who previously used LimeWire now use alternatives such as UTorrent which uses torrent files.  In conclusion there is a divide in thoughts regarding legal issues in the gaming industry. Some people think piracy is a large issue, however others think that piracy isn’t a very large threat, and that DRM can cause inconvenience to consumers.