I am one of the few people on the planet, apparently, that has never played a single minute of Fortnite. Video games are not something I shun but the new wave of online video games just don't really appeal to me. There was a time in my life that I suppose if I or my family were extremely fragile people who always try to point the finger at anyone but ourselves, that I could have said that I had somewhat of a video-game addiction. It never really occurred to any of us to seek monetary compensation because someone made a game that was too good.
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I promise you that this story is real and is actually moving forward in Quebec, Canada and is available to anyone that has lived there since 2017 and has experienced "damages to their personal, family or social lives, or their education, work activities or any other important functioning activities in their lives" due to playing the game.
It seems that this is the way of the world now: Anytime that something is successful, some group of lawyers is going to come out of the woodwork and try to cash in on it. I am sure there will be a lot of takers in this suit because there are a ton of people out there that feel as though any failures in their own life must be the fault of some outside entity, not because they are lazy or didn't pursue things that are actually going to benefit them in life.
Epic Games is a good target for the lawyer-driven greed because they have made $9 billion in 2 years off of the success of the game. That's a pretty fantastic number considering that as far as I know, Fortnite is free to download and play.
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The plaintiffs claim is that Epic Games was aware of the addictive nature of their game but failed to properly warn players about the dangers of it... as if it was cigarettes or some other sort of drug. I don't know how you feel about video games, but I think the entire idea behind the creation of ANY video game (or anything else for that matter) is to create a product that is good enough that people are going to want to continue using it. I guess Fortnite was far too successful at accomplishing this because now they can be sued for making a product that is too good.
I would be willing to bet that significantly more people's lives have been negatively affected by lawyers than they have by Fornite or any other video game in existence.
The sad thing is that in order to prevent this from happening again I would be willing to bet that every video game that you play in the future is going to be required to have some sort of warning label or splash screen that every user is forced to watch before they can enjoy the game that they just want to play. It will be like how the warning labels on cigarettes started to take over more and more of the package until there wasn't even any space left for the actual name of the product.
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This lack of personal responsibility is akin to various lawsuits that people filed against fast-food chains claiming that the reason they are fat and unhealthy is because of KFC, McDonalds, and Taco Bell.... not because they are an irresponsible human being that is incapable of making good life decisions.
Spurious lawsuits like this are filed all the time and I think I already know what the end result is going to be. Rather than face a lengthy and expensive trial, Epic Games is going to settle out of court for an "undisclosed amount of money" and then the lawyers are going to keep most of the money for themselves and give a pittance to the people they are meant to be representing.
I certainly hope that anyone who signs on to this lawsuit is permanently banned from playing Fortnite or any other game made by Epic Games in the future. Although this still isn't fair to Epic Games who was just trying to make money by producing a quality game that people wanted to play, but whoever sues for this fake addiction should at the minimum be banned from participating in it in the future.
