A Canadian legal firm is preparing a class-action lawsuit against Epic Games, accusing the developer of “knowingly” creating the “very, very addictive game”, Fortnite.
“Epic Games, when they created Fortnite, for years and years, hired psychologists – they really dug into the human brain and they really made the effort to make it as addictive as possible,” said Alessandra Esposito Chartrand, an attorney with Calex Légal (thanks CBC, Dextero). “They knowingly put on the market a very, very addictive game which was also geared toward youth.”
Likening the case to the 2015 class-action suit against tobacco companies that saw the Quebec Superior Court ruling determine tobacco companies didn’t do enough to warn their customers about the dangers of smoking, Chartrand believes Epic knew Fortnite was “as addictive as possible” and failed in their duty to warn players of the risk of addiction. Consequently, the legal challenge is “very centred on the duty to inform”.
The legal notice – which was filed on behalf of the parents of two minors, aged 10 and 15 – also draws on the recent decision of the World Health Organisation to list gaming disorder as a disease.
“In our case, the two parents that came forward and told [us], ‘If we knew it was so addictive it would ruin our child’s life, we would never have let them start playing Fortnite or we would have monitored it a lot more closely’,” Chartrand added.