Legal

Everything you need to know about the legal side of the games industry. High-profile lawsuits and disputes, game-related laws and legislative changes, as well as patent and copyright issues.

Chris Barrett, the onetime director of the Marathon reboot, has initiated legal action against Bungie and Sony. He alleges that the companies intentionally tarnished his reputation by wrongly and publicly suggesting they had conducted an investigation into his conduct and concluded he was involved in sexual misconduct. Barrett contends this was done to evade a $45 million payout owed to him.
Epic Games has finalized an agreement with telecommunications firm Telefónica, which will result in the Epic Games Store and Fortnite being pre-installed on Android devices.
On the evening of December 11, Anton Gorelkin, a deputy and deputy chairman of the Committee on Information Policy, announced that on December 12, a draft law regulating the Russian gaming industry would be submitted to the State Duma for consideration. The editorial team of App2Top obtained the text of the draft law. Here's a straightforward explanation of what it entails.
The unions of several Ubisoft studios in Barcelona have protested against the company management, reports GamesIndustry. They have filed a lawsuit against Ubisoft due to the partial cancellation of remote work: starting in September, all employees are required to spend at least three days a week in the office.
A conflict has erupted between the leadership of Summer Eternal and Longdue Games—studios founded this fall by former ZA/UM employees. Argo Tuulik, co-founder of Summer Eternal, has been served with a court injunction prohibiting him from developing games at his studio. He is barred from engaging in this activity until April 2025
Tax incentives remain a key tool for governments in various countries to attract digital and R&D companies. This is especially true for corporate income tax (CIT), which is considered one of the most burdensome. Experts from Futura Digital, in a column for App2Top, discussed the most relevant types of CIT incentives for IT and GameDev companies that are in demand among their clients.
Two gamers from California have filed a class-action lawsuit against Ubisoft due to the shutdown of The Crew servers, accusing the company of selling activation keys instead of the full version of the game. The plaintiffs claim that the company effectively deprived them of the right to own the product.