A Canadian Supreme Court judge has approved a case filed by Quebec parents who claim their children grew addicted to the computer game Fortnite.
Three parents informed Justice Sylvain Lussier in July that their children looked to be excessively reliant on Fortnite and had stopped eating, sleeping, and washing.
Lussier’s decision on Wednesday decided that the class-action complaint was neither “frivolous or clearly ill-founded.”
“The court concludes that there is a serious issue to be argued, supported by sufficient and specific allegations as to the existence of risks or even dangers arising from the use of Fortnite,” Lussier ruled.
An attorney from the business that initiated the claim compared Epic Games to a cigarette producer, saying the legal liability was “basically the same.”
“Our motion was heavily inspired by the tobacco motion just in terms of what we were alleging,” lawyer Alessandra Esposito Chartrand said
Lussier reiterated the analogy between video game and nicotine addiction. “Tobacco’s deleterious effect was not recognized or accepted overnight,” he decided.
The court rejected the parents’ contention that Epic Games purposefully made Fortnite addicting.
“The court finds that there is no evidence for these allegations of the deliberate creation of an addictive game,” the judge wrote. “This does not exclude the possibility that the game is addictive and that its designer and distributor are presumed to know it.”
Epic Games contested the suit’s legality in a statement.
“Parents can receive playtime reports that track the amount of time their child plays each week, and require parental permission before purchases are made,” the company said.
“We plan to fight this in court. We believe the evidence will show that this case is meritless.”
According to techacake.com, Fortnite has over 80 million active gamers monthly. Other Fortnite users in Quebec who think they have suffered signs of addiction to the game are included in the class action.