Canada Sues Epic Games Because Fortnite is Too Addictive
The lawsuit has been brought by parents of three children who say their kids would not sleep, eat, or shower because of their severe addiction to playing Fortnite.
A Canadian Superior Court judge has authorized a class-action lawsuit against Epic Games, the creator of the popular free-to-play Battle Royale Fortnite, after parents of three children accused the developer of making a too "addictive" game.
The original application against Epic Games was filed back in 2019 by the legal firm Calex which, at the time, was representing the parents of two minors, who had been aged 10 and 15, who they said were addicted to Fortnite. Calex accused the developer of "knowingly" creating the "very, very addictive game" and cited a report by addiction specialist Anita Ghadia-Smith that likened the addictive qualities of playing Fortnite to cocaine addiction.
Other parents have since joined the lawsuit and on December 7, Quebec Superior Court Justice Sylvain Lussier authorized the class-action suit.
As reported by CTV News, in court filings, the plaintiffs claim that their children would not sleep, eat, or shower because they were addicted to playing Fortnite and allege that the game was deliberately made to be highly addictive.
In the 24-page ruling, the court agreed with the plaintiffs that their claim "does not appear to be frivolous or manifestly ill-founded" – the Quebec judge concluded that just because there's "no certainty" that Epic deliberately created an "addictive" game, it "does not preclude the possibility that the game is in fact addictive and that its creator and distributor are presumed to know this."
Epic Games responded to the suit by saying it had "industry-leading parental controls that empower parents to supervise their child’s digital experience."
"Parents can receive playtime reports that track the amount of time their child plays each week, and require parental permission before purchases are made, so that they can make the decisions that are right for their family. We have also recently added a daily spending limit by default for players under the age of 13," the company's spokesperson Nathalie Munoz said in a statement to CTV News.
Munoz also added that Epic Games plans "to fight this in court" and believes that "the evidence will show that this case is meritless."
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