While Electronic Arts was named the worst company in America by gamers recently, the other giant in gaming, Activision Blizzard, has been hit with something potentially worse – another lawsuit. On March 30, Worlds Inc. filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Activision Blizzard, Inc., Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. and Activision Publishing, Inc. in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Activision’s World of Warcraft and Call of Duty video games have been identified in the complaint as infringing on Worlds’ patents.
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This is what developers and manufacturers should do. I know going after cheat devices/makers is a cat and mouse game, and cost money. However, they can get that money back by sueing these manufacturers of cheat devices. Take a page from Nintendo's playbook.
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Seriously patents should totally not be part of the picture when it comes to game design.
Do you see people patenting different methods of camera work in cinematography. No because it's utterly ridiculous and would ruin the art of film.
Sadly gaming was birthed into a capitalist world and is getting raped by corporations that are trying to turn it into a money printing machine rather than letting it mature as a great wonderful form of art.
Thankfully they can steal the spotlight away from the beautiful things but they will still grow around the edges. This same thing has happened on and off with movies, they go through big corporately sponsored movie booms then collapse and the independent developers all lead the way until they sell out to the corporations again a few generations down the road.
Seriously, if Worlds Inc, wins this, I presume they will go after every major game publishers who have a game with some online multiplayer component; which is why I hope Activision wins this one.
will be interesting to see how this goes in court. i bet its tossed out. unless activision stole code from worlds inc, which i doubt. activision solved this "issue" themselves in their own way, as every other person designing games for online play now does.
"how do we get many players online in the same space?"
"how bout we limit the number of characters rendered?"
"brilliant! i will file a patent"
there was a similar lawsuit a while ago claiming infringement on "virtual worlds". i cannot find the outcome to that suit so i am guessing it went no where. google "Balthaser Online virtual world patent lawsuit" if you care to read further.
seems to me another case of lawyers going for the big money with bullshit cases.