A video game developer is so fucking far from this situation it is laughable; these suits are destined to fail. It’s sad the lawyers are sucking money from the victims’ families.
It’s sad the lawyers are sucking money from the victims’ families.
I’d give reasonable odds that they aren’t.
So, some lawyers do cases on contingency. Basically, if they lose, they don’t get paid. But if they win, the plaintiff agrees to give them a (potentially quite substantial) chunk of the payout.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contingent_fee
A contingent fee (also known as a contingency fee in the United States or a conditional fee in England and Wales) is any fee for services provided where the fee is payable only if there is a favourable result. Although such a fee may be used in many fields, it is particularly well associated with legal practice.
https://www.lawfirm.com/terms/contingency-fee/
A contingency fee is a payment agreement between an attorney and a client. Instead of paying an upfront or hourly rate, the client agrees to pay the attorney a percentage of any compensation recovered.
This percentage is usually between 20% and 50%, according to Cornell Law School.
So, say you’re one of the lawyers here. You figure, okay, all of these parties you’re suing have real money. You sue them. Maybe it costs you $N to do the case. But if your expected return is $100N, and maybe you’ve got a 1-in-30 chance of getting lucky with a sympathetic jury and winning a big payout, then the expected return says that it’s worthwhile to just throw mud at a wall and see what sticks.
Your odds probably aren’t great of winning any of these lawsuits, but every now and then, you can get really big payouts, which makes up for the case being a long shot. Do enough of them – and here, they’re suing a bunch of parties – and it becomes increasingly likely that you’ll win one.
The families this week also announced lawsuits against 92 Texas Department of Public Safety officers. The lawsuit names the Uvalde School District and several of its employees as defendants, including the then-principal and then-school district police chief.
The families also plan to sue the federal government, their attorney said, noting that over 150 federal officers were at the school.
Even deeper pockets than the companies involved.
The money here ultimately comes from the company’s customers if they win (since it results in higher prices) or if they win against the government, higher taxes. The families probably won’t pay anything in the event of a loss. In a win, they’ll split the money with the lawyers.
I would only argue with this piece:
The money here ultimately comes from the company’s customers if they win (since it results in higher prices)
Prices have been divorced from costs and are more based on “what the market will bear”. This only would be true if markets were actually competitive, and the fines encompassed a large amount of the supply side, neither of which is true. Fines like this are borne by the company books.
This is just grasping at straws.
Before video games we were blaming rock music and Marilyn Manson for violence. This is just stupid. The only ones guilty here are the perpetrators and the society that failed to catch them falling in between the cracks and gave them easy access to firearms. There have always been people with murderous aspirations and always will be. The weapon of choise is just a tool and a force multiplyer. They likely would have used a tactical nuke if they had access to one. They didn’t so an assault rifle was the next best choise. Focusing on AR-15 is ridiculous. They’ll use what ever the best thing is they have access to.
On the other hand, CoD is just U.S. Army recruitment propaganda, so fuck it.
“When we have a new product that has elements that we’re not sure how people will respond to, what do we do as a corporation?” he asked. “We market it as much as we can — we do all the things we can to essentially brainwash people into liking it before it actually comes out. I’d like to see the government doing this too.”
Under capitalism, production is obviously shaped by demand, and if something that is perceived bad is being produced, that is obviously because people vote with their wallets to do that. Obviously. See also why you personally are to blame for climate change for not recycling hard enough and paying for fuel.
Before video games we were blaming rock music and Marilyn Manson for violence.
Marilyn Manson’s first song was released in 1992.
Video games were being blamed for violence by that time, and there was even a congressional hearing on the topic of video games and violence in 93-94.
Focusing on AR-15 is ridiculous. They’ll use what ever the best thing is they have access to.
No, because an AR-15 was used in this specific case, and these specific companies were involved in making and aggressively marketing this specific gun to the specific person who used it to kill these people.
This isn’t a “Marilyn Manson/video games/anything-but-guns is the real reason” type argument.
These specific companies’ obviously dangerous practice of marketing guns to teenaged boys contributed to the events at Uvalde, or so the suit alleges.
It’s an argument worth hearing the details of before judging.
Call of Duty? REALLY? The other two are maybe something (still seems like grasping at straws) but a video game?
My heart goes out to the families for what they went through but this doesn’t seem like it solves anything…
I agree.
I was taken aback by this level of CoD: MW2 as many others were:
It was such a morality issue that came up. I simply didn’t expect it to be in the series. It made me not fire like I normally would. I felt so uncomfortable and guilty being there. It just shows that it’s the person not the game.
And maybe that was the point of that mission. To cause you to think about the violence that you normally included upon your virtual enemies without a second thought. If you play a FPS game, you won’t question why you’re shooting the other team, you just do it. The same way it doesn’t technically matter why the crowd of people in said COD level are your enemies. What matters is the developer telling you to shoot them.
Oh, that definitely was their intention… to make you stop and think about your actions. They gave you a choice.
I believe they even give you an achievement for NOT shooting anyone in that scene. Unfortunately, I shot a couple innocents before realizing what was happening.
The first time I played it, I just figured it was just a messed up level. But then I thought about it and wondered why they included it. Totally changed my opinion.
If some conservative parent who doesn’t normally play videogames were handed that without context, they’d be all for banning the thing. And yet they wouldn’t realize it was teaching you a lesson.
Before anyone rushes to judgement about “suing ‘Call of Duty’”:
Families of the Uvalde victims have filed a lawsuit against Daniel Defense, the makers of the AR-15 assault rifle, and Activision, the publisher of the first-person shooter video game series “Call of Duty,” and Meta, the parent company of Instagram, over what they claim was their role in promoting the gun used in the shooting.
The suit alleges the companies partnered to market the weapon to underage boys in the games and on social media.
They’re alleging the AR-15 maker, activision and meta played a role in aggressively promoting the gun to underage boys. This isn’t ‘video games caused columbine’. Stealth marketing guns to kids is maybe not great. Meta’s whole thing is shady intrusively targeted marketing. Everyone knows that Activision is capable of some truly scummy behaviour. I’m not 100% sold but that it seems worth hearing out to me.
Do you know where a lot of these military video games get a lot of their funding? If you guessed the Department of Defense you win! If anyone is to blame it’s the United States government.
Look, I actually agree with going after weapons manufacturers, and I can understand suing social media companies for the way their algorithms steer people to radicalism but keep your god damned hands off my video games.
