Legal
Within the games industry there are a number of issues that arise purely from a legal standpoint and where some examples may get dragged into a legal debate on the grounds of other problems there are enough that come purely from a legislative area. These may vary from things as simple as the name of a particular game or trademark (as with industries outside gaming too of course), but also there are many legislative issues that come from the approach to buying and using certain hardware and software based on what is deemed legal from the publishers whose right is to protect their own products.
My first example comes from a lawsuit between the companies Zenimax (parent company to Bethesda) and Mojang (an indie developer that has had massive success). In this example Mojang had been developing another indie title which revolved around a fantasy card game that they planned to call 'Scrolls', this immediately sparked claims of copyright infringement from Bethesda as it 'clearly' conflicted with their franchise called 'The Elder Scrolls'. Bethesda, (and therefore Zenimax), claimed that using the name Scrolls for a different game could fracture their already strong consumer base and lose recognition for some very highly acclaimed titles. This might seem to be a ridiculous claim that a new game that in no way opposes Bethesda in terms of competition and is so completely different from their series that to claim copyright over one word in their titles' name however from the point of view of Zenimax they have to be seen as willing to defend a brand that is very important to them else it could be seen as careless action regarding copyright ownership and could be revoked or have it's conditions changed legally by an outside judging body. From this it becomes more obvious as to why seemingly frivolous lawsuits arrive 'just for the sake of it', whereas in reality it is merely a large company being protective over it's property and rightly so. Zenimax and Mojang settled this outside of the courtroom on the grounds that Zenimax owned the copyright and would license Mojang to use it so long as it was on a one use basis and didn't turn into it's own 'Scrolls' franchise, this led to an agreement in which both companies came out with what they wanted essentially, Mojang had never planned to create a sequel in the first place and Bethesda & Zenimax were able to protect their own property. Robert Altman (CEO of Zenimax) said that "We are pleased to have settled this matter with Mojang amicably."
In a completely separate example we see developers come across legal issues that are defined from the point of view of consumers vs. producers, in short Piracy/Theft/Infringement. All of these are commonly known by most people with a handle in the games industry and there are several issues legally and also morally that come around these things. Developers see it as a massive problem (and rightly so), because for every copy of a game that is attained illegally (without payment), they don't make the money that they should have done, and where in most cases this is a digital download (and no material possession is lost), this is still seen as a case of theft on the part of developers and indeed the legal system. A lot of the time people who do this will claim to have a reason or excuse for essentially stealing games, most of this will boil down to not having enough money which of course if applied to anything else is just outright theft. Though there are some questionable examples of whether or not there are cases of it being understandable as to why people do 'acquire' games for nothing, if the country they live in hasn't published it for example or perhaps it's just so old it's out of print and no other copies will be made. From a moral and indeed developers standpoint these should be acceptable cases of downloading software for nothing. The problem is that from a legal standpoint action will be taken as a whole against the entire idea of illegal distribution and piracy of video-games, without much regard given to these minor (potential) exceptions, and in the instance of MegaUpload, anyone who had things stored there that had nothing to do with video game piracy lost everything without warning or much respect at all because so much was deemed to be illegal that it was permanently shut down regardless of content.
It's difficult to approach legal issues with a specific view on what should be done about particular issues, whether it be keeping certain content away from age groups who shouldn't be allowed to be exposed to it or from people who claim to have good reason to download for free but there are many questions that are left unresolved and ignored from a legal perspective because it's just too difficult to contain and split into such fine examples. For example should the age requirement be different for gender because girls mature faster? It seems ridiculous but if an emotionally disturbed 18 year old gets hold of questionable content legally is that any better than a perfectly sane 15 year old having the same product?
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