There will be a class action lawsuit against Epic Games in Canada.
The lawsuit was first filed in 2019 by Montreal-based law firm Calex Legal on behalf of the parents of two minors who claimed that Epic Games knowingly created Fortnite to be the most possibly addictive.
Now, Judge Sylvain Lussier has sided with the plaintiffs, agreeing that this claim “does not appear to be frivolous or manifestly without merit,” with the court proceeding now moving forward as the plaintiffs “have a product liability claim valid against the defendants”. .”
“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,” the judge said, as reported by The Independent .
However, the judge disagreed that Fortnite was deliberately created to be addictive.
“The court finds that there is no evidence for these allegations of the deliberate creation of an addictive game. This does not preclude the possibility that the game is indeed addictive and that its designer and distributor are presumed to know about it.”
Meanwhile, Epic Games argued that there is not enough evidence pointing to the existence of video game addiction (based on the results of the American Psychiatric Association).
But the judge argued that “the fact that American psychiatrists have called for further research or that this diagnosis has not yet been officially recognized in Quebec does not make the claims in question ‘frivolous’ or ‘baseless’.”
Epic added that it plans to “fight this in court.”