Class action lawsuits are very often a good thing for customers:

In 2022, Apple agreed to pay a $50 million dollar settlement for certain eligible 2015-2019 MacBook owners who experienced problems with their butterfly keyboards. The claims process opened in late 2022, and the settlement got final approval last May. Starting today, eligible MacBook owners are finally receiving their payouts (up to $395 per person).

Butterfly was the technology to make keyboards exceptionally thin but also fragile — some keys may stop working after a few weeks of careful usage. Apple stopped using them in 2019, but for the first few years of complaints folks from Cupertino blamed users and rejected warranty requests.

#Apple #Legal #Hardware

Rostyslav Zagornov blamed 11 bit studios and the freelance artist Steven Stone in direct theft of one of his old works to build up Frostpunk: Beyond the Ice. (shitty mobile game) official concept arts. It's obvious, that at least for this flying ship Steven used a copy of what Rostyslav created for his An-Laenort visual novel.

Within the game, several stolen pieces are shown as backgrounds on loading screens.

#Theft@GameDEV
#2DArt@GameDEV
#Legal@GameDEV

Tencent removes directors from Epic Games after Justice Dept. inspection. The Justice Department voiced concerns that Tencent was being anti-competitive by appointing its own directors to Epic, which it only has a minority stake in.

VIA

#Legal@GameDEV
#Tencent@GameDEV
#EpicGames@GameDEV

This fella made the game run at 60FPS on PS5. For free. And got DMCA-ed by SONY.

#Legal@GameDEV
#PlayStation@GameDEV

Yeah, Copywrite laws sux, never use what you don't own as commercial projects (and probably free ones too), and always do your homework on all the assets, names, and terms:

Even for a small indie game you should hold a spreadsheet of all works, their respective creators and owners, and so on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSncDVr-J7A

#Laws@GameDEV
#Legal@GameDEV

Nintendo have tried to make other Palworld-like games imposable by making restrictive patents in the US.

And you know what? 22/23 were rejected!

#Nintendo@GameDEV
#Legal@GameDEV

The most unpleasant scam indie game developers can face:

Random people were able to literally republish a game from Steam to consoles without any consent from the original studio. And they are doing such things for years.

It's even worse for browser games on ItchIO — they are getting wrapped in WebView and sold as games on all platforms by dozens of similar companies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvpLrBpmmX0
#IndieGames@GameDEV
#Legal@GameDEV
#Nintendo@GameDEV

Epic Games is trying to end copyright violation madness on its community platform UEFN and marketplace FAB. Unlike Roblox, that often requires manual DMCA strikes, Epic is going to use mass-research, similar to YouTube algorithm.

#Legal@GameDEV
#EpicGames@GameDEV
#UEFN@GameDEV

Figma is mad: they sent a legal request to stop using Dev Mode, cause it's not a common term in other software and services, but THEIR TRADEMARK!

#Legal@GameDEV
#WTF@GameDEV

— We don't need a contract! — We do! — Don't you TRUST me? — I trust no one!

This should be your ONLY way of doing things in any commercial game development. Unless you want to end up like this.

#Legal@GameDEV