David Jaffe can breathe a little easier today. According to the embattled developer, Bissoon Dath v. SCEA and David Jaffe, a copyright infringement lawsuit over various themes in the God of War series, was dismissed by a federal court judge last week.

Our man Dan Rosenthal is at the Game Developers Conference and filed this report from a lecture he attended last night:

The Serious Games Summit at GDC closed out its first day with a sobering presentation from Allan McCullough and Parry Aftab entitled "Violence Prevention -- Playing A Video Game Can Make A Difference." Sponsored by the Child Safety Research and Innovation Center, the session explained that while games often get criticized as being too violent, the games industry can actually work to lessen the real-world effects of violence and abuse against children through serious games.

A group of King’s Quest enthusiasts who have been working on their own content for the 1990s-era adventure game have been forced to abandon their project due to action from Activision.

A variety of King’s Quest games were released under the Sierra label in the 1990s. Volunteers began work on their project, dubbed The Silver Lining, back in 2002 under the name of Phoenix Online Studios, reports Kotaku. While initially they ran into problems with Sierra’s parent company Vivendi Universal—receiving a cease-and-desist order in 2005—a public backlash over the cancellation of the game more or less forced Vivendi to grant a non-commercial “fan license” to the project.

Everything remained status quo until recently, when Activision, which merged with Vivendi in 2008, issued a cease-and-desist to Phoenix Online, indicating “that they are not interested in granting a non-commercial license to The Silver Lining.”

GP’s own legal guru Dan Rosenthal offered his take on the revocation of the non-commercial fan license:

It's always unfortunate when you have a lot of hard work on a fan project go to waste. Unfortunately the real problem here for Phoenix Online was the bad luck of Sierra changing hands from Cendant to Vivendi Universal to Activision Blizzard. Changes of ownership often bring with them changing priorities, and who knows what sort of future Activision sees for the IP. Like many independent studios, Phoenix Online simply wouldn't be able to afford the cost of ignoring the cease-and-desist letter and risking a potential copyright infringement lawsuit.

The real damage here, however, comes from the chilling effect that this sort of action places on fan studios operating under non-commercial licenses (or even worse, no license but a "wink and a nudge" from the IP holder). Now, every fan project going forward is going to be reminded of the Sword of Damocles over their heads from pouring their efforts into someone else's IP.

Not long after the ESRB retracted their online ratings summary of PSP game Dead or Alive: Paradise, the "creepy" and "voyeuristic" game is in the spotlight once again, with director Yoshinori Ueda claiming the game is not "soft-core porn".

In an interview with Eurogamer, Ueda fired back at critics claiming the game is sexist, saying "We're certainly not trying to degrade women. They have beautiful bodies. We're trying to show off the beauty of their bodies but we're not trying to be degrading about it - we're trying to show that they are beautiful characters."

Ueda counters accusations that DoA:P's excessive mammaries have nothing to do with game play by asserting that DoA:P isn't really a game anyway, at least not in "the traditional sense".  "What we offer is a selection of things to play and activities to have fun with. The players have the freedom to play Paradise however they want," Ueda said. "For us, the goal was really to offer a little bit of paradise to the users, and we hope that people playing the game will be able to come away with the feeling that they've visited paradise."

GP: So it is a game, it's not a game, it's about the characters, it's about whatever the players want... Ueda's point unfortunately gets lost amidst the contradictions. It's a bit disingenuous to suggest that his game actually attempts to honor women, while dismissing that some may feel degraded. And while various branches of modern feminism offer competing arguments about whether women should or shouldn't to take pride in having an attractive body, the characters Ueda features in DoA:P aren't real -- they're not human.  Of course, this isn't a new issue, as the Dead or Alive series has been controversial for the sexualization of its characters since Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. But does anyone else see something inherently chauvinistic about having a male director assert that all he wants to do is show off women's beautiful bodies for other people's pleasure?


Dan Rosenthal is a legal analyst for the games industry.

Ubisoft recently detailed the specifics of their new DRM scheme, which requires a constant internet connection to merely be able to play the games. Understandably, gamers are upset that a momentary internet connection hiccup can result in losing unsaved game progress mid-session -- even in single-player mode.

Instead of whining about it on the internet, however, game journalist Lewie Procter of SavyGamer is deciding to fight back in the form of a "reverse boycott". In essence, Procter wants people to buy the game en masse, then return the game unopened and untouched at the end of the valid refund period, explaining that they find the game's DRM to be unacceptably restrictive. In theory, the protesters will receive a full cash refund (at Tesco, a UK retailer) and Ubisoft will feel the burn from the retail outlet.

Negative Gamer has already signed on in support of the protest. However, it's unlikely to catch on as well in the US, where many retailers have significant restrictions on refunds for games.

GP: While the intentions are good, I fear that the reverse boycott will ultimately be ineffective. Even if there is an unusually large response, the dollar amount is simply not going to be enough to make Tesco or Ubisoft take notice. But the attempt is far from useless. Negative public backlash has proven helpful, perhaps instrumental, in changing restrictive DRM schemes in the past. Simply bringing attention to the issue could be Procter's greatest success.
 

Dan Rosenthal is a legal analyst for the games industry.

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) removed an online ratings summary of the content in Dead or Alive: Paradise for PSP from its website today in response to inquiries as to the appropriateness of the summary.

While the ESRB is mostly known for providing ratings on game boxes (such as the familiar "E for Everyone" or "T for Teen" ratings), the organization's website also provides more detailed synopses of a game's content intended to "explain in objective terms the context and relevant content that factored into a game's ESRB rating assignment."

The entry for Dead or Alive: Paradise, however, went a step beyond "objective":

This is a video game in which users watch grown women dressed in G-string bikinis jiggle their breasts while on a two-week vacation. Women's breasts and butts will sway while playing volleyball, while hopping across cushions, while pole dancing, while posing on the ground, by the pool, on the beach, in front of the camera.

 

There are other activities: Users can gamble inside a casino to win credits for shopping; they can purchase bathing suits, sunglasses, hats, clothing at an island shop; they can "gift" these items to eight other women in hopes of winning their friendship, in hopes of playing more volleyball.

 

And as relationships blossom from the gift-giving and volleyball, users may get closer to the women, having earned their trust and confidence: users will then be prompted to zoom-in on their friends' nearly-naked bodies, snap dozens of photos, and view them in the hotel later that night.

 

Parents and consumers should know that the game contains a fair amount of "cheesy," and at times, creepy voyeurism—especially when users have complete rotate-pan-zoom control; but the game also contains bizarre, misguided notions of what women really want (if given two weeks, paid vacation, island resort)—Paradise cannot mean straddling felled tree trunks in dental-floss thongs."

ESRB spokesman Eliot Mizrachi released a statement on the issue today:

The rating summary for Dead or Alive Paradise was posted to our website in error, and we have since replaced that version with the corrected one.  We recognize that the initial version improperly contained subjective language and that issue has been addressed. 

 

Our intention with rating summaries is to provide useful, detailed descriptions of game content that are as objective and informative as possible.  However they are ultimately written by people and, in this case, we mistakenly posted a rating summary that included what some could rightfully take to be subjective statements. 

 

We sincerely regret the error and will work to prevent this from happening again in the future.

GP: While some might be quick to condemn the ESRB for overstepping their boundaries, it's important to realize a couple things. First, there's nothing technically wrong with their original position: the ratings, after all, are voluntary, and the ESRB itself is an industry body. Second, they were quick to admit error and replace the synopsis with a more objective one -- when was the last time we heard the MPAA admit they were wrong?

Dan Rosenthal is a legal analyst for the games industry.

Jellyvision, the minds behind the popular “You Don't Know Jack" series of games, has filed a lawsuit against insurance company Aflac for trademark infringement.

The complaint, filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, seeks an injunction to prevent Aflac from using the phrase "You Don't Know Quack" as part of their online web-game marketing scheme. 

Here's where the weird part comes in: Jellyvision also owns a website called Healthcare Mentor, presumably why Aflac's insurance game bothers them so much. The site even touts Jellyvision's history as a pioneer in "Interactive Conversation" (GP: Fancy word for quiz games?).

The interesting question will be whether Jellyvision can claim that Aflac's use competes with its own. Trademarks are categorized by a "goods and services code", which as the name implies, limits the fields of goods and services that the mark can exercise power over. While Jellyvision's only active trademark for "You Don't Know Jack" dates back to 1995, it is registered under the goods and services code for "computer game programs recorded on CD-ROMS."

Jellyvision used to have three more trademarks for "You Don't Know Jack" falling under goods and services codes for things like "online computer game services",  "providing on-line interactive computer games [...] providing computer games that may be accessed network-wide by network users" and the like, but those marks have all been either cancelled or abandoned. Jellyvision certainly will have an uphill battle on their hands.
 

Dan Rosenthal is a legal analyst for the games industry.

Attorney Mona Ibrahim has published an analysis of the legal implications involved in reverse-engineering games.

The article follows a hypothetical game developer who is frustrated that her favorite game has poor server support, so she reverse-engineers the network protocols to create a private, lag-free server.  The concept isn't so far-fetched: guides on how to create a private World of Warcraft server abound and some reverse-engineered games, like SWGEmu have gained quite a bit of attention.

Ibrahim's article outlines the various laws and doctrines that come into play with reverse-engineering, from the Copyright Act to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and provides practical examples of where enterprising coders can go wrong.

For instance, regarding the DMCA, Ibrahim notes:

If Mallory's new server doesn't provide the same safeguards that control access to the original game servers (like a CD key or a version verification protocol), then her own server is circumventing access controls to the online component of the game. Therefore, by distributing the program, means (such as DIY instructions), or code to access servers that don't use the game's original access controls, she would be violating the anti-circumvention provision.

The article concludes that while reverse engineering itself is not illegal, it does run a gauntlet of legal issues and that "[t]his isn't the type of project you want to pursue if you're risk averse".


Dan Rosenthal is a legal analyst for the games industry.

2K Games announced this week that BioShock 2 will be available for pre-order on Steam, and that the game would be protected by SecuROM DRM software, much to the dismay of gamers who had negative SecuROM experiences with the first BioShock (which launched with an activation limit). 

In response to the uproar, 2K Community Manager Elizabeth Tobey responded on the 2K Forums with the following clarification:

BioShock 2 is using a standard Games for Windows Live activation system, much like other games you have played in the past. That doesn't mean you always have to be online to play or save the game - you can create an offline profile for the Single Player portion of the game (you just won't earn achievements and you can't play Multiplayer, of course.)

We are using SecuROM only as a disc check method for the retail copy of BioShock 2. That is it's only use.

Tobey later confirmed that SecuROM will only be used as a disc check but that activation will be done through Games for Windows Live—a revelation that may have PC gamers groaning given GFWL's less than stellar reputation.  Furthermore, GFWL will place restrictions on your ability to save without creating a profile, and will require online activation even for single-player mode.

While the BioShock 2 DRM scheme appears to be less restrictive than the DRM included with the launch version of the original BioShock, players will still have to contend with Games for Windows Live which has had a checkered history in games like Dawn of War 2, Fallout 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV.

In September 2008, EA was slapped with a class-action lawsuit over their use of SecuROM in Spore, but such a lawsuit is unlikely for 2K Games given the limited role they claim that SecuROM will have.


Dan Rosenthal is a legal analyst for the games industry.

Sooner or later, most gamers will face the dreaded scenario of having to leave their desktop PC's and consoles behind and suffer through the misery of modern air travel.

Domestic travelers have become familiar with intrusions and searches at Transportation Security Administration security checkpoints. But as the ACLU has recently discovered, international travelers are not only having their laptops seized and searched by Customs and Border Protection, but agents are making copies of files and giving them to third-party agencies. The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the government, which turned over hundreds of pages of documents revealing startling information about how much access—and how little oversight—agents have to your gaming laptops when you travel.

For instance, over a period of nine months, CBP agents searched over 1,500 devices, including laptops, thumb drives, cell phones, and DVDs. Last year, agents transferred 282 files from these devices to third-parties. Under current policy, CBP is not required to justify the searches. Interestingly, of those files, only four were justified under "national security" concerns, and apparently encrypted files were sent to unknown agencies for "translation/decryption".

Several spreadsheets containing summaries of the data (as well as detailed information on each incident, if you're so inclined) are available from the ACLU; a further list of documents and correspondence released from CBP can be found here.

Dan Rosenthal is a legal analyst for the games industry.

GP: Dan offers a unique vantage point to a lot of the topics we talk about here and it's our hope that he'll contribute more pieces going forward. Please welcome him aboard!