Making A List and Checking It Twice: Our End of Year Games Litigation Roundup
It’s hard to believe that 2025 is ending, yet here we are amidst another round of the Happy Holidays. And what better way to celebrate the season and ring in a new year than with another holly-jolly litigation roundup! What, that doesn’t fill you with holiday joy? Well too bad, you clicked the link and gave us the view, so you may as well finish what you started and take something of value from this. Consider it our gift to you!
While we cannot cover every case filed or decision handed down over the last six months, and while certain cases covered in our roundup may not be directly games-related, we believe that everything presented here may touch on the industry in some way or another. Indeed, as the universe of games, social media, new technologies, and all the related laws and regulations continue to intersect and overlap, traditional lines will continue to blur and even seemingly unrelated decisions may provide a glimpse into the future for games.
California Shows its Teeth
In the latter half of this year, the California Attorney General announced two major settlements for alleged violations of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
First, in October, the AG announced a $530,000 settlement with television and streaming service Sling TV. The AG alleged that Sling TV made it difficult for consumers to opt out of the selling or sharing of their personal information and failed to protect children’s privacy on their streaming platforms. Specifically, the AG alleged that Sling TV’s complex and misleading opt-out process, its failure to provide an in-app opt-out mechanism, and its improper handling of children’s data all resulted in violations of the CCPA. In addition to the monetary fine, Sling TV is required to take several actions to bring their practices in line with the CCPA, such as providing an opt-out mechanism within the Sling TV application, allow parents to designate profiles as “kid’s profiles” that do not sell or share personal information or targeted advertising by default, and provide parents with clear disclosures and tools to protect their children’s privacy.
The following month, the AG announced a $1.4 million settlement with mobile game developer Jam City. The AG alleged that Jam City failed to provide its users with opportunities to opt-out of the sale or sharing of their personal information, and that it additionally failed to implement sufficient privacy protections for minors. While Jam City did implement an age gate on certain games, the AG claimed that this was not consistently applied based on the users’ age information.
Taken together, these enforcement actions by the California AG should inform companies with a mobile presence to double-check their compliance with the CCPA and other applicable privacy laws. Companies should confirm they have implemented accessible in-app options for opting out of the sale or sharing of personal information, and be certain to obtain appropriate opt-in consent where it appears that minors’ data (ages 13 to 16) might be shared or sold.
Roblox, Part Un
The massively popular online game platform Roblox has been on the receiving end of multiple lawsuits from various State Attorneys General in the latter half of this year, each of them over concerns of sexual exploitation of minors on the platform.
First, in August, the Louisiana Attorney General filed a consumer protection lawsuit against Roblox, alleging that the company violated the Louisiana Unfair Trade Practices Act by designing its platform to allow bad actors to reach and exploit children, and by falsely and deceptively marketing Roblox as safe for children. The complaint seeks injunctive relief as well as significant civil penalties. Following Louisianna’s lead, the Attorneys General of three other states—Texas, Kentucky, and Florida—each filed similar lawsuits alleging violations of similar state laws geared at preventing deceptive or unfair trade practices.
In an apparent response to these lawsuits, Roblox recently announced that it would begin using age estimation technology for users who want to chat on the platform. Beginning in January, users will also be required to complete an age check before they can use the chat feature. This age check is to be accomplished by submitting an ID or through Roblox’s Facial Age Estimation process, which uses video and still imagery to estimate a user’s age. In some markets, users already have the option to voluntarily complete these age checks.
Roblox, Part Deux
After more than two years of litigation, some significant decisions have been handed down in Soucek et al v. Roblox Corp., an ongoing class action lawsuit where the plaintiffs allege that the platform and a collection of third-party websites conspired to maintain and facilitate an illegal gambling ecosystem targeting children and fueled by Roblox’s virtual currency, Robux. In essence, plaintiffs claim that users can wager their Robux on these third-party gambling sites and then cash out their winnings on the Roblox platform. Plaintiffs have made claims of violations of the UCL’s unlawful and unfair prongs, negligence per se, unjust enrichment, and negligence.
First, in October, the Northern District granted Roblox’s motion to dismiss with respect to the plaintiffs’ UCL unlawful prong and negligence per se claims. While plaintiffs asserted that Roblox violated six different laws--including state laws prohibiting the facilitation of gambling operations, laws regulating physical slot machines, and analogous federal laws—the court held that Roblox’s alleged conduct of knowingly allowing and profiting from gambling occurring on the online casinos was not covered by any of those laws. And because the negligence per se claim relied on an alleged violation of those same laws, that claim also likewise failed.
Then, in December, the court denied a third-party defendants’ motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ UCL and common law claims. Boris Said, developer of the now-defunct Robux gambling website RBLXWild, asked the court to dismiss the claims against him because Robux was not actual currency or a “thing of value” under the law. Rejecting this theory, Judge Chhabria held that under his reading of California law, Robux were in fact “things of value,” similar to arcade tokens exchanged for something the user values, such as gameplay. However, while Judge Chhabria readily determined that Robux were “things of value” under any reasonable understanding of the phrase, he also used the order as an opportunity to criticize the law’s vague definition of the phrase, and called for an update to the California Penal Code’s gambling provisions “to be clearer about what they cover, especially as online games played for various forms of virtual tokens and currencies become increasingly common.”
While the case is ongoing, the Court’s most recent order indicates that in some spaces there may be a shift in the interpretation of “thing of value” as applied to virtual currencies and their intersections with various gambling laws.
A Few Other Developments of Note
California Consolidated Video Game Addiction Lawsuit: Over a dozen individual lawsuits alleging claims of video game addiction have been consolidated into a single lawsuit in California Superior Court, JCCP No. 5363. As we highlighted in our mid-year roundup, there have been numerous such cases filed across the country over the last couple of years, but cases alleging addiction hit a significant setback with the decision in Angelilli v. Activision Blizzard, Inc. out of Illinois. While there have been no substantive rulings in these consolidated California cases yet, a hearing on a demurrer is scheduled for February 2026.
Bartz v. Anthropic PBC: Another case we highlighted in our mid-year roundup has seen some additional developments, as following the court’s finding of no fair use where pirated books were used to train an AI model, the parties reached a settlement agreement which was preliminarily approved by Judge Alsup in September 2025. As part of the settlement, Anthropic agreed to pay an eye-watering $1.5 billion, the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history. This settlement agreement may serve as a roadmap for the numerous other pending lawsuits where authors allege their works were unlawfully scraped from so-called “shadow libraries” to train AI models.
Yuga Labs v. Ripps: Remember NFTs? Well, they’re back in the news, as in July, the Ninth Circuit issued a decision on appeal following summary judgment in favor of Yuga Labs, publisher of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection. In April 2023, the Central District of California granted summary judgment to Yuga against Ryder Ripps, a conceptual artist, and Jeremy Cahen, who had launched the “Ryder Ripps Bored Ape Yacht Club” (RR/BAYC) NFT collection, which were nearly identical in appearance to the original BAYC NFTs. Despite the defendants’ claim that the RR/BAYC project was satirical, the Central District granted summary judgment on Yuga’s trademark infringement and cybersquatting claims in the plaintiff’s favor, while simultaneously rejecting Ripps’ First Amendment and fair use affirmative defenses. Following appeal before the Ninth Circuit, the three-judge panel concluded that Yuga’s NFTs were “goods” under the Lanham Act and that it had trademark priority, but largely reversed Yuga’s victory as it was deemed not entitled to prevail on its claims at the summary judgment stage because they did not prove as a matter of law that Ripps’ project was likely to cause consumer confusion in the marketplace. While Yuga may still ultimately prevail on their claims, they must do so before a jury.
Epic Games v. Google: Just when we thought this years-long dispute might finally be ironed out, another wrinkle emerges. Nearly two years after the titanic ruling that Google Play constituted an illegal monopoly on Android devices, the parties reached a proposed settlement in November wherein Google would introduce a new tiered service fee for developers, permit alternative payment options for apps on Google Play, remove “scare screens,” and streamline the installation of approved third-party app stores on Android devices. Judge Donato cast doubt on the proposed settlement agreement, raising concerns that it does not meet the legal threshold needed to revise a court ruling. A further hearing on the settlement is currently scheduled for January 2026.
Epic Games v. Nasser et al: In October, Epic filed a lawsuit in the Eastern District of Michigan against two individuals for allegedly using tens of thousands of “bots” to drum up engagement on their user-created Fortnite maps and reap tens of thousands of dollars in ill-gotten gains in the process. Fortnite players have for years been able create user experiences in the game called “islands” where other players can interact and play, and Epic rewards these community creators with monetary payouts based on various metrics such as player count and session length. The named defendants allegedly created several such islands, programmed thousands of automated bots to “play” in those creations, and then profited handsomely from their fake engagement. Epic caught wind of the scheme, however, halted payments, and demanded that the individuals stop playing Fortnite. Their refusal to do so has in part led to this lawsuit, where Epic has stated an intent to recoup the money paid under false pretenses. Epic also has a track record of taking action against cheaters, including pursuing legal action against cheat distributors and even requiring tournament cheaters to make public apologies. This lawsuit seems in line with that overall anti-cheating goal.