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Guy Game Results in Lawsuits and Injunction
Several readers have written in to report on Tuesday's lawsuit regarding 'The Guy Game'. The PC/console offering, which strings a weak trivia game around footage of naked college age girls, has come under fire after the revelation that a woman featured prominently in the game was under the age of 18 at the time the footage was taken. The lawsuit names Sony (PS2), Microsoft (Xbox), Take-Two Interactive (Publisher), and Top Heavy Studios (Developer) as defendants. Commentary available on GamesIndustry.biz.
Sorry, you seem a bit short-sighted:
Sony was not sued because a Playstation can play this game.
Sony was sued because they published the game, and the game developer contracted for them. They are thus technically the representative of a child pornographer and publishers of child pornography.
Frankly, I'm surprised Sony was willing to publish so stupid a game. Anyway, they should know you have to be extra careful with releases on content like this. Sony wouldn't've had legal liability if they didn't act as publisher/approver (that's why Dell et. al aren't being sued for the PC version of this); they chose to have their own publishing and content standard rules, and managed to approve something illegal.
The end users could probably be technically sued, but they'll probably be able to get off due to not knowing about this -- incidentally, anyone who buys the game in response to this story is a prime target for a legal attack due to intentional purchase of child porn.
News is a rather large exception. And even in the news, the image must be newsworthy.
Plus, news organizations routinely pay for such rights anyway, whether they have to or not.
A video game, however, is not news. This situation is pretty clear cut. Commercial exploitation of someone's image without persmission is illegal. And someone under 18 cannot legally give permission.
Plus, technically (stupid as the law is), her being under 18 makes it child porn.
Well here's the Guy Game website,
and here's the Gamespot pics,
and here's PS2 pics,
and here's XBOX pics,
and here's XBOX videos,
and here's PS2 videos.
Can anyone figure out who's the girl in question? Or I guess we can just download it all, and then see what pics and vids mysteriously vanish from the websites in the next day or two. heh.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.