Blizzard Sued for Death of Gamer

Somatic writes "In the latest saga over online gaming addiction in China, the parents of a 13-year-old Tianjin boy are suing the makers of World of Warcraft, blaming the game for the death of their son, according to the Chinese news agency Xinhua. The parents filed a suit against Blizzard Entertainment on Wednesday, saying their son jumped to his death while reenacting a scene from the game, the report said. The parents are backed by the anti-Internet addiction advocate Zhang Chunliang. Mr. Chunliang has spoken to 63 parents whose children have allegedly suffered from online gaming addiction and plans to file a class-action suit, according to the report."

Comments

a good introduction on such tort law problems

[Diego and Aline]

... can be found at the Becker-Posner blog here. Gary Becker is a Nobel prize winner economist and Richard Posner is, I presume, an equally important lawyer.

It would be nice if we could get hold of the existing arguments and proposed solutions before jumping into naïve comments, fuck-the-corporations shouting and suchlike.

Re:A time bomb for the game industry?

[tomstdenis]

I don't buy it [literally and figuratively]. I have made stupid choices in my life [e.g. buying video games over the net when I really shouldn't have] but I know when to quit. I pull myself away from it and do something else.

These kids getting super addicted to WoW and other RPGs are just kids who don't have proper perspective on life. They place an over abundance of importance and value in the games when personal and professional development is more important.

For instance, I don't spend all day on slashdot or gaming because I have projects to work on that help pay the rent, buy food, get invites to conferences, etc. I realize that thre are MORE IMPORTANT things than gaming.

For young kids I totally blame the parents. It's really quite simple. Unplug the computer, lock up the HD, etc. If an 8 yr old kid can run around buying computer parts that you locked up you're giving your kids too much money or you should teach them stealing is wrong. When I was a young kid my parents would just put the NES away when I had other things to do [homework, piano, cubs/scouts, etc]. I don't view them as evil or mean for it and I look back and say "thanks for helping me balance my life".

Tom

Re:Anyone else see the irony in this?

[Blackwulf]

iD has been sued several times by the victim's families of school shootings. Maybe not for Columbine, but they were sued in connection with the Peducah, KY shootings, along with Sony, Square (for FF7), Activision, and some retailers. Kinda like the Strickland v. Sony lawsuit in Fayette, Alabama, but that's more against GTA than Doom.

Re:safety warnings

[prichardson]

I really want to clear this up because the likes of Jay Leno have really twisted the story.

The McDonalds in question had repeated complaints about the temperature of their coffee, and the woman burned wasn't just burned a little. She recieved third degree burns on her thighs. They knew their coffee was too hot and they didn't do anything about it.

McDonald's Coffee

[Pyromage]

Mod parent up - more people need to know what happened.

First, the person burned was the *passenger*. Secondly, the car was stopped at the time for her to put some cream & sugar in it. Third, McDonald's coffee is served 40 degrees hotter than that of other fast food restaurants. The temperature that other restaurants serve it at *would not* cause third degree burns.

And the very large sum of money that she was awarded initially totalled less than a day's coffee sales for McDonalds. And that was reduced significantly, as well.

I don't like the comparison, because McDonald's did screw up, and this kid screwed up. Blizzard just made a kickass game.

Re:McDonald's Coffee

[Anonymous Coward]

Additionally,
        The woman originally contacted MCD's and asked to cover her medical expenses. They said "no".
          Then she found out that she was the 71st lawsuit for coffee burns, some of which were just people sitting at McD's and severely burning their tongues, mouths, throats. Lastly, she sued for the cost of her medical expenses which was like $10-16K do not recall the exact number, the rest of the money awarded was "punitive damages"(amount is relative to the income/worth of the person or corporation being sued)for McDonalds not correcting a known dangerous situation.
        The story gets twisted and used as propaganda all the time by corporate shills who would like to see "tort reform" of "frivilous lawsuits". However the reform is always aimed at removing individuals right to sue and leaving corporations free to bring litigation. And do not forget that 80% of all litigation in the US is corporation against corporation. Hmmmmmm... kinda like the fiscally responsible bankruptcy law just passed, no mention of corporations not being able going bankrupt and being held to the fiscal responsibility of the pension bill - compensation for work that generated the revenue to pay the CEOs their salaries and pensions.

Re:McDonald's Coffee

[jadavis]

And the very large sum of money that she was awarded initially totalled less than a day's coffee sales for McDonalds.

Totally irrelevent. Money is money, and it comes straight from the stockholders' pockets. Those stockholders are retirees and so forth; just regular people.

The thing I don't like about the McDonald's lawsiut is: what if some people like their coffee that hot? It's not totally unreasonable. Some people commute and may like the coffee to stay hot the entire time. Some people just like to sip it slowly. Some people still like it to be hot after they put stuff in the coffee (milk, cream, whatever). Or a combination of these factors.

Should it be illegal to sell coffee to meet the needs of those people? A few people avoid burns, millions of people suffer from lukewarm coffee. It's clearly called "hot coffee". I can't think of any warning that would be helpful beyond that. If it said "this coffee could cause 3rd degree burns, be careful" I don't think that would make any difference at all to the consumers' coffee habbits.

What's next? Sue a microwave manufacturer because "who would guess water could get that hot in just one minute?"? There are millions of products that you have to be careful with.

Re:McDonald's Coffee

[MoaDweeb]

Please understand that the reason the coffee was so hot was that they could use a lower grade of bean and the taste would be disguised. Evidence was also presented that Maccas had also done a risk/ reward analysis for this and decided that the amount of money saved was greater than that would be spent on lawsuits.

Re:Mario bros.

[zippthorne]

You're supposed to punch while you jump. Not even Mario broke bricks with his *head*.

Re:Mario bros.

[appleprophet]

Not if he's crouching while you jump or if he's holding something.

Re:Good luck with that one

[blincoln]

Didn't get that movie off the shelves.

Probably because The Basketball Diaries has a scene that's much closer to the reality (including the trenchcoat and heavy boots), and came out in 1995.

Re:safety warnings

[geminidomino]

I don't play video games much and certainly don't read the "fine print"

If you've ever played a Nintendo GCN or DS game, that "fine print" is a huge splash screen shown on loading.