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Activision and Meta sued by families of Uvalde school shooting victims
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It's once again the "video games cause violence" nonsense that will also again fail. Video games don't "train" people how to use a weapon, or how to reload it, how to handle it, or properly aim, or clean it. It's a thumb stick and a button. That'd be like saying Legos trains kids to build skyscrapers.
I became an all pro nfl quarterback because I played a lot of madden
I learned medicine from Dr. Mario.
I am a marine biologist with interplanetary exploration now that i played subnautica.
This is my favorite one 😂😂😂
Agreed, video games help out more kids than hurt. I’ve been through some dark times in my life and video games have helped in unexpected ways.
Well said Sir, i truly hope you are in better place now…
Doom (1993) addict here.
Never had the urge to kill anyone and never will.
Mario party on the other hand...
Don't get me started! tosses bomb out of carwindow
That's just because you haven't been attacked by hell demons yet..
I learned how to reload, aim, and fire hundreds of guns from H3VR.
That's what gun Youtubers are for.
You know, I've actually never really thought about it, but you're right.
I think it is exactly video games that can show how one can easily die in irl situations eg in war games vs irl battlefield
I mean… the enemies, sure, but, depending on the same game, not so much yourself :p
Statistically every player dies at least once in game, and from my experience it could be like walking along and then get sniped or just get rushed
Etc etc
VR games can train for the aiming and reloading part though. But it's not a cause obviously. Whoever thinks that is a fucking idiot.
It's not an issue of whether video games teach people to shoot, but whether they are responsible for making people more violent. They don't. Even a child can separate play violence, from real violence and there's no correlation. Even with the highly political studies that attempt to make an association, it's statistically insignificant and well within a margin of error to be made all but meaningless even with apparent bias.
It’s a spaghetti to the wall lawsuit, to see what sticks, they are also suing a bunch of state agencies. After the police investigated it self and found no wrongdoing, I don’t blame them.
100% games don’t train you but you can pickup some tactics. But still it doesn’t really provide you with any real world training or practice. I’ve played thousands of hours of video games and that didn’t do me any good when I got into firearms and competitions. Real guns and video game guns are not the same.
It won't fail if this group of Republicans gets power.
They do desensitize you to pointing weapons at people though. It’s a step in the process of learning to kill.
Does anyone make games where you're a cop and you have to take out a school shooter?
Yes. Ready or Not. There was also "Active Shooter" where you played the school shooter.
Remember Postal and all the controversy at the time?
The cop sim is alien isolation apparently.
i may be wrong but doesent Call of Duty punish you for camping like a uvalde police officer?
Campers actually make kills. Uvalde cops just talk a lot of shit into the mic and then drop out of the lobby just before the match starts.
Dont sell those four hundred ish officers short, they were very busy little bees!
Scope this list of accomplishments!
Bravely fought parents to keep the mass murderer safe
Tied very very hard but failed even in that, a parent was able to get in, retrieve their kid and get out safely
Bravely sent officers who remembered the active shooter training away from the mass murderer
Threatened the townsfolk generally
Had the kids who were playing dead announce themselves, (deception is wrong you know!)
Had multiple officers trained for exactly this on site within minutes of the mass murderer entering the school, with rifles and ballistic shield, but fucked off because an officers life is worth any arbitrary number of normies
Continued harassment campaign against the mother who did manage to get past the thin blue line to get her kid
They're cowards, but the continued harassment of families is what makes the Uvalde police despicable human beings. I can't imagine being so vile as to attack families who lost a child, all because the public witnessed me and my coworker's cowardice.
No you get kicked for being AFK
They ain't gonna get shit from Activision or Meta...should be sueing the shooters parents and the US government more like
Can’t sue the government they’re gonna always win, plus the parents aren’t responsible.
Yeah but neither is Activision lol
Might want to ask the Crumbleys about that.
So dumb, should be suing the city of Uvalde.
They did and won. They’re also suing every officer independently. It’s hard not to see this as simply suing everyone they can think of to see what works.
Yeah, and got a pittance ($2 million.)
I think they must have a charlatan as a lawyer, and that is really a shame.
it's a parental issue, nothing to do with the games, I grew up playing these and more and have never considered this a solution to anything except playing a game.
Poor brains make poor decisions.
Anything could trigger a nutcase
Surely humans never used to hurt each other before call of duty was made 😔
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Their kids are dead now they have some free time on their hands.
You mean to try and avoid accountability.
? How are the parents of murdered toddlers accountable?
Does no one pay attention to ESRB ratings anymore? It's part of how GTA got out of these type of lawsuits back in the hot coffee and vice city days.
Manhunt was another one
the only people who killed those kids were the shooter, and the cops who refused to stop him. anything beyond that is a reach and a half
Uvalde PD needs to pick up an old Police Trainer Arcade for the station break room.
Get an old CRT, an NES+Zapper, and a copy of Hogan's Alley.
How are their kids playing these games? Sounds like a YOU problem.
Since the sale of Activision happened, lawyer see billions of dollar signs. Despite what happened, I don't believe any other districts where school shootings happened have tried anything similar recently.
Are Hyundai and Kia going to sue Rockstar for promoting theft?
meta for sure i think their platform can indeed be harmful for teens and there is little real regulation there
but call of duty? come on thats just stupid.
They are both just stupid, because what has to be proven is that the service or game was the proximate cause (meaning the shooting wouldn't have happened otherwise) and there were no intervening causes (such as the shooter's mental condition) and also overcome first amendment considerations and lots of precedents.
Here's a GPT Summary:
To win such a lawsuit, the plaintiff would need to overcome significant legal hurdles, including establishing a duty of care, proving proximate cause without significant intervening causes, and addressing First Amendment protections. Additionally, they would need to counter strong public policy arguments against such liability. The combination of these factors makes success in such cases highly unlikely.
I feel for the families, but this is foolish. This is basically throwing slop at the wall in the hopes that some of it sticks. If anything, I feel for the families even more because of this, since they are likely being strung along by their lawyer who almost certainly knows they're giving these families false hopes.
There is so little to go on here, too. The "video games cause violence" gambit has been used before, and rightly failed then. The AR-15 is so common in the real world that it being in a game amounts to nothing. The idea of comparing virtual force-on-force combat to gunning down unarmed civilians is sickening. The claim that the game taught him how to be a marksman is utterly laughable.
The only plausible thing I can think of that potentially salvages the lawyer's credibility at all is if they're only doing the "sue all possible parties to avoid any one dismissing the case by deflecting blame on a party not named in the suit" approach. Given that the lawyer is also suing the distributor who sold the AR-15 to the shooter, this is at least possible.
Edit: the article says they're also suing Daniel Defense, the source of the weapon, but I do not see them, either as a company or via any of its executives or employees, mentioned as defendants in this action. My last statement suggesting a legal strategy that may be in use seems less likely now.
Edit 2: After reading the brief, I still believe the main "games cause violence" gambit is weak. However, I will note that the highly specific AR-15 variant was featured in one of the COD games, by name, as a weapon from Daniel Defense with a particular model number, and the company made public comments about how happy they were that their specific version was featured in the game, so the AR-15 commonness angle may not be as applicable. There was also apparently a level in that very same COD game which involved gunning down civilians in an airport. The idea that games teach you actual marksmanship, however, remains laughable.
what if it did though? lots of people can shoot and they don't shoot up a school. how is anything, a game, a class, a youtube video, whatever, teaching people how to shoot responsible for what those people shoot? Makes no sense. It's not like you need training to pick up a loaded gun and pull the trigger, this is just nuts to me.
I present to you, the lawsuit's introduction, section 12:
These are the lawsuit's direct claims of what COD:MW2 and similar games are teaching "An American Teenager" before the age of 18. Like, literally, they are asserting that playing COD makes someone understand those facets of shooting directly, not merely how to pull the trigger more generally.
so? so what? where's the part where COD:MW2 trained teenagers to shoot at kids in a school? and even if it DID do that, so what again? Where did the game take over junior's mind and make him think it was okay to shoot at PEOPLE, especially little people? I'll stick with my "this is nuts" comment.
Umm, I think you're drastically missing something. My WHOLE COMMENT is about the shortcomings of the entire idea that the lawsuit has any merits at all. I'm not claiming that COD taught teens shit; quite the opposite, since I find many of the claims, as I clearly put, "laughable." You seem to be arguing against a position I don't hold.
Wait... the lawsuit claims Call of Duty simulates trigger pressure?
Since when? Did they name an accessory manufacturer? He wasn't shooting kids with a keyboard, mouse, trackball or other controller, was he?
How stinking frivolous can this suit be?
I quoted from it for a reason. It claims that American Teens are developing these skills from the games. However, as far as I can tell, it provides not a scintilla of evidence for this (almost certainly because none exists), and they're just being recklessly hyperbolic about what these games do and do not cover. To their (minimal) credit, they don't, as far as I can tell, use this claim later in their "causes of action" section (which is basically the actual individual torts claimed), but the fact that they suggest it at all is simply ludicrous.
It's not just weak, it's settled law.
Must be represented by ambulance chasers.
Problem is when the ambulance chasers don’t tell the plaintiffs that they’re on the hook for the defense’s legal fees when they lose. If the defense hired particularly ruthless lawyers, they can also ask the court to require a bond be put up to cover said fees.
I found this out personally when I inquired with a lawyer about suing my insurance company.
Yep. This one is at the high end of frivolous, too. In order for a game company to be liable, they'd have to show that that one particular game directly caused the deaths. There would have to be no intervening causes.
That's just not going to happen, because it's not true.
"Games make kids into murderers!"
GTA5 ALONE sold 200 million units. If games were turning kids into killers, game developers clearly are bad at making violent games. That conversation rate is pitiful.
And I sincerely hope they're laughed out of court and told to pay activisions court fees. This is a parental issue not a "video games cause violence" cop out.
Ok, by now over the years, over 1 billion people (probably closer to 2 billion) have played 'violent' video games, the percentage that went on to be killers due to playing the video games is such a small percentage that it can't even be calculated. May as well blame reading Harry Potter books or watching the news.
Christ... again with this?!
People really need to get over "video games cause violence" thing... it's simply not true... I wouldn't be shocked if the numbers didn't even add up to prove tendency... In fact, I've heard it said that physical violence is probably at a lower rate in gamers than others...
I guess violence didn’t exist before electronic games did according to that logic. Play Pac-Man one time and now you’re a deranged lunatic.
Vote Democrat if you don't want Republicans to ban video games that they deem subversive.
Greedy bozos
While at it sue looney tunes because that damn coyote be loaded with explosives and blowing shit up all the time.
Why is everything about money with you Americans? Jesus.
At what point do parents actually parent? Most likely they're the ones purchasing these games. They're rated M, 17+. Parents should educate themselves on what they're buying for their kids. Talk to your kids about the difference between reality and video games. Video games are no more violent than what's on TV and movies.
Set limits for social media and video games. Most ISPs offer parental controls. You can set time limits and cut off WiFi to your kids devices. It's not 100% but it's a start.
I asked my sister why she would let her 10 year old play GTA V. She said "I don't know anything about GTA". Exactly the kind of person who's a part of the problem.
Everyone needs their pockets filled
But it's ok for the Bible to promote incest and pedophilia with the promise of going to a fantasy land called heaven sue meta not Activision
Activision and Meta gave them the guns?
The lawsuit lottery, moron families looking for a cash grab.
Don't forget the evils of metal music.
Sue the GOP.
They should countersue on the grounds that having children is a liability. It's equally as stupid.
My kid got a Fanatec direct drive base and shifter set up for Christmas 2 years ago and played Asetto Corsa religiously for a year and a half - turned old enough to start drivers training a few months ago so i let him drive to the store before he actually was signed up. Almost hit two parked cars and couldn’t drive for shit. But yeah video games train people to use guns and kill 🤡😂
Are they suing gun makers and senators as well? Also, NRA? If not, it's just corruption and stupidity.
But these games sell worldwide while school shootings are a very American phenomenon.
Since Ozzy won the lawsuit that claimed his song Suicide Solution “caused” someone to attempt suicide, all of these cases have sided w the content creators.
What’s the level of correlation between a religious upbringing and school shooters, vs violent video games and school shooters? Sue the Vatican.
oh I saw this episode, wait that was the one about Marilyn Manson, my bad
No offense, but they should’ve gone after Epic because of Fortnite.
They should sue God and the republicans for derelict of duty
This is a frivolous suit, and the attorneys should be sanctioned. It's settled law.
i guess this is happening in US......because is sounds so stupid that there is no other way
Such a stupid lawsuit
Is it so hard to put some of the families. God theverge is trash.
Definitely not Smith and Wessons fault.
God created mass shootings to incite fear for maga Republicans/ jihadist to fight for your right to buy assault rifles since guns don't kill the people
I call on these companies to spend what they would have on PR, legal costs, etc… to instead donate this money to the victims. It’ll be worth the massive amount of coverage the news will get.
Call on the Uvalde police to donate from their pension fund.