Its like Christmas and Super Bowl Sunday all wrapped up into a nice soft taco with a side of irony. The most hated man in video games was recommended to be banned for a decade from any legal proceedings at a disbarment hearing yesterday. After petitioning to read his 4000 word appeal brief, he was denied by the way, JT stormed out of the courthouse. The judge then asked to impose the decade long exile. Appeals will follow but it seems like the legal career of Mr. Thompson is in serious jeopardy.
Was it all worth it, Jack? Did you really hate video games so much that you have ruined a legal career over bitching about games? Some people quit the business because of an injustice such as a death penalty case or some civil rights issue. You are being banned for… video games. I am trying to think of a snide comment to make here, but I think a Nelsom Muntz laugh will do just fine. Oh yeah, a big fuck you as well.
It is the end of the world… of Warcraft. A gamer from Fort Lauderdale, FL is bringing a lawsuit against a video game store for selling virtual gold for real money. This practice is called gold farming and has the same inflation effect that would occur if people printed their own money. This sounds like an absolute waste of time and it probably is. Yet, this could be one of those cases that turns out to set a precedent.
In order to win the lawsuit, the gamer must show that he suffered actual damages. There is nothing written that says people have any rights to virtual property. How can you own something that is not tangible? This is the basis of the Antonio Hernandez’s case:
“This loss of time, conservatively, amounts to hundreds of thousands of hours of subscriber time and causes the irreparable harm of driving subscribers away from World of Warcraft,” according to Hernandez’s lawsuit. “The economic harm incurred by this loss of time is in the millions of dollars.”
This instance, though sort of pathetic, does have the implications bring a whole new facet to the rights of gamers and their property inside the virtual world. We will keep a close eye on this and see just how far the government is going to allow these types of claims to be heard.
The State Supreme Court of Florida today issued a cease and desist order to everyone’s favorite legal crusader Jack Thompson stripping him of his abilities to file for lawsuits of any kind. In layman’s terms, “Shut the fuck up.” Queue Nelson Munce laugh.
Uber pwnage. Seriously. The Court basically got tired of this guy submitting brief after rambling, incoherent brief on things like a random scene in a video game. The already backed-up legal system cannot deal with frivolous lawsuits and anyone who went to law school and took ethics should know this.
After the jump is the brief that was sent to Jack Thompson. The news for JT does not get much better, his hearing on possible disbarring is still pending. You might see JT charging for ZJ’s in a couple years with Barry Badrinath.
It seems as if the legal ship has sailed for the recent FUBAR of Xbox Live. There has not been any updates from Majornelson, the XBL guru, who keeps us all in the loop. The reason? Until the dust has settled from a recent class action suit, in where else, Texas, a legal gag order is in effect reports Xbox360 Fanboy. This means one thing: This is a very serious legal matter. “Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K” for MS.
Well, it looks like Epic has worked out all the legal issues with Sony surround the update for the Unreal Editor 3. Mark Rein announced that the update, which allows users to cook their own PS3 mods for Unreal Tournament 3, is in the final stages of internal testing and should be released next week, if everything goes to plan.
We’re very close to releasing an update to the Unreal Engine 3 editor, that comes with the PC version of UT3, that will allow UT3 mod-makers to cook their mods into the required PS3 format. We’ve been doing some internal testing and we’re hoping to expand to a wider group tomorrow or Friday. If all goes well then we should see the update released next week which is what I expect will happen. Obviously the process works, as we put out a few mods before Christmas and people seem to be playing them, but it is the update to the editor that we’re testing.
This is great news for PS3 gamers who are looking to get some more mod action going on their copy of Unreal Tournament 3. I know the mods already released are terrific, and I only hope the community continues to grow.
We're like Spaceballs... we're making Loot Ninja everything. Coming soon we'll have hats, shirts, hoodies, possibly banana hammocks if one Editor has his way...
Check out the shirt prototypes here and the hats here
