Makers of Fortnite, Epic Games and its Canadian subsidy are facing a class-action lawsuit from parents, who have claimed that their children have stopped eating, showering and sleeping to play Fortnite. The complainants have gone on to claim that the makers of the game have knowingly developed the game to be very ‘addictive’. The parents who have filed the lawsuit have children ages 10 and 15 at the time of filing the suit. They have claimed that one of their children has logged 7,700 hours in the game over the span of two years.
The suit was filed in 2019 against Epic Games. Legal firm Calex Legal is looking forward for an approval from a Canadian court to proceed with the lawsuit. Alessandra Esposito Chartrand is an attorney with Calex Legal and had claimed that Epic Games had hired psychologists to make the game Fortnite as addictive as possible. Chartrand has also claimed that Epic Games knew about the fact that they are about to create the most addictive game and failed to warn the players of the risk of being addictive.
The lawsuit was filed in 2019 and since then the court has been analyzing the claims with the argument of the case could be proceeded or not. But now an approval has been granted by the Montreal CTV when the judge ruled out that the suit is not frivolous or manifestly ill-founded. Fortnite was launched in 2017 and since then it has logged a player base of more than 400 million registered players ad has at least 83 million playing every month. With the figures, the game has surely become one of the most popular ones online.
The game has managed to attract the younger players and reports say 60 percent of the registered players are between the ages 18 to 24 in 2021. Natalie Munoz, the spokesperson for Epic Games has defended that the game has ‘industry leading’ parental controls that allow the parents to supervise the digital experience of the child.
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