Video Game Addiction Lawsuit: Cases, Rulings, and Government Actions

The video game addiction lawsuits are a growing group of more than a hundred individual cases accusing Epic Games, Roblox Corp., Microsoft, Activision Blizzard, and other major developers of deliberately engineering their games to addict children. As of mid-2026, no case has gone to trial, no settlements have been reached, and the earliest substantive rulings have gone against the plaintiffs. The bulk of the action sits in a coordinated proceeding in Los Angeles Superior Court, with scattered federal cases proceeding on their own after judges twice refused to consolidate them.

What the Lawsuits Allege

The complaints name a broad roster of defendants: Activision Blizzard, Epic Games, Roblox Corp., Microsoft, Mojang Studios, Take-Two Interactive, Rockstar Games, Electronic Arts, Nintendo, Sony, Ubisoft, and Tencent. Games called out by name include Fortnite, Roblox, Call of Duty, Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto 5, Rainbow Six, and Battlefield.¹

Plaintiffs allege the companies hired behavioral psychologists and neuroscientists to build in features that exploit young players’ reward systems and then concealed the risks. The features at issue include loot boxes compared to slot machines, pay-to-win microtransactions, engagement algorithms and daily login rewards, deceptive interface designs, and data collection used to tailor paid offers. The complaints tie these mechanics to the medical community’s recognition of “Internet Gaming Disorder” in both the DSM-5 and ICD-11.¹

The claimed harms run from depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, suicidal ideation, and ADHD-like symptoms to “gamer rage” outbursts, withdrawal when gaming is restricted, academic decline, and sleep deprivation.¹² Families also claim financial losses from unchecked microtransaction spending and the cost of therapy or tutoring, and some complaints allege compulsive gaming causes structural changes in the brain’s reward system similar to those seen in substance use disorders.

Who Can File a Claim

These are not class actions. Plaintiffs’ attorneys have chosen to file individual injury claims, arguing the harm each person suffered is severe enough to stand on its own rather than share a pooled recovery.¹

To generally qualify, a plaintiff must be 22 or younger, have played internet-based multiplayer games with microtransactions for at least three months, and have been diagnosed with or suffer from video game addiction or internet gaming disorder. Parents and other family members can file on behalf of a minor.¹

Where the Cases Are Being Heard

Plaintiffs’ lawyers twice tried to consolidate the federal cases into a multidistrict litigation, and were turned down both times. In June 2024, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation denied MDL No. 3109, which covered a broad range of video game addiction claims, finding the games and defendants varied too much for centralization to be efficient.³ In December 2025, the Panel denied a narrower request focused on the “gateway” games Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft (MDL No. 3168).⁴ Federal cases therefore remain in their original district courts.

The main consolidated proceeding is in state court. More than a hundred cases have been grouped into JCCP No. 5363 in Los Angeles Superior Court, before Judge Lawrence P. Riff. That proceeding targets Epic Games, Roblox Corp., Microsoft, and Mojang, among others, and remains in pretrial discovery.² A separate proposed class action is also pending in Canada on a nationwide basis.⁵

Key Rulings So Far

Two early federal decisions have shaped the landscape, and both favored the defendants.

Angelilli v. Activision Blizzard

In April 2025, a federal judge in the Northern District of Illinois dismissed all nineteen claims in Angelilli v. Activision Blizzard, Inc., though with permission to amend. The court held that Roblox’s game creation tools, characters, and skins are expressive content protected by the First Amendment, and that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shields Roblox from liability tied to third-party user content on its platform. The judge expressed skepticism that the addiction claims could be reworked to survive.⁶

Johnson v. Activision Blizzard

In February 2025, a federal judge in the Eastern District of Arkansas granted Activision’s motion to compel arbitration in Johnson v. Activision Blizzard Inc., one of the earliest individual cases, filed in November 2023. The court found a valid arbitration agreement existed through Activision’s online terms of service, stayed the claims against Activision, Infinity Ward, Treyarch, and Sledgehammer Games, and rejected the plaintiff’s argument that the agreement was void because he was a minor when the account was created, holding that under Arkansas law such contracts are voidable rather than void.⁷

No Trials, No Settlements

As of mid-2026, no bellwether or other trial has been scheduled or conducted in any video game addiction case, federal or state, and no settlements have been reached.¹

Government Actions Moving Faster

While the private cases sit in discovery, regulators have already extracted concrete changes from several of the same companies.

Epic Games (Fortnite)

In December 2022, Epic agreed to pay $520 million to resolve FTC claims. Of that, $245 million was earmarked for refunds to players tricked into unwanted purchases through dark patterns, and $275 million resolved allegations that Epic violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by collecting children’s personal information without parental consent.⁸ Epic rebuilt its payment flow with hold-to-purchase mechanics, explicit opt-in for saved payment methods, high privacy defaults for players under 18, and “cabined accounts” for users under 13 that disable chat and purchasing until a parent consents.⁹ By June 2025, the FTC had sent over $126 million to more than 969,000 U.S. players, averaging about $114 per person.¹⁰

Cognosphere (Genshin Impact)

In January 2025, the FTC announced a $20 million settlement with Cognosphere, operator of HoYoverse and Genshin Impact. The agency alleged a multi-tiered virtual currency system obscured the true cost of loot box prizes and that the company marketed to children while collecting their data without parental consent.¹¹ The consent order bars HoYoverse from selling loot boxes to players under 16 without parental consent, requires a direct real-money purchase option instead of forcing players through virtual currency first, and requires clear disclosure of loot box odds and costs.¹²

New York v. Valve

On February 25, 2026, New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Valve Corporation, operator of the Steam platform, alleging that loot boxes in Counter-Strike 2, Team Fortress 2, and Dota 2 amount to illegal gambling under New York’s constitution and penal law.¹³ The office pointed to a Counter-Strike skin market that surpassed $4.3 billion as of March 2025, with individual items selling for more than $1 million, and called the system “particularly pernicious” for children and adolescents. James is seeking a permanent injunction, restitution for players, and fines equal to three times Valve’s alleged illegal gains.¹⁴ Valve had not publicly responded as of the filing, and the case remains at the complaint stage.¹⁵

Updated COPPA Rules

The FTC finalized its first major overhaul of the COPPA Rule since 2013 on April 22, 2025, with a compliance deadline of April 22, 2026. The update expands “personal information” to include biometric data, tightens parental notice and consent for services used by children, and imposes stricter data security and retention obligations.¹¹ The agency declined to explicitly ban engagement-enhancing design techniques under COPPA’s “internal operations” exception, but signaled it would continue using its broader Section 5 authority against unfair or deceptive practices that encourage harmful prolonged use by children.¹²

What to Watch Next

The private litigation is at an early and uncertain stage. There is no federal MDL, the California JCCP is still in discovery with no trial date set, and the two most substantive early rulings handed defendants First Amendment, Section 230, and arbitration defenses that other courts may or may not follow. Whether plaintiffs can amend around the Illinois dismissal, and whether other federal courts enforce arbitration clauses as the Arkansas court did, will shape how far these cases can advance. On the regulatory side, the outcome of New York’s gambling theory against Valve, and the April 2026 COPPA compliance deadline, are the next concrete markers for how the law around game design and monetization is likely to shift.

1
ClassAction.org. Video Game Addiction Lawsuit
2
Beasley Allen. Game Over: Beasley Allen Files Video Game Addiction Lawsuit
3
United States Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. In Re: Video Game Addiction Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 3109
4
United States Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. In Re: Gateway Video Game Addiction Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 3168
5
CLG. Video Game Addiction Canadian Class Action
6
Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP. Game Addiction Litigation
7
CaseMine. Johnson v. Activision Blizzard Inc.
8
The New York Times. Fortnite FTC Refunds
9
Epic Games. Epic FTC Settlement and Moving Beyond Long-Standing Industry Practices
10
Federal Trade Commission. Fortnite Refunds
11
Federal Trade Commission. Genshin Impact Game Developer Will Be Banned From Selling Lootboxes to Teens Under 16 Without Parental Consent
12
Federal Trade Commission. Level Up: Tips for Businesses From the FTCs Settlement With Genshin Impact Developer HoYoverse
13
Office of the New York Attorney General. Attorney General James Sues Game Developer for Promoting Illegal Gambling Through Loot Boxes
14
Reuters. New York Sues Video Game Developer Valve, Says Its Loot Boxes Are Gambling
15
Office of the New York Attorney General. New York v. Valve Corporation, Complaint