Several families of victims killed or injured in a 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, sued Activision Blizzard for its alleged role in “chewing up alienated teenage boys and spitting out mass shooters,” per the lawsuit filed in May 2024. The families look to the court to hold the company accountable for its alleged promotion of guns and violence to kids, claiming that 18-year-old shooter Salvador Ramos played Call of Duty “obsessively.” Activision Blizzard filed a response in late December invoking California’s anti-SLAPP statutes, which protect companies’ “right to engage in creative expression.”
Activision Blizzard’s lawyers state in the response that the lawsuit “is the latest attempt to revive an old playbook, echoing claims made in lawsuits filed in the aftermath of Columbine and other violent crimes.” It cited several court cases that ruled “creators and distributors of video games cannot, as a matter of law, be held legally responsible for school shootings or other violent crimes.”
SLAPP stands for “strategic lawsuit against public participation,” and anti-SLAPP protections are used to dismiss “meritless lawsuit[s] targeting the legitimate exercise of the right to engage in truthful speech, lawful petitioning, and legal association,” according to Bloomberg Law. For example, a court granted an anti-SLAPP motion to strike a negligence and liability complaint over video game addiction in 2014. That’s because courts and legislatures had previously agreed that video games should be treated as creative works subject to the First Amendment, rather than as products, legally speaking.
“The cause of Plaintiffs’ injuries—both legally and morally—is the perpetrator’s violent attack. And if Plaintiffs seek to restrict artistic expression, they must make their appeal to the legislature, not the courts,” Activision wrote. “In this ‘latest episode in a long series of failed attempts to censor violent entertainment’ (id. at p. 804), there can be only one result: the Complaint must be stricken.”
Throughout the 25-page response document and its accompanying materials, Activision Blizzard argues its case as to why Call of Duty should be considered artistic expression and more than just a product. Part of that argument is detailing how games — and, specifically, Call of Duty — are a matter of public interest: “The games also tackle real-world issues—like geopolitics, how technology affects war, and the moral complexities of combat—inspired by historical events, including Russia’s intervention in the Syrian civil war and the 2012 Benghazi attack.”
Activision says all of this is done using creative and artistic cinematic and literary devices, while also looking to technology to boost immersion and realism — something that doesn’t strip it of its First Amendment protections. “If anything, cutting-edge technologies have only increased video games’ artistry and creativity—and made them more expressively convergent with film and television—by transporting players into rich landscapes, quickly evolving and engaging storylines, and dynamic battle scenes,” the lawyers say. All Call of Duty games include realistic depictions of guns, which Activision Blizzard argues has “artistic relevance” to the franchise. Therefore, Activision Blizzard says, the plaintiffs don’t have a basis for negligence nor product liability claims. It also argues other claims, like aiding and abetting. Several other documents were filed alongside the arguments, including a lengthy declaration from Call of Duty creative lead Patrick Kelly, which disclosed that Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War cost $700 million in development, and one from University of Notre Dame media professor Thomas Payne, who outlines the cultural history of Call of Duty and military games.
But attorney Katherine Mesner-Hage alleged in the original complaint that Activision, Meta (with Instagram), and gun manufacturer Daniel Defense are a “three-headed monster” that “knowingly exposed [Ramos] to the weapon, conditioned him to see it as a tool to solve his problems and trained him to use it.” It’s a conversation that springs up every once in a while around tragedies such as the Uvalde shooting or with violence like the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson; with Thompson’s death, some media pointed to suspect Luigi Mangione’s history with video games like Among Us, despite a lack of evidence connecting the killing to the social game.
The next hearing, on April 15, will decide whether the complaint is stricken due to anti-SLAPP protections.
Source：https://www.polygon.com/news/505036/activision-blizzard-uvalde-shooting-victim-lawsuit-creative-expression-response
