Why Video Game Addiction Lawsuits Will Surge in 2025

A New Chapter in Behavioral Design Litigation

The past few years have marked a sea change in how courts, regulators, and the public view digital platforms and their impact on youth mental health. What began as scrutiny of social media companies is quickly expanding into adjacent industries, particularly the video game sector, where many of the same behavioral design principles are not only present but more deeply entrenched.

Drawing on strategies optimized to maximize time-on-platform and monetize user behavior, video games (especially those popular among adolescents) employ a range of psychological techniques shown to encourage compulsive use. This has prompted growing concern among researchers, clinicians, regulators, and now, litigators.

We are on the verge of a new wave of litigation that will likely assert that game developers have created addictive digital products, failed to warn consumers about the risks, and externalized the resulting public health costs. The legal theories are familiar: product liability, public nuisance, and negligence. But the battleground is new.

For legal professionals seeking to position themselves at the forefront of this emerging space, the time to pay attention is now.

Contextual Prediction: From Social Media to Video Games

To understand where this is headed, consider the trajectory of youth addiction litigation targeting social media platforms.

In In re Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation (MDL No. 3047), plaintiffs allege that major social platforms knowingly designed features, such as infinite scroll, variable rewards, and algorithmic content loops, that exploit adolescent brain development and impair mental health. Claims include failure to warn, design defects, and public nuisance. That litigation is still unfolding, but its implications are already reshaping platform governance and litigation strategy across the tech industry.

The same behavioral design playbook is used in many of today’s most popular video games. Features like loot boxes, reward streaks, progression systems, and real-time social pressures are engineered to foster prolonged engagement. The result: compulsive use patterns that closely resemble other behavioral addictions.

With the public and courts now more receptive to psychological manipulation claims, video game companies face increasing risk exposure.

The Legal Theories Likely to be Asserted

Based on current legal and regulatory trends, we anticipate that the next wave of litigation will assert a combination of the following legal theories:

1. Product Liability

Plaintiffs will argue that certain video games are defective, not in a traditional manufacturing sense, but due to their intentional use of behavioral mechanisms designed to foster compulsive use. These defects, they will claim, render the products unreasonably dangerous, especially for minors.

2. Public Nuisance

Echoing arguments from opioid litigation, plaintiffs (particularly public entities) may allege that the widespread use of addictive games has created a public health crisis. These claims could seek recovery for increased costs to schools, health care systems, and community mental health services.

3. Negligence and Failure to Warn

Developers and publishers may be accused of breaching a duty of care by failing to adequately disclose the risks associated with excessive gaming. Given the large volume of user data these companies collect including time spent, behavioral trends, and churn analysis, plaintiffs may argue that companies knew, or should have known, that their products were causing harm.

These theories are likely to be bolstered by internal documents uncovered during discovery that could show deliberate design choices aimed at increasing compulsive use.

Video Game Addiction Litigation: Legal Challenges Ahead

While video game addiction litigation is gaining momentum, plaintiffs will face significant legal and procedural hurdles that may define the early shape of this emerging practice area.

1. Proving Causation

Addiction involves multiple factors including genetics, mental health, and environment. Legal teams must establish connections between specific game design elements and harm suffered, particularly when isolating a single title as the cause of addiction-related damages.

2. Responsibility Arguments

Game companies often point to user accountability and available safeguards like parental controls and playtime limits. Cases may hinge on whether these features effectively prevent excessive use or were implemented too late to prevent harm.

3. Contractual Barriers

Terms of service agreements containing arbitration clauses and class action waivers present procedural obstacles. Courts must determine if such contracts can bind minors or if they're unconscionable when applied to products marketed to children.

4. First Amendment Considerations

Defendants may invoke free speech protections by classifying game mechanics as creative expression. Plaintiffs typically focus on commercial aspects like reward systems and monetization strategies rather than narrative content.

5. Limited Precedent

With few established rulings holding game companies liable for addiction-related harms, cases often draw from litigation involving tobacco, opioids, and social media. Building persuasive legal frameworks through discovery and expert testimony remains essential in this developing area of law.

Past Litigation Foreshadowing the Trend 

The legal ground has already been tested. Several notable cases have touched on video game addiction litigation:

1. Lineage II (Smallwood v. NCSoft, 2010)

• Case: In one of the earliest video game addiction cases, a California federal court refused to fully dismiss a claim against the developer of Lineage II. The plaintiff alleged over 20,000 hours of playtime led to psychological harm and life dysfunction, and that NCSoft failed to warn of the risk of addiction. The court allowed the negligence and failure-to-warn claims to proceed past a motion to dismiss, implicitly recognizing that addiction-related harms could support a tort claim if the design made those harms foreseeable. 
• Significance: Established early precedent that games may carry addiction liability under certain conditions.

While few of these cases have yet resulted in landmark rulings, they signal an increasing willingness by courts to entertain the core premise of gaming addiction as a compensable harm.

2. Fortnite Class Action – Quebec (2022–2023)

• Case: A Canadian class action authorized in 2022 alleged Fortnite was addictive and targeted youth with known psychological vulnerabilities. Epic Games sought dismissal, arguing that gaming addiction lacked legal basis and was speculative. However, the Quebec judge rejected this argument, allowing the case to proceed based on evidence of actual harm, medical recognition of addiction, and the claim that Epic failed to warn users.
• Significance: Epic claimed the lawsuit was based on subjective parenting issues; the court disagreed, citing WHO’s recognition of gaming disorder.
• Status: Ongoing.

3. Orellana v. Roblox Corporation et al. (M.D. Fla. 2024)

• Case: Plaintiff Ramona Orellana sued on behalf of her children, alleging severe gaming addiction caused by Fortnite, Roblox, and PlayStation. The case was a test of how enforceable arbitration agreements are in addiction-related claims involving minors. 
• Outcome: The court found that two of the children were bound by arbitration clauses in Epic’s and Sony’s user agreements. However, for one child (A.O.), Sony failed to prove a binding agreement, and the court denied its motion to compel arbitration for that claim.
• Significance: Confirms that arbitration clauses can block public adjudication, even in addiction cases, but also that such clauses are not automatically enforceable for minors without clear contractual evidence.

4. Supercell Class Action (Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, Brawl Stars)

• Case: Parents filed a class action alleging that mobile developer Supercell exploited addictive behavior through gacha mechanics and psychological pressure, especially targeting minors. A 2021 lawsuit was dismissed, in part because the legal theory focused on gambling analogies without anchoring the claims in mental health harm. A 2022 filing focused more on addiction-related psychological and financial harms but still linked it to in-game purchases rather than damages arising out of therapy and mental illness.‍
• Outcome: The court found they had not alleged any personal injury, either economic or psychological, that was concrete and specific to them.

Video Game Addiction ≠ Dark Patterns: A Distinct Legal Theory

It’s important to distinguish addiction-based litigation from the more commonly known “dark pattern” lawsuits. Dark patterns typically involve deceptive interface designs that trick users into unwanted purchases or actions, examples include hiding opt-out buttons or pre-checking purchase boxes.

Addiction-based litigation, by contrast, focuses not on deception, but on psychological conditioning. These claims center on reward systems, engagement loops, and other mechanisms that exploit neurobiological pathways in ways that mimic substance addiction.

A video game addiction lawsuit could succeed even where no dark patterns are present, because the core allegation is about the impact of compulsive engagement (especially among children) on mental health outcomes.

If it can be shown that a company knowingly engineered addictive features (effectively hooking customers while publicly denying any issue) courts may respond as they did in litigation against Big Tobacco or opioid companies.

Scientific and Regulatory Foundations Are Strong—and Growing

Scientific literature provides a robust foundation for these claims:

• The World Health Organization added Gaming Disorder to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) in 2019.
• The American Psychiatric Association includes Internet Gaming Disorder in the DSM-5’s Section III, indicating a condition warranting further study.
• A 2023 meta-analysis published in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews found that compulsive gamers exhibit brain activation patterns similar to those seen in substance use disorders.

This isn’t hypothetical harm. By 2018, minors were entering residential rehab programs specifically for gaming addiction. Clinics dedicated to treating video game-related disorders now exist across the U.S..

Psychologists have even warned in the social media context that younger kids can view their online existence as an extension to their real lives, which could lead them to struggle to grasp the real-vs-virtual currency distinction, making them easy prey for these money-for-chance schemes​.

The direction of travel is clear: greater scrutiny, more regulation, and likely, more litigation.

The Role of Public Entities and School Systems

One likely expansion of this litigation will be from individual plaintiffs to public institutions. School districts are already absorbing the cost of therapy, academic disruption, and behavioral interventions related to student gaming addiction. Expect to see:

• Public nuisance claims modeled after social media and opioid cases (Similar to the Monroe County case against Social Media companies).
• Cost recovery actions seeking funds for special education support, mental health services, and school counselors.

Platform Facilitation Liability

With favorable rulings in the social media context, notably cases like Anderson v. Tiktok and  Massachusetts v. Meta Platforms courts have shown a willingness to let these cases proceed beyond initial defenses, including Section 230 and First Amendment challenges. 

These decisions primarily hinge on allegations that the platforms actively facilitated or promoted harmful content, rather than passively hosting it. This evolving judicial approach suggests that future litigation concerning video game addiction may similarly target not only game developers and publishers but also the digital platforms that host and actively facilitate access to these games.

Where Video Game Addiction Liability Stands: 2025 and Beyond

The video game industry sits where Big Tobacco stood in the 1990s: aware of product risk, dependent on a vulnerable user base, and increasingly exposed to litigation. What’s different this time is the age of the users, the scale of the digital footprint, and the available data proving harm.

For attorneys, this is not a speculative issue, it’s an active and accelerating area of law. Whether representing harmed individuals, public entities, or gaming companies themselves, firms must prepare now for a legal environment where compulsive digital engagement is no longer a design choice, but a potential liability.