Activision Is Being Sued For Their Alleged Responsibility In The Uvalde School Shooting

Recently, a lawsuit has been filed regarding the 2022 Uvalde school shooting. The suit, brought by the same attorney who won a settlement for the families of the Sandy Hook victims alleges that three companies bear responsibility for the tragedy – specifically, Facebook/Instagram parent company Meta, gun manufacturer Daniel Defence, and Call of Duty publisher Activision.

According to the suit, parts of which were originally shared by the Washington Post and then again on Game Developer, the lawsuit revolves around the companies promoting real-world weapons to young men “insecure about their masculinity, often bullied, eager to show strength and assert dominance.” The suit goes on to state that over the last decade and a half, both Activision and Meta “have partnered with the firearms industry in a scheme that makes the Joe Camel campaign look laughably harmless, even quaint”.

For those too young to be familiar, Joe Camel was a popular ad for Camel cigarettes using a “cool” cartoon camel. The ad appealed to children and teens quite a bit.

So, while this, at first glance, might seem like another case of the old GTA, “video games make kids violent” argument, it seems the core of this argument revolves around the marketing of the game and who to. Because of this marketing, the lawsuit claims that both Activision and Meta are complicit in the actions of the shooter. As Game Developer explains, Activision exposed the shooter to the gun via the game, Meta marketed it to him via their platforms, and even made it easy to acquire.

That’s another point the lawsuit takes aim at, how easy it apparently is to acquire a weapon via social media.

As mentioned above, most gamers are familiar with arguments regarding video game-related violence. There were several lawsuits in the 90’s particularly aimed at Grand Theft Auto that went nowhere. One of the reasons for this is the existence of the ESRB/PEGI rating systems, which parents can use to determine whether or not a child should own a particular game. Most games in the Call of Duty franchise have a Mature (17+) ESRB or a PEGI 18 rating. Some are rated for teens.

In physical shops, the salespeople would often refuse to sell games with these ratings to anyone under the age of 18 unless a parent was there to make the purchase. Now, with so many games being bought digitally, the system is probably even less effective.