218A. Milestone Losses by Meta and Google Imply Peril That Could Affect Game Companies. [Updated]
Meta and YT got sued. Brutally. Everything they were guilty of, game devs are just as guilty for. That means the lawyers are coming. I tried to warn you 12 years ago. Last chance to clean up.
[Important update was added post publication, at the end of the article]
Here I will walk you through the two cases that both won remarkable victories last week, briefly go over my expertise in the area, explain what’s going to happen next, and suggest some escape/survival routes for affected companies. Historically, these companies have been pretty good at ignoring my good and free advice, but perhaps the threat of commercial extinction will trigger a self preservation instinct.
The New Mexico Case Against Meta
Meta lost this case on March 24, 2026. The case was brought by state prosecutors. There was no shortage of willing Meta whistle blowers and internal documents to support the State’s case. Their argument was that Meta violated the state’s Unfair Practices Act (UPA) by exposing children to sexual content and predators, and by not informing users/parents of the risks of using their product.
The UPA carries a fine of $5000 USD per violation. The jury found that there were so many violations that a fine of $375M was appropriate. 375,000,000/5000= 75,000 violations. New Mexico is a relatively small American state. Pay-outs like that will attract every lawyer in a 10,000 km radius, so this is only First Blood.
Defence lawyers argued that “We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and are clear about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content. We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online.” Clearly the jury was unimpressed with Meta’s record or “hard work”.
Given that the focus here was on sexual hazards, I would expect Roblox to be extraordinarily vulnerable to similar lawsuits. Other game developers have relatively minor exposure to such claims.
The Los Angeles Case Against Meta and YouTube
Meta and YouTube lost this case the next day, on March 25th, 2026. This case is remarkable in that it was brought by a young woman, not the government. She argued that these platforms got her addicted, and did so intentionally. Now, I know what you are thinking… “If that’s all she had to prove, there could be billions of future plaintiffs”.
Indeed.
The scope of liability here is staggering. She was awarded $6M USD and there are apparently hundreds of similar cases already being heard in American courts. Any number of people could win similar cases just using the already public information available, if they can get a doctor to assert that they suffered harm secondary to addiction to social media.
My Related History and Expertise
I used to be a neuroscience researcher at the Brain Research Institute in Los Angeles, studying mechanisms of addiction. I then spent three years practicing clinical drug rehabilitation at the Betty Ford Center in California near Palm Springs. Perhaps you can imagine how useful this would be later when I pivoted to game development and began pioneering new methods of monetisation at the turn of the century.
In 2013 America’s National Public Radio tapped Dr. Nora Volkow and I for a special segment on Addiction in gaming. You can listen to that here. According to her bio:
Nora D. Volkow, M.D., is Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the National Institutes of Health. NIDA is the world’s largest funder of scientific research on the health aspects of drug use and addiction.
It was an honor to be speaking on the same topic as Dr. Volkow. I was tapped because I was the top published academic on the subject of gaming addiction in 2013. That’s not as impressive as it sounds. I was the only published academic on the topic working in the gaming industry in 2013. As others no doubt saw how I was blacklisted for “ratting” on the industry, I don’t think there have been any others stepping forward to assist me in that role over the last 13 years.
A couple months after that NPR interview I was summoned to the ICPEN regulatory summit in Panama and asked to testify against the industry on the topic of exploitation of children in online games. I demonstrated that all 25 screens of the tutorial for a popular Disney IP game (Marvel Superhero Squad Online, by Gazillion) had unethical and exploitative content that could not be accidental. This game was advertised as “safe for 6 to 8 year olds”.
I contrasted that with the same studio’s Marvel Heroes, the adult version. That game had zero exploitative screens because the developer knew adults would be looking at it. Thus I was able to show that Disney and their partners would exploit children whenever they thought they could get away with it. It just so happened the only other testimony came from a Disney VP who testified immediately after me. Her calls for “self regulation” landed on extremely unsympathetic ears, especially coming right after my graphic testimony and visuals.
I would publish Game Dosing in 2013, explaining the technology that Meta and YouTube would later “secretly” deploy and get sued over. The last few minutes of my testimony in Panama was to warn regulators that this technology was coming and that they needed to be prepared for it. So if Meta and YouTube thought they could just stealth deploy it, sorry. I warned regulators 13 years in advance, and I’ve written many papers on the subject since then. Regulators read them, even if you don’t.
The Perils of Letting Lawyers Run Your Company
Now, I don’t want to appear ungrateful. Because I live a virtuous and transparent life, all those companies that would like to cancel me have limited options. Debating me always backfires, so they occasionally resort to character assassination. If lawyers didn’t volunteer to aid me in my times of need, I probably wouldn’t still be here.
But when you hire a bunch of lawyers to help you make an interactive media product (game, social media, dating app, etc) they aren’t going to be thinking “how can I make this product better?” They are going to be thinking “how do I mitigate risk for my client?” That seems to translate to “How do I cover your ass if you are sued for harming people with your product?” Not “how do we transparently explain the risks of our product so that there is no reason to sue us?”
The end result is that those same lawyers who were hired to risk mitigate, ultimately multiply your risk. In this case, it could literally doom these companies that just last year looked indestructible. As the top expert on the subject of Digital Drugs, you have the option of pairing me with some lawyers, and a dev team, and you could be the first company to bring transparent and effective digital drugs to market. The public likes drugs, if they work and have limited identifiable side effects. Chemicals made inside your body in response to stimuli are much safer than drugs made somewhere else.
The primary restrictions are:
You have to be transparent with your customers that neuroscience was used to optimize the product. Just like devs now are expected to disclose if AI was used.
You have to be extra careful about letting children use your product, until you can prove safety to a higher degree with this vulnerable population.
You get to do meaningful research, that will lead to rapid improvements in the technology. This is the next paradigm. You don’t have to share that research. But you have to pay up front for R&D.
The alternative is to be sneaky and experiment on children without telling the public. That works until it doesn’t. Then the sun will be eclipsed as hundreds of thousand of bloodthirsty lawyers descend on what’s left of your company.
How you play this is up to leadership. It’s also a test of leadership.
My Advice to Industry
Prior to helping regulators, I was the industry’s dirty little secret. As the top “dark ops” academic in the industry, the biggest media companies would discretely contact me if they “had a problem”. Then I would quietly and secretly pay them a little visit and explain to them how to fix their problems. Lawyers weren’t always thrilled about this and would do all sorts of dishonorable things to me to try to force me to do what they wanted. I live by a Code of Bushido since the age of 13. Yes I realize I’m an ideological antique. If you are my patron, I’m sworn to loyalty, even if you are doing something you shouldn’t be doing.
I’m ~15 to 20 years ahead of academia and industry in the field of Digital Drugs. Some of you have spent a lot of money confirming this. Which one of these two leadership options sounds like it would be more effective?
You secretly hire a team of psychologists and data people to run PsyOps on your adult and minor customers without them knowing, for a couple years. This will cost you ~$100M. Eventually the public finds out. Regulators probably already know. You suffer irreversible brand damage. You get sued for upwards of $100B. You still ended up with obsolete tech that only boosted your revenue by 10 to 25%. You also generated a lot of disloyal and knowledgeable whistle blowers.
You give Ramin a discrete message, ask if I can help you with a little problem. I know you guys know how to do this, I used to get these kinds of calls every week before Panama. If I can help you, I will say so. If I can’t, I will say so and why. If I reject you, don’t get bent. It cost you nothing to ask, and I won’t tell anyone what you asked me for at least 10 years. If you are wanting to do something a bit…Clandestine… then bring me into a room. No electronic devices. No recordings. The Russians dragged me into an underground bunker once. Then you ask me all your questions. The stuff you could hire a research team to figure out, that I already figured out years ago. If anyone asks, we were talking about making Healthy Games. No legal liability. You just saved yourself millions of dollars and a few years, and the lawyers are grudgingly content.
Does this shock you? I never claimed to be Lawful Good. I even wrote a paper explaining that I’m True Neutral. If whatever we are doing can lead to a net positive for society, I’m willing to cooperate with people of creative morals. My mother was an OG California Hippie, and my father was a criminally convicted violet sociopath. I have the best of both worlds. My approach is always rational and pragmatic. I know how to play ball, it’s a necessary skill set in this industry.
I’ve been writing a lot about how we need to move off of dopamine games and move towards oxytocin games. I warned you 12 years ago and now you are getting sued successfully for $6M by some 20 year old who got strung out on doom scrolling. Now you will have millions of people asking themselves “I could make $10K on DoorDash, $100K on OnlyFans, or $6M suing Meta. What should I do?”
Oxytocin makes you healthier, no one’s going to sue you over it unless you use it for mind control. [There’s always that one person who seems to like to get sued] I gave a lecture on the topic at the Captivate Conference back in 2014. I spelled it all out, it’s been 12 years. What are you waiting for? The next lawsuit?
[Update: A secondary theme here that is critical, but that I may not have originally expressed explicitly, is that if your company is run by lawyers, budget will be diverted from all other aspects of production to feed lawyers. They will steer your company into scenarios where you will become eternally dependent on lawyers for survival. If you always do what your lawyers say, your company is run by lawyers.
This isn’t just opinion, you see this playing out all across industry. It becomes especially obvious in regards to these lawsuits. These companies are going to rush to hire more lawyers to handle a flood of lawsuits. On a fixed budget, that means layoffs everywhere else (probably excluding leadership). This is a crisis created by lawyers, for lawyers.
If you are a game developer and 25% or more of your budget goes to lawyers, your odds of survival are negligible. If you embrace a consumer antagonistic ideology, which the entire AAA class has, this is an ideology that is entirely dependent on lawyers for existence. Who advocated for that? Who benefits?
If you adopt pro consumer ideology, and develop consumer friendly technologies (almost unheard of in industry these days) then you abolish 90+% of your need for lawyers. You might actually find that your customers like you better, and buy more of your product.]