On the MMO side of the gaming action it would seem that there is a company that has decided that the whole concept behind MMOs is theirs and is patent protected, and therefore everyone out there with one needs to be paying them royalties.
Worlds.com has filed a complaint against NCSoft for infringing on a MMO patent and virtual world patent. The patents pertain to the use of scaling virtual spaces and enabling users to interact and chat in 3D environments. They are seeking to recover damages for the infringement as well as preventing, for the time being, NCSoft from continuing to infringe upon their patents.
If this thing really goes down how it could this could make on company very rich while crippling almost any MMO out there. My question is why wait so long, then again apparently the patents didn’t become legal until more recently. I’d like to hear comments from the public about this almost completely earth/game shattering news. If Worlds.com wins this suit who will be next on their list Turbine, Blizzard, or some other company? Also with the patents that are being infringed upon isn’t it possible that a vast majority of games outside the realms of MMO might be hit for these apparent fouls?
We’ll see what happens in the future, but for now that’s all we’ve got on the subject. If you are interested about obtaining a PDF version of the complaint click here.
Altered Confusion™ 