Video Game Lawsuit Updates and 2026 Status

By David Meldofsky, California-licensed attorney · Founder, Lawsuit Informer

Last updated: October 3, 2026

Two questions bring people here. Where do these cases stand, and has anyone been paid? The short answer to the second one is no. Nobody has been paid, and no settlement has been announced. Most of the cases sit in a single California court. The federal system has twice refused to combine them nationally. A separate Roblox case about child safety is growing on its own. Here is where each of those stands.

This page is part of our broader coverage of Video Game Addiction Lawsuits. Brand coverage is available at Roblox Lawsuit, Fortnite Lawsuit, Minecraft Lawsuit, and Epic Games Lawsuit.

Has There Been a Settlement?

No. As of October 2026 there is no settlement, no claim fund, and no program you can file with. The number people confuse with one is Epic's 2022 deal with the Federal Trade Commission, worth about half a billion dollars. That was a government case about children's privacy and billing, and part of it paid refunds to Fortnite players. It has nothing to do with the addiction claims and settles none of them.

Search for a "settlement amount" and you will find dollar ranges on law firm sites. Those are guesses. No settlement has happened, no jury has awarded anything, and no fund exists, so there is nothing for a court to have approved. What any individual claim might eventually be worth would depend on the facts, the injuries, and whether the plaintiffs win at all. None of that has been decided.

The California Coordinated Proceeding

The center of the addiction litigation is a coordinated proceeding in Los Angeles Superior Court, JCCP No. 5363, which the court calls Videogame Addiction Cases. It sits in the Complex Litigation program at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse, Department 534, before Judge Lawrence P. Riff. It gathers suits against companies including Roblox, Epic Games, Microsoft, and Activision.

The cases were filed in counties across California and pulled into Los Angeles, and more keep being added. Thirteen Los Angeles cases were in it as of the state’s September 2026 coordination log, along with cases from Alameda, Fresno, Kern and Riverside counties. Anyone can look it up on the court’s case search by the number JCCP5363.

The complaints point to features such as loot boxes, intermittent rewards, virtual currency, and engagement loops. Plaintiffs say those were built to encourage compulsive use, especially in minors, and that families were never warned.

Coordinating the cases means one judge handles the evidence gathering, the expert work, and the legal motions for all of them at once. Some Fortnite cases have started discovery, the stage where each side has to hand over documents and answer questions. As of October 2026 there is no trial date on record, no test cases picked, and no settlement fund. For how these proceedings work, see Mass Torts.

What is on the calendar is bigger than a trial date. On October 21, 2026 Judge Riff hears motions from Roblox, from Microsoft, and from Epic Games, Microsoft and Mojang together, asking him to throw the claims out now. Free speech is the argument driving them.

California gives that argument a fast track with teeth. A defendant who wins one of these motions can have its legal fees charged to the family that sued. The motions were first set for July 29, 2026 and the court moved them on its own. A status conference follows on October 28.

The Federal MDL Denials

When many similar federal cases are filed around the country, plaintiffs can ask a panel of judges to gather them before one judge. That grouping is called an MDL. Plaintiffs asked twice here, and were turned down twice.

The first request, MDL No. 3109, In re: Video Game Addiction Products Liability Litigation, was denied on June 5, 2024. The full order is on our primary-source page for the MDL No. 3109 order. The cases named more than thirty companies across a wide range of games that only partly overlapped, and the panel found them too different to combine. It also noted that the conspiracy claim named a different set of companies in each lawsuit.

Plaintiffs narrowed the ask and tried again, this time covering only the three "gateway" games children play first: Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft. That request, MDL No. 3168, In re: Gateway Video Game Addiction Products Liability Litigation, was denied on December 10, 2025.

This time the plaintiffs did not claim the companies had acted together, which raised the bar they had to clear. The panel also saw unnamed "Doe" defendants in the filings. It read that as a sign the case would keep growing into something too large for one judge. Either way the outcome is the same. Federal cases move one at a time, and California remains the main forum.

The Separate Roblox Child Safety MDL

A separate Roblox case is moving on its own track, and it is about child safety rather than addiction. In December 2025 the panel created MDL No. 3166, In re: Roblox Corporation Child Sexual Exploitation and Assault Litigation, before Chief Judge Richard Seeborg in the Northern District of California. Those lawsuits claim the platform failed to protect children from predators.

It is not only Roblox. Discord, Meta and Snap are defendants in it too, each with their own lawyers in the case. The proceeding held 180 pending cases as of October 1, 2026, out of 190 filed since it opened with 31 transferred actions. Several state attorneys general have brought their own suits alongside it.

Arbitration is the live fight there too. On September 22, 2026 Roblox and Discord each moved to push a set of test cases into arbitration. The court calls those cases arbitration bellwethers, and the plaintiffs amended their complaints in September so the chosen ones could carry the question.

Oppositions are due October 27 and replies November 20. Judge Seeborg hears it on January 13, 2027, with a case management conference first on November 16, 2026. What he decides for the test cases is expected to shape how the rest are handled. Full coverage is at Roblox Lawsuit.

What the Companies Are Arguing

The companies are fighting hard, and three of their arguments are shaping the early stages as much as the underlying claims.

Arbitration. The terms of service nobody reads usually include a clause sending disputes to a private arbitrator instead of a courtroom. This fight decides more than it sounds like it does. Arbitration happens in private, one family at a time, with no jury and no public record. Families who end up there lose the strength that comes from being heard together, so where a case is heard shapes what it can become.

The clauses have worked. In Angelilli v. Activision Blizzard, one of the cases in the first MDL request, the claims against Activision and Microsoft went to arbitration in 2025. A blunter example came in May 2026. Judge Mia Roberts Perez, in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, stayed Tomlin v. Epic Games and sent the whole case to arbitration, finding the mother and her child had accepted terms carrying broad arbitration agreements.

They have also failed, in two different ways. A father named Damien Uhl sued Roblox after his daughter made a friend on the platform who said he was her age and turned out to be an adult. Uhl says Roblox promised parents the platform was safe while knowing what was happening on it. Roblox then spent about eleven months fighting the case in court. It moved the case to federal court, argued over sending it back, and asked the judge to throw the claims out for good.

Only after that request failed did the company ask for arbitration. On September 3, 2026 the Ninth Circuit ruled 2-1 that Roblox had given up the right. A company cannot ask a judge to end a case on the merits while holding arbitration in reserve in case it loses. One judge disagreed, and the ruling was not published as precedent, so other courts do not have to follow it.

The second way out has nothing to do with what the company did. On September 25, 2026 the same judge who sent Tomlin to arbitration denied Roblox in Mercado v. Roblox, No. 25-5925. She agreed the child had accepted the terms, through the account, the pop-up notices, and Robux purchases. It did not matter. The law lets minors disaffirm a contract, meaning back out of it, and this child filed a declaration in June 2026 doing that. Roblox showed nothing to undo it, so the clause failed.

So whether a family ends up before a judge or an arbitrator can turn on several things. Those are the clause itself, who accepted it, whether a minor backed out of it, and how quickly the company asked.

Free speech. Game makers argue their games are creative works protected by the First Amendment, and that how a game looks and plays cannot be treated like a cracked ladder rung. This is more than a theory. Two federal judges have already thrown addiction claims out on that ground.

In April 2025 a judge in the Northern District of Illinois dismissed the Angelilli claims against Roblox, Google and Apple. She held that game design and user-generated content are either protected expression or covered by Section 230. That is the federal law shielding platforms from liability for what their users post.

In August 2025 a judge in the Western District of Missouri dismissed Courtright v. Epic Games outright on First Amendment grounds. He refused the failure-to-warn claim too, reasoning that a forced warning about addictive gameplay would compel speech about protected content. Both rulings came in federal court. That is part of why the California proceeding carries this litigation, and the same argument reaches Judge Riff on October 21.

One Los Angeles judge has already turned both arguments down. On September 24, 2026 Judge Dean J. Kitchens refused to throw out Los Angeles County’s separate case against Roblox, which accuses the company of weak age checks and of misleading families about safety. He rejected the Section 230 defense and a free-speech motion of the same kind set for hearing on October 21.

What separates the two is what each case is about. The County is suing over what Roblox told families and how it checked ages. The addiction cases are about how the games themselves are built, which is the ground the federal judges found protected. The same two defenses can fail in one case and win in another.

What caused the harm. The companies argue a child's problems came from a condition they already had, such as ADHD, anxiety, or depression, rather than from a game. Plaintiffs answer that a vulnerable child is exactly the one a compelling design affects most, and that a game can make an existing condition worse. Nothing here has been settled. For the science behind the argument, see Is Video Game Addiction Real?

The Case Everyone in This Litigation Is Watching

One courtroom over, a nearly identical question has already reached a jury. California coordinated the youth social media addiction claims against Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube into JCCP 5255 in 2023, before Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl. Those cases allege the same basic theory as the gaming cases: that a product was designed to compel use by minors, and that families were not warned.

On March 25, 2026 the first of those bellwethers produced a verdict. A Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google liable in the K.G.M. case and awarded $6 million, including punitive damages. Snap and TikTok had settled before trial. A second bellwether ended in July 2026 without reaching a jury, after the plaintiff settled with Google, TikTok and Snap and then dismissed against Meta days before jury selection.

That matters here for two reasons. It establishes that a California jury will accept a design-based addiction theory against a platform, which is the precise argument the gaming defendants are contesting. And it shows the pattern these cases tend to follow: most defendants settle quietly before trial, and one litigates. Full coverage of that litigation is on Social Media Addiction Lawsuit Updates.

The difference is structural. The social media claims run on two tracks, a federal MDL and the California proceeding, and can build precedent in both. Because the JPML twice declined to centralize the gaming cases, JCCP 5363 carries that weight alone.

Milestones That Typically Come Before Settlement

• Rulings on expert testimony about game design and compulsive use
• Summary judgment decisions
• Selection and trial of early test cases
• Early verdicts, which can move negotiations in either direction
• Appellate rulings on key legal questions

These cases are still working through the early items. Test cases, often called bellwethers, are individual claims tried first to show both sides how a jury reacts, which is usually what moves settlement talks. For more, see Bellwether Trials and What Is a Settlement?

Filing Deadlines and Timing Questions

Every state sets its own time limit for filing. The clock can start at different points, depending on the age of the person involved and when a diagnosis came. Some states pause the clock for claims brought on behalf of a child. These rules differ a lot from state to state and courts enforce them strictly. The practical advice runs both ways: do not assume your window has closed, and do not assume there is plenty of time.

For general background, see Statute of Limitations Basics.

How attorneys weigh a filing window, and how they decide whether a situation fits the California proceeding, is covered in Lawsuit Center’s guide to video game lawsuit attorneys.

Sources

• Los Angeles Superior Court case search, JCCP5363. The court’s own record of the proceeding title, the Department 534 assignment, and the October 21 and October 28 calendar settings.
• A.G. v. Roblox Corporation, No. 24CV103034 (Los Angeles Superior Court). The member case carrying the October 21, 2026 motions by Roblox, by Microsoft, and by Epic Games, Microsoft and Mojang AB.
• Judicial Council of California, civil case coordination log, JCCP 5363. It records the November 14, 2024 petition and the member case numbers. Judge Samantha P. Jessner heard the coordination petition on March 4, 2025. Judge Lawrence P. Riff was assigned as coordination trial judge on January 7, 2025.
• Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, Pending MDLs — the October 1, 2026 report the MDL No. 3166 case counts come from.
• Docket 3:25-md-03166-RS (N.D. Cal.), entries 421, 429, 442, 452 and 462 — the Roblox and Discord omnibus motions to compel arbitration in the bellwether cases, filed September 22, 2026. Oppositions are due October 27 and replies November 20. The case management conference is set for November 16, 2026 and the hearing for January 13, 2027.
• Mercado v. Roblox Corp., Epic Games, Microsoft Corp. and Mojang AB, No. 25-5925 (E.D. Pa. September 25, 2026) — the order denying arbitration on the ground that the minor disaffirmed the terms of use.
• Tomlin v. Epic Games, Roblox Corp. and Microsoft (E.D. Pa. May 20, 2026) — the earlier order from the same judge staying that case and sending it to arbitration.
• Uhl v. Roblox Corp. (9th Cir. September 3, 2026) — the unpublished 2-1 decision holding Roblox waived arbitration by litigating first.
• Angelilli v. Activision Blizzard, Inc., No. 23-cv-16566 (N.D. Ill. April 23, 2025) — the dismissal of the claims against Roblox, Google and Apple on First Amendment and Section 230 grounds. The order is covered on our Angelilli v. Activision Blizzard page.
• Courtright v. Epic Games, Inc. (W.D. Mo. August 2025) — the dismissal of addiction and failure-to-warn claims on First Amendment grounds.
• County of Los Angeles v. Roblox Corporation (Los Angeles Superior Court, September 24, 2026), before Judge Dean J. Kitchens. The order denying both the demurrer and the anti-SLAPP motion, and letting the public nuisance, false advertising and unfair competition claims proceed. A separate case from JCCP 5363.
• JPML order denying transfer in MDL No. 3168 (December 10, 2025) — the second refusal to centralize the gaming cases.

Case counts, rulings and settlement details reported here reflect public reporting available on the date above and should be confirmed against the docket before being relied on.

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About the Author

David Meldofsky is a California-licensed attorney and the founder of Lawsuit Informer, an educational platform focused on helping people understand lawsuits, consumer safety issues, and legal rights related to defective products and toxic exposures.

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Last Updated: October 3, 2026

Educational information only. Not legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is formed.