TKS: Privacy in video games: the darkest of patterns

Join us for a Tuesday coffee seminar with Miloš Novović!

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The video game industry is one of the most profitable industries in the world. Sources estimate the value of the industry to be around 300 billion dollars – in other word, exceeding the combined value of the markets for the movies and music. The current estimates place the number of gamers as high as 2.7 billion people worldwide.

Where there are people, there is also personal data – and in video games, personal data is used for a wide range of purposes. Some of these purposes may be as innocent as asking a player to enter their name – or pick a nickname – for a character they are creating in the game. On a more controversial side of things, a video game could be closely tracking every player’s move, manipulating their online matches and interactions with other players in order to promote and sell in-game purchases.

In this talk, we will examine the level of transparency challenges that the video game industry is facing. First, we will briefly present the video game industry, the common chain of product distribution, and the growing interest in collection of personal data through video games. Secondly, we will examine privacy policies provided by a select group of video game companies against a backdrop of the legal requirements found in the General Data Protection Regulation. Thirdly, we will present the results of data subject access requests filed with the selected companies and examine the extent to which they help players gain meaningful information on how their data is being used. Fourthly, we will identify some common pitfalls present in the industry and offer some thoughts on the possible ways to increase transparency, ensuring that players have a solid idea of how their personal data is being used as they embark on their digital adventures.

Miloš Novović is an associate professor of law at BI Norwegian Business School, specializing in law and technology. He is responsible for several courses on privacy and data protection, as well as legal tech courses covering issues such as digital contracts, copyright, AI and digital platforms. His teaching and research interests also include international commercial contracts and arbitration law.

Miloš holds a PhD in law from University of Oslo, where he wrote about copyright, contract and private international law issues stemming from copyright-related terms of use agreements offered by largest online companies. He also holds an LL.M. in intellectual property law from the George Washington University, as well as an LL.B. from University of Montenegro.

Miloš provided privacy and IT contract-related advice to major Norwegian and international companies over several years, and is a chairman of the Norwegian Society for Comparative Law.

Registration for physical and virtual attendance. The Zoom-link will be sent to participants (no need to sign up again if you already registered for this event before it was moved to 30th November).

Contact person: Øystein Flø Baste

 

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Senter for rettsinforamtikk
Publisert 15. okt. 2021 14:23 - Sist endret 23. nov. 2021 13:15