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Are Conventions In Danger Now? Class Action Threat

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There’s a lot of class action lawsuits going around in the gaming world as of late, from Magic judges to now it looks like conventions. Come see the latest

First off if you haven’t heard about the big Magic Judge class action lawsuit, read up on it here (“Are ‘Magic’ Judges Employees?”).

In summary, Magic judges are disputing the fact they are “volunteers” and are instead de-facto employees of Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro.

Well now that notion has seemed to spread like wildfire to the Convention scene, and the first Comic Con has now come under fire.

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ICv2 ran the story this morning about it. Here’s the highlights:

A class action lawsuit has been filed against the organizers of Seattle convention Emerald City Comicon for using volunteer labor to support the show.

The suit alleges that volunteers were not paid for their time, overtime, and break periods and were not paid the minimum wage, and asks for double the back wages, interest, costs and fees.

Something to remember however as they pointed out towards the end of the article:

Of course some shows, such as San Diego Comic-Con and Wondercon, are operated by non-profits and can use volunteers.  But for-profit shows that use volunteers may find themselves on the wrong end of a lawsuit.

So are conventions the next target in the legal cross hairs? Maybe, maybe not. Most of the tabletop gaming scene’s events are by the book as far as I’ve seen, but we never truly knows when someone will get that entitlement itch do we?

What’s the best advice for our industry? Well I think for the most part everything is nominal, this whole trend may just be isolated to the bigger shows and cons like comics that are a bit more mainstream. However I think if Games Workshop is serious about getting back into organized play again, that they take a close look at this one for sure!

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About the Author: Rob Baer

Virginia Restless, Miniature Painter & Cat Dad. I blame LEGOs. There was something about those little-colored blocks that started it all... Twitter @catdaddymbg