The four-year lawsuit filed by actress Lindsay Lohan against Grand Theft Auto V publisher Take-Two has finally come to an end, with a unanimous New York Court of Appeals ruling that rejects the starlet’s contention that she was the inspiration for the game character Lacey Jonas.
Although the court conceded that “an avatar (that is, a graphical representation of a person, in a video game or like media) may constitute a ‘portrait’” within the limits of the relevant statute, it also concluded that “the artistic renderings are indistinct, satirical representations of the style, look, and persona of a modern, beach-going young woman that are not reasonably identifiable as plaintiff.”
Lacey Jonas is depicted in two loading screens in the game — one in which she is flashing a V-sign while taking a selfie on the beach, and another one showing her arrest by a policewoman on Vinewood Boulevard.
Jonas also appears in the “Escape Paparazzi” random event, which can be undertaken by any character who encounters her in an alley trying to escape a horde of photographers. When being driven to her house (or, if playing as Trevor, to the Altruist cult) she’s revealed as a narcissistic anorexic former child star.
Lohan originally filed suit in 2014, and a five-judge panel tossed the case in 2016 saying it had “no merit.” Lohan appealed, but this latest ruling would seem to put an end to the matter once and for all.
Also along for the ride was former Mob Wives star Karen Gravano, who claimed in a similar lawsuit that her likeness and story were used for the GTA V character Andrea Bottino. Bottino appears in the random mission “Burial,” where she’s rescued in Paleto Bay before being buried alive by some mobsters. Gravano’s lawsuit was rejected as well.
Both lawsuits were doomed to fail from the beginning, not only because the cartoonish stereotypes depicted in GTA games are hardly identifiable as specific people, but courts have long upheld that parody is given wide latitude and is well-protected by the First Amendment.
Even if the game characters were recognizable as real-life individuals, the court noted that “this video game’s unique story, characters, dialogue, and environment, combined with the player’s ability to choose how to proceed in the game, render it a work of fiction and satire.”
Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.
Why does this run so well on Apple devices?
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”