Electronic Arts (EA) are allowing five of their patents for accessibility to be used by any game developer, completely royalty free.

The “EA’s Patent Pledge for Increasing Accessibility” (as part of the Positive Play initiative) have granted any developer to use five of EA’s patents royalty free. These patents are focused on “accessibility-centered technology.” However, EA do note this will be terminated for specific parties if they file a patent infringement lawsuit against EA, its affiliates, or partners.

The patents include a Ping System for communication via controller inputs; most notably already seen in Apex Legends. Other patents include improving color visibility for the colorblind or similar impairments, greater visual contrast for when objects on screen have a similar luminosity, and making personalized music compensating for the player’s hearing issues. You can find the patents below.

Ping System that allows players to transmit contextually aware audio and visual communications generated via mappable controller inputs.

Patent No.: US 11,097,189
Country: United States
Title: CONTEXTUALLY AWARE COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM IN VIDEO GAMES
Date Issued:  August 24, 2021
Date added to pledge: August 24, 2021

Image processing that improves visibility of colors to optimize for color vision deficiencies.

Patent No.: US 10,118,097
Country: United States
Title: SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR AUTOMATED IMAGE PROCESSING FOR IMAGES WITH SIMILAR LUMINOSITIES
Date Issued: November 6, 2018
Date added to pledge: August 24, 2021

Patent No.: CN 107694092
Country: United States
Title: SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR AUTOMATED IMAGE PROCESSING FOR IMAGES WITH SIMILAR LUMINOSITIES
Date Issued: November 3, 2020
Date added to pledge: August 24, 2021

Automatically detecting contrast ratios in pixel regions of rendered frames and updating regions having subpar contrast ratios to meet contrast ratio standards or thresholds.

Patent No.: US 10,878,540
Country: United States
Title: CONTRAST RATIO DETECTION AND RENDERING SYSTEM
Date Issued:  December 29, 2020
Date added to pledge: August 24, 2021

Generating personalized music based on a user’s hearing information and stylistic preference to best comport with that user’s hearing issues.

Patent No.: US 10,790,919
Country: United States
Title: PERSONALIZED REAL-TIME AUDIO GENERATION BASED ON USER PHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSE
Date Issued:  December 29, 2020
Date added to pledge: August 24, 2021

Patents can sometimes cause issues for developers. Namco (now Bandai Namco Entertainment) originally held the patent for minigames during loading screens, leading to very few of them until the patent expired in 2015. Further, WB Games successfully patented the Nemesis system seen in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War; preventing others from doing the same without royalty.

Other patent news includes Amazon grouping online players based on their preferences and behaviors- including “toxic” players. Sony Interactive Entertainment have patented AI to play games for you, and cloud gaming technology they promise will lead to an “elimination of piracy” and an alternative to consoles.

In 2019, EA patented technology to encourage microtransactions by “creating a sense of urgency” by devaluing items.

Image: Former Twitter header photo.