EA spreads 5 user-friendly features to all games

It isn't often we talk about patents for video game mechanics, but today EA is giving us a pretty good reason to. Electronic Arts announced this morning that it's making several patents centered around accessibility free to use for all game developers. EA says that it's making these patents royalty-free through a program called the "Patent Pledge."

The Patent Pledge concerns five patents that EA has been awarded here in the United States. Two of the patents are for image processing technology "that improves visibility of colors to optimize for color vision deficiencies." A third patent is for technology dealing with contrast ratios, specifically technology tasked with "automatically detecting contrast ratios in pixel regions of rendered frames and updating regions having subpar contrast ratios to meet contrast ratio standards or thresholds."

The fourth patent in EA's Patent Pledge is for technology "generating personalized music based on a user's hearing information and stylistic preference to best comport with that user's hearing issues." The fifth and final patent included in this Patent Pledge is arguably the biggest, as it's the one for Apex Legends' ping system. Those who have played Apex Legends know that the ping system is good enough that players can use it on its own to communicate with teammates, so to give other game developers royalty-free access to it is a big deal indeed.

Obviously, all of these patents could help small developers who would like to implement accessibility features in their games but might otherwise violate EA's patents in doing so. However, with the Patent Pledge, EA is essentially saying that it won't enforce any of the patents listed, though it does explain that it reserves the right to terminate the pledge "for a specific party or its affiliates going forward if that party files a patent infringement lawsuit or other patent proceeding against EA, its affiliates, or partners."

EA even suggests that it could add more patents to the pledge in the future, but the five it's starting with sound good to us. EA might have a questionable reputation among gamers most of the time, but this is a good move because we're fans of anything that can make gaming more accessible to a larger group of people. We'll let you know if EA adds more patents to the pledge in the future, so stay tuned for more.