The legal notice has likened playing the game to the effects to cocaine.
Calex Légal, a law firm in Montreal, are representing the parents of a 10-year-old and a 15-year-old, both of whom are claimed to be addicted to the video game Fortnite, produced by Epic Games.
The firm are asking for other parents concerned that their children are similarly addicted to come forward, stating in their legal notice to Epic Games that players are receiving the chemical dopamine to the brain, and that vulnerable young people can become dependent on playing.
The lawsuit is based on a very similar case brought against tobacco companies who didn't warn their customers against the dangers of smoking.
"It's basically the same legal basis. It's very centred on the duty to inform," said Alessandra Esposito Chartrand, an attorney with Calex Légal. "We dug into it and we realized there was a strong case for it."
Speaking more of the case against Fortnire, Chartrand told Canadian news outlet
CBC that "Epic Games, when they created Fortnite, for years and years, hired psychologists - they really dug into the human brain and they really made the effort to make it as addictive as possible.
"They knowingly put on the market a very, very addictive game which was also geared toward youth. In our case, the two parents that came forward and told, 'If we knew it was so addictive it would ruin our child's life, we would never have let them start playing Fortnite or we would have monitored it a lot more closely.'"
Epic Games have reportedly not responded to any requests for comment regarding the lawsuit, while their most recent release, Fortnite Battle Royale, currently has over 125 millions players around the world.
