Publisher EA has announced the Patent Pledge which will allow other companies the free use of EA’s patents in the name of expanding accessibility in games.

In an announcement EA specifically mentions that this programme is meant to help players with medical issues or disabilities.

This initial reveal of the Patent Pledge includes five patents. Below are details about these patents and what the tech behind them is supposed to accomplish.

Developers can use the tech in this patents as royalty free now and into the future, though any person or company thinking of doing this should read the section titled “Defensive Termination”.

This part of the agreement states that EA may renege on the pledge should an entity using the patent “files a patent infringement lawsuit or other patent proceeding against EA, its affiliates, or partners.”

That aside the five patents released today may be joined by more in the future, and in this case it would be great for more to be piled on.

The patent many people are talking about in this first batch is the ping system which seems to be what is used in Apex Legends to great effect.

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