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A video game developer is so fucking far from this situation it is laughable; these suits are destined to fail. It's sad the lawyers are sucking money from the victims' families.
Odds are a lawyer volunteered for the case in the hopes that Activision will settle just to keep their name away from Uvalde in the news. Families get pennies, lawyer gets a pay day, Activision barely notices.
I'd give reasonable odds that they aren't.
So, some lawyers do cases on contingency. Basically, if they lose, they don't get paid. But if they win, the plaintiff agrees to give them a (potentially quite substantial) chunk of the payout.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contingent_fee
https://www.lawfirm.com/terms/contingency-fee/
So, say you're one of the lawyers here. You figure, okay, all of these parties you're suing have real money. You sue them. Maybe it costs you $N to do the case. But if your expected return is $100N, and maybe you've got a 1-in-30 chance of getting lucky with a sympathetic jury and winning a big payout, then the expected return says that it's worthwhile to just throw mud at a wall and see what sticks.
Your odds probably aren't great of winning any of these lawsuits, but every now and then, you can get really big payouts, which makes up for the case being a long shot. Do enough of them -- and here, they're suing a bunch of parties -- and it becomes increasingly likely that you'll win one.
Even deeper pockets than the companies involved.
The money here ultimately comes from the company's customers if they win (since it results in higher prices) or if they win against the government, higher taxes. The families probably won't pay anything in the event of a loss. In a win, they'll split the money with the lawyers.
I would only argue with this piece:
Prices have been divorced from costs and are more based on "what the market will bear". This only would be true if markets were actually competitive, and the fines encompassed a large amount of the supply side, neither of which is true. Fines like this are borne by the company books.