Summit IX: Day Two

The third day of the conference, also known as Day Two [of presentations], featured another morning run, 6 more sessions, a garden dinner, and the Audience Choice awards for the panels that the attendees found to be the most useful for them, professionally.

Morning Run

A group of semi-professional legal athletes completed another river run at a killer pace. We salute their strength and their commitment. This is such a beautiful benchmark for the conference: this year, we had nearly a hundred counsels joining one of the three morning runs. This is the spirit! (the other spirit is, naturally, Billecart-Salmon Brut Réserve).

Breakfast

As always, on the second day of the program the breakfast crowd took some time to assemble in the courtyard – but assemble it did.

By the time of the first session, any school principal would have been proud of our attendance record (and our tea station's master was proud of the people who opted for lapsang souchong over espresso as their first morning drink).

Session 7: Compliant Engagement of Minors

The headliner of the second day was a cross-country, cross-sectional 75-minute panel focused on the topic of protection of minors, a theme that is bound to hold our industry's attention for at least a few years to come.

Lead and moderated by Anna Morgan , the panel featured in-house counsels Nic Murfett and Shanna Pearce, a policy expert Dr. Anselm Rodenhausen , and two counsels from the companies that specialize in this area: Timothy M. and Amy Lawrence .

Session 8: Online Safety

The second headliner session looked at the near-term future of regulation, with Paul Gardner leading and moderating another cross-country, cross-sectional panel – with Cam Rogers , Ryan Black , Isabel Davies , Kayla Page and Ann Becker.

Lunch

After the first block of the sessions, the attendees took to lunch like fish to water (the fish option that day was salmon filets with seaweed and tamari sauce, if you must know):

The extended 90-minute lunches are designed for having stimulating conversations, whether to discuss the superiority of Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight over Persona 3: Dancing in Starlight...

...or to debate the acceptability of calling an Activision counsel "a Microsoft lawyer"...

Summit On Tour III in Rome

Following lunch, we had a short intervention in Italian, to introduce the next conference of this community: Summit On Tour III in Rome (the "III" in the name of the conference stand for Indescrivibile, Incredibile and Irresistibile).

With the help of Giovanni Cattolli (currently on a mission in Iceland under the alias of Jochen Kattoll ) and the conference's headmaster Luca Guidobaldi , we highlighted the ambition to use On Tour III to connect not only the games industries of Italy and other countries, but also to engage in the dialogue with Italy's other creative industries – film, television, fashion, publishing.

We are thankful to our community's very own gli Azzurri –  Nicoletta Serao and Francesco de Rugeriis at LCA, Gianluigi Marino at Osborne Clarke and Giulio Coraggio at DLA Piper Italy – for their collaborative approach to shaping the Italian part of the Rome event.

The registration for Summit On Tour III in Rome continues, details and application – here. We keep the price at half the cost of the cheapest Taylor Swift ticket, so that more studio counsels can come with larger teams, and more associates at the regional law firms can get their travel budgets approved.

Session 9: Cyber Attacks

The second block of the program opened with a practical talk about cyber security, lead by Tobias Schelinski and his panel of experts: Hans-Peter Fischer, Christoph Ritzer and Ana Bastos.

We started with the architecture of cyber attacks, thanks to Peter's decades of experience in responding to all sorts of crisis.

The audience, including the experts on coordination of law enforcement and games companies, couldn't take their eyes off the screen (and just wait until we have a proper "cooperating with police" panel next year!):

When we had questions...

The panel had answers:

When we had more questions...

The panel had more answers:

Another rebranding

As our partners continue to merge and rebrand, we continue to support their communication to increase awareness in the community.

Another day, another ripped t-shirt – this time, to celebrate the emergence of the new identity of A&O Shearman.

Session 10: Monetization

The next session – also cross-country and cross-sectional, in the tradition of our community – was dedicated to the broader look at monetization: not just at what's allowed and what's not, but at what is more viable, long-term: regulation or self-governance, aggressive growth with the risk of high churn or a slower-growing, but more resilient loyal following.

Lead by Kirk Soderquist , the panel featured Isabel Davies, Brian Chadwick , Katya Nemova , Ann Becker and Henner Hentsch .

The debate resonated with the audience: we're all in this together, our risks often shared.

Session 11: Engaging India

Boosted by fresh juice and a round of flat whites, we were ready to take a deep dive into India – the home of over 500 million players, with a huge potential that remains largely untapped by the global studios (Krafton excluded). The session was moderated by Vikram Jeet Singh , featuring three regional experts: Murtaza Somjee , Surbhi Kejriwal and Sneha Jain .

We're quite certain that this is just the beginning of the conversation about the region.

Session 12: Risk Assessment in Content & Operations

The last panel of the day, and of the entire conference, belonged to the rare category that we call "mental models": a glimpse into the workings of different legal teams, a look at the intersection of legal and production, a discussion about a way to think about things, rather than about any specific things particular.

By the time we rang the opening bell of this session, we had the courtyard's attention (despite continuing to serve cold KEO and homemade chips):

Lead and moderated by Bogac EROZAN , the panel of Kinga Palinska LL.M , Brian Chadwick and Jan-Peter Ewert (with a special shout-out to Amelie Draper ) looked at the ways a studio may approach, predict and mitigate risks related to content and operations.

And that was it: 12 sessions, 1 workshop, 2 dinners and 3 morning runs done – not to mention the lunches and the numerous coffee breaks.

It was the time to open the doors to the Garden Dinner.

Garden Dinner

We served local deserts with unpronouncable names...

As well as deserts cooked right on the spot:

We got lucky with the weather.

As accordion played, the conversations flowed (and the wines... disclaimer: multiple 0% options this year!).

And then it was the time to announce the winners of the Audience Choice Awards –

Audience Choice Awards

One of the things we've introduced at the Limassol conference was the anonymous voting with paper ballots at the end of each day: attendees are asked to mark, how much professional value did each of the sessions deliver to them personally.

We specifically use this wording on the ballots: we're not asking "who had the best slides" or "which topic was the hottest". We want to know the overall value – form insight to inspiration – for our each of our attendees, who all have rather different needs and backgrounds.

For a brief moment, we naïvely believed that we can announce the winners from a window up top – an attempt as futile, as trying to argue against VZBV and The Norwegian Consumer Council, if you're a games platform that doesn't like to refund preorders.

The audience was supportive, but we simply couldn't get the message across the distance.

With each new edition of the conference, the average score of a session continues to climb. We're not talking about "good and bad" sessions, we're talking about "great and good", where the difference in many cases equals 0.01 (in our system, a session may get a maximum of 3.00; to give you an idea of just how close the sessions were rated this year, we have 2.72, 266, 2.63, 2.62, 2.52 and so on – from 200+ votes).

Ladies and gentlemen: at the 9th edition of Games Industry Law Summit in Vilnius, the sessions rated the highest by the audience are...

Risk Assessment in Content & Operations

By Bogac EROZAN (Riot Games), Kinga Palinska LL.M (CD PROJEKT RED), Brian Chadwick (Devolver Digital) and Jan-Peter Ewert .

The second most upvoted panel is...

Compliant Engagement of Minors 2024 XC

By Anna Morgan (Bird & Bird), Dr. Anselm Rodenhausen (Video Games Europe), Nic Murfett (Take-Two Interactive), Shanna Pearce (Epic Games), Timothy M. (k-ID) and  Amy Lawrence (SuperAwesome).

And coming close behind as the third is...

50 Ways to Get in Trouble: Enforcement of Consumer Protection Law

By  Konstantin (Konni) Ewald (Osborne Clarke), Leonie Schneider (Osborne Clarke), Katya Nemova (Wargaming) and Eric J. Weiss (Perkins Coie).

Congratulations to all the winners, and to each of the 53 speakers – half of them presenting for the first time! – who worked hard to prepare and deliver one of the 12 sessions this year.

You've done an amazing job!!

What's Next?

In about 2 weeks, we will release the official photo gallery of the event.

We will also deliver brand reports to all of our sponsors, and will circulate the sponsorship deck for 2025 (if you would like a copy, please reach out to me or Alma).

Our next conferences are:

• Summit On Tour III in Rome (April 2025)
• Summit X in Vilnius (September 2025)

The registration for both events is already open (and Rome is 70/250 booked).

We build this community together

We would be hard pressed to maintain the quality standard of our conferences without the generous support from our sponsors. It is their trust and commitment that enables us to continue to improve everyone's experience. The success of the Summit is the result of their trust in our vision.

Much appreciation to the games teams at Fenwick & West , Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz , Latham & Watkins , Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP , Osborne Clarke and Perkins Coie –

Thank you, the interactive entertainment groups at ADVANT , A&O Shearman , Baker McKenzie , 🇨🇾 Chrysostomides Advocates & Legal Consultants , CMS , DLA Piper , Dentons , k-ID , 🇨🇦 Miller Thomson LLP , Mobile Games Intelligence , Norton Rose Fulbright , 🇨🇭 PLANZER LAW - Technology, Gaming & Entertainment Practice , Taylor Wessing and Wiggin –

Our gratitude to the regional and global offices of Bird & Bird , 🇯🇵 City-Yuwa Partners , Covington & Burling LLP , 🇹🇷 DERIS Intellectual Property Attorneys , 🇩🇪 game - German Games Industry Association , GG Insurance Services , 🇩🇪 IHDE & Partner Rechtsanwälte , 🇮🇳 Jerome Merchant + Partners , 🇨🇾 Karamanolis & Karamanolis LLC , 🇰🇷 Kim & Chang , 🇮🇹 LCA Studio Legale , 🇯🇵 Nishimura & Asahi , 🇹🇷 Özdağıstanli Ekici Attorney Partnership , Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP , 🇱🇹 TRINITI JUREX and 🇵🇱 WKB Lawyers !

Remember: we build this community together!

// Sergei @ Charlie Oscar