Tracing Global Regulatory Trends
LEAD:
Vanessa P. Lerner (Dias Carneiro Advogados)
ON STAGE:
Sophie Lewis (Harbottle & Lewis)
Michael Boughey (HWLE)
Sean West (Perkins Coie)
Tracey Tang 汤擎 (AnJie Broad 安杰世泽律师事务所)
Olivier Oosterbaan (Leopold Meijnen Oosterbaan)
This cross-country panel looks at the major issues that trigger regulatory response across the world, and at the specific responses already implemented or currently discussed – which may differ, depending on the history and the political agenda of each region.
With the legislators often cross-referencing each other when introducing new regulatory tools, we zoom out for the big picture: what are the global trends that merit our focus? What can we expect to land, sooner or later, on the desk of each and every major region? And what can we learn from the markets that were the pioneers in a specific field?
Game Over?How Games Die, Scale Down, and Persist
LEAD:
Andrea Dufaure (Hogan Lovells)
ON STAGE:
Luca Guidobaldi (ADVANT Nctm)
Boğaç Erozan (Riot Games)
Neil Yang (NetEase Games)
Hajer Boujbel (Scopely)
Martyna Czapska (GOG)
Live service games rarely end in a single, clean moment. Some titles shut down entirely, disappearing as servers go offline. Others linger on, scaled down to a fraction of their former scope, sustained by smaller teams or niche audiences. A few find ways to reinvent themselves through relaunches, pivots, or even player-run servers that keep worlds alive beyond official support. This panel explores the full spectrum of what it means for a game to “end” in today’s industry.
As player expectations evolve and movements like “Stop Killing Games” gain traction, the traditional model of sunsetting is increasingly under scrutiny. What obligations do developers have when a game winds down and what happens when players take preservation into their own hands? From private servers and IP enforcement to regulatory pressure and consumer rights, this discussion will unpack the legal and operational realities behind shutdowns, scale-downs, and second lives, and explore whether a new framework for ending games is starting to take shape.
Aiming for Global ComplianceLanguage, Priorities, Decisions
LEAD:
Ron Koo (Perkins Coie)
ON STAGE:
Felix Hilgert (Osborne Clarke)
Lydia Starostina (Playrix)
Rafal Kloczko (Epic Games)
Ewelina Jarosz-Zgoda (CD Projekt Red)
Rafael Orozco (Bandai Namco)
This session returns to a question that we first raised at the Limassol edition of the Summit: does a games studio have a chance of becoming globally compliant – or compliance is the direction of travel, rather than the destination point? And if it’s the direction of travel, then what sort of compass do you use to stay on the course?
With the counsel who represent studios of different scales and different organizational structures, we will explore hard-won lessons and best practices of identifying which areas deserve immediate attention and which can wait, translating legal risk into language that resonates with production, marketing and management teams, and making principled risk decisions when resources are limited. We will also discuss the role that law firms can play in extending a studio’s compliance reach well beyond what internal resources alone can cover.
Plaintiffs SpawnedThe Rise of Class Action Around Video Games
LEAD:
Andy Ramos (Pérez-Llorca)
Teresa Michaud (Cooley)
ON STAGE:
Nadia Latti (CMS)
Inês Teixeira (DLA Piper)
Chris Stevens (Roblox)
Rohan Paramesh (Aristocrat (Product Madness))
Since the beginning of the pandemic, consumer litigation targeting video games has surged dramatically. At the same time, procedural mechanisms for “class,” “collective,” and “representative” actions have expanded well beyond the traditional common law jurisdictions of USA, UK, and Australia – taking hold across Europe, South America, and Asia.
Compounding this trend, governments in these jurisdictions are subjecting games to increasing regulatory scrutiny. Together, these converging forces place games at the epicenter of legal risk — facing potentially costly civil litigation with the capacity to affect their entire player base.
This panel will explore the geographic expansion of class action mechanisms into new jurisdictions, the substantive legal theories that have been — or are likely to be — asserted against video games, and the practical strategies that companies can implement to deter, manage, and defend against such actions.