UGC: User Generated Challenges

LEAD:
Peter Lewin (Wiggin)

ON STAGE:
Ryan Morrison (MGL Law)
Aleksandra Mirgorodskaia (Chrysostomides)
Jasmin Dolling (Larian Studios)

OFF STAGE:
Hana Lee (Mod.io)
Tracey Tang 汤擎 (AnJie Broad Law Firm 安杰世泽律师事务所)

UGC has become an increasingly crucial part of the modern games industry. What started as a largely hobbyist community involving niche PC mods for existing games has exploded into its own microcosm of commercial enterprises and original IP creators.

Peter Lewin, fresh from the RDC 2026, together with Jasmin Dolling, Aleksandra Mirgorodskaia and Ryan Morrison, explore the complexities of the different ways in which our industry manages UGC and its relationship with licensed IP, advertising, ownership and related disputes, acquisition and clearance, migration from the original home to other digital worlds, the challenges of moderation, and the various monetization models across the spectrum of platforms.

Q&A WITH THE LEAD

Legal Radar: China 2026合规通关

LEAD:
Tracey Tang 汤擎 (AnJie Broad 安杰世泽律师事务所)

China is the biggest games market in the world, with the number of players exceeding the whole population of the EU. What’s happening across the major legal domains, and has the country’s legal system and judicial practices evolved to address the challenges of new technology and a broadening of the industry’s audience?

Tracey Tang, a lawyer with over 20 years of experience both in litigation and in transactions, provides a snapshot of the developments that are relevant specifically to the international games industry, including IP (trademarks!), AI/LLM use and regulated access.

Q&A WITH THE LEAD

Legal Radar: Hong Kong SAR

LEAD:
Sher Hann Chua 蔡思涵 (Linklaters)

Hong Kong SAR has been a part of the international games industry for a long time: most of the studios would have dealt with the local offices of their Chinese partners, or would have seen joint ventures structured as the Hong Kong-registered companies – but how much do we really know about the region’s specific features that make it attractive for a particular type of deals?

Sher Hann Chua, a TMT and IP lawyer experienced in technology and entertainment transactions, introduces Hong Kong’s special features that matter to the games industry – its legal and tax systems, as well as its stock exchange, SEHK, which is among the top 10 in the world by market capitalization.

Q&A WITH THE LEAD

The IPO GameThe pros and cons of taking studios public

LEAD:
Brian Chadwick (Devolver Digital)

ON STAGE:
Lydia Starostina (Playrix)
Agnieszka Kania (CD PROJEKT RED)

OFF STAGE:
James Evans (Ashurst Perkins Coie)
Yulia Dementieva (Nexters)

Brian Chadwick, the GC of Devolver Digital – a games publisher that successfully listed, ran as a listed company, and recently delisted with the overwhelming support of its shareholders – reviews the reason for why a games studio may want to seek public listing, and what and the advantages and the challenges of being listed:

What do employees and partners think? What do investors think? How does the typical business model, revenue profile, short and long-term growth strategies of games companies fit with the public markets? Do the games companies have the right ‘personality’ for the public markets? Do the executives have the relevant skill sets and experience? What about the advisory industry? How do annual audits, financial results, market regulations, disclosure and trading regulations all overlay on a games company? What do retail, institutional, industry, employee shareholders all expect? Are they aligned? And what is the day-to-day experience of being listed?

Brian is joined by Lydia Starostina, the GC of the privately held Playrix, and Agnieszka Kania, the lead Corporate Counsel at the publicly listed CD PROJEKT RED.

BREACHED!(a role-playing session where choices matter)

LEADS:
Brian Chung 정태현 (Kim & Chang)
Katya Nemova (Wargaming)

ON STAGE:
Sergei Klimov (Charlie Oscar)
Aleksandra Mirgorodskaia (Chrysostomides)
Sean Kane (FKKS)
Jessica Davies-Rouzet (Pnyx)
Arata Nomoto 野本 新 (City-Yuwa Partners シティユーワ法律事務所)
Patrick Renee (Wiggin)
Vanessa P. Lerner (DCA)
Lewis Parle (Lockton)
Philip Wildman (GG Insurance)
Pieter Koornhof (HWK Consulting)

This interactive session places the audience in the middle of an on-going data breach:

Cyprus-registered Sweet Dreams Interactive, an indie studio that has been for over a decade successfully running the digital board game Weevils Unlimited, has recently sold 40% of its shares to Big Wins Corp. – a Singapore-headquartered, NASDAQ-listed games conglomerate. And just a month later, the studio’s CTO discovers that the servers in Amsterdam have been breached.

The Cape Town-based CTO reports the initial findings to the studio’s producer, and the sleepless weekend begins. Who do you call first? How much should be revealed to the investors? How to define the task for the external crisis management consultancy and how do you work with external counsels from the UK to Brazil and to Japan? What about insurance – which may exist both for Sweet Dreams, and the investment of Big Wins? How to approximate the scope of the problem, and which regional authorities to notify (or not)? And what happens to Sweet Dreams Interactive in the end?

Lead by Brian Chung (close to three decades at Kim & Chang, with first-hand experience of multiple crisis cases) and Katya Nemova (over a decade as in-house counsel at Wargaming, at global scale), this session will involve dice rolls, sealed event envelopes – and audience voting at key points in the story.

Q&A WITH THE LEADS

Age Assurance 2026Balancing integration capacities, risks of friction and budgets

LEAD:
Ann Morgan (Bird & Bird)

ON STAGE:
Heather Catchpole (Bird & Bird)
Vanessa P. Lerner (DCA)
Jason Qian (Cam Rogers Legal)
Katya Nemova (Wargaming)
Elizabeth Schweitzer (SYBO Games)

Anna Morgan, a leading expert in the field of age assurance, reviews how different solutions – such as facial age estimation, hard-identifier based verification, behavioural age estimation, digital wallet based credentials and other technologies like third party look up services – are being perceived by different regulators around the world, including the situaiton in UK/EU (Heather Catchpole), Brazil (Vanessa P. Lerner) and Australia (Jason Qian).

Then, together with the studio counsel (Katya Nemova and Elizabeth Schweizer), the discussion moves to the 3 practical issues that games companies face at implementation phase: how easily a particular technical solution integrates with the company’s own service; what is the level of friction that this solution creates for the studio’s users; and whether the company wants to develop its own solution, or use a third party provider.

Playing Non Zero-Sum GamesNegotiations in cross-cultural context

LEADS:
Greg Boyd (Frankfurt Kurnit)
Olivier Oosterbaan (Leopold Meijnen Oosterbaan)

ON STAGE:
Tracey Tang 汤擎 (AnJie Broad 安杰世泽律师事务所)
Ryan Black (DLA Piper)
Nicoletta Serao (LCA)
Matt Datum (Bandai Namco)

OFF STAGE:
Michele Robichaux (Odin Law and Media)
Tanisha Khanna (Trace Law Partners)
Arata Nomoto 野本 新 (City-Yuwa Partners シティユーワ法律事務所)
Meryl Koh 许君宁 (Drew & Napier)

In some negotiations, every issue seems to carry equal weight, and it turns into a competition of who can pressure the other side into the most concessions. In other negotiations, the focus is rather on making the overall pie larger, so that even if one slice is bigger than the other, the size of the smaller slice only keeps growing as the parties progress in discussing the terms. How do you steer the process towards the second option, and what do you do when you discover that you simply can’t, and the time has arrived to turn yourself into a psycho lawyer?

Greg Boyd and Olivier Oosterbaan, experienced counsel and negotiators with decades of experience in the tech and entertainment industries, will discuss the magic phrase ‘industry standard’, the limitations of ’take it to leave it’ approach, the Battle of Redlines(TM), the Jurisdiction, Schmurisdiction(TM) excuse, the way that the relationship outside of the present deal affects the negation process, and whether making a call may help or hurt the progress.

Joining them are the regional experts with experience in cross-border negotiations – Tracey Tang (Shanghai), Matt Datum (Tōkyō), Ryan Black (Vancouver) and Nicoletta Serao (Milan) – who will add cultural context to some of the approaches, and what you may expect as “the norm” in their part of the world.

Q&A WITH THE LEADS

Consumer Protection 2026CP enforcement as the key challenge for the games industry

LEADS:
Konni Ewald (Osborne Clarke)
Alisa Schwab (Osborne Clarke)
Nicoletta Serao (LCA)
Kimberly Culp (Fenwick)

Consumer protection enforcement in the games industry is evolving rapidly, driven by increased regulatory scrutiny and coordinated cross-border action. This session will provide an update on the CPC Network’s Key Principles and will also analyse what both the new EU Kids Act as well as the Digital Fairness Act mean for games companies.

Konni Ewald, Alisa Schwab, Nicoletta Serao, and Kimberly Culp will then explore recent enforcement trends in the United States, Germany and Italy, highlighting notable cases and enforcement priorities that games companies need to factor into their product, marketing, monetization and compliance strategies.

Hidden ObstaclesRegional laws that fly under the global industry radar

LEADS:
Tobias Schelinski (Taylor Wessing)
Greg Boyd (FKKS)

OFF STAGE:
Jingnan Wang 王婧楠 (Wargaming)
Vanessa P. Lerner (DCA)
Brian Chung 정태현 (Kim & Chang)
Arata Nomoto 野本 新 (City-Yuwa Partners シティユーワ法律事務所)
Tanisha Khanna (Trace Law Partners)
Nicoletta Serao (LCA)
Michael Boughey (HWLE)
Burak Özdağıstanli (Ozdagistanli Ekici)

An experienced ranger (Tobias Schelinski) will give a brave explorer (Greg Boyd) a tour of dangerous regulations that are hidden out of sight in the Jungle of Law. Buckle up – especially if your role is in-house! The laws that Greg will discover apply to the majority of the global game studios, and non-compliance could hurt more than a snake-bite.

This session looks at the regional laws, regulations and requirements that typically fly under the radar of most games studios. Depending on the country, a certain amount of royalties earned per year, or a certain number of daily new installs of your game on mobile devices, or a specific number of “daily logins”, or a specific game mechanics will trigger new obligations that your studio may not be aware of – until the authorities come knocking. This session will bring you up to date on some of the most common hidden obstacles, placing you in a better position to anticipate your international compliance obligations.

Q&A WITH THE LEADS

Distributed Talent, Consolidated RiskAddressing the challenges of remote work gone abroad

LEADS:
Yahor Yefanau (VIZOR | Strikerz | Glera)
Aleksey Ponomarev (X-FLOW)

ON STAGE:
Cameron Rogers (Cam Rogers Legal)
Ryan Black (DLA Piper)
Aris Damianou (C Accounting & Tax)

OFF STAGE:
Peter Lewin (Wiggin)
Ryan Morrison (MGL Law)
Maurício Pepe De Lion (DCA)
André de Melo Ribeiro (DCA)
Aleksandra Mirgorodskaia (Chrysostomides)

Working with a distributed team is the reality at most games studios these days: the more unique a skillset of a particular person, the more freedom that talent commands in the choice of where to work from, in order to stay productive and to deliver the most value to their team. 2020 made the industry accept WFH (work from home) as a valid developlment model; by 2026, this evolved into WFA (work from abroad) – and it’s not unusual now to have a development team spread across 3, 5 or even 10 different countries.

When does an independent contractor become an employee, regardless of what the paperwork says – and to what extent your company can rely on a contractor platform that’s often a part of this relationship? At which point does your studio’s footprint create a substance in the eyes of the local authorities, triggering registration, reporting and tax obligations? And what can your studio do to hedge the risk of an attempted IP clawback by a disgrunted veteran, who may seek revenge over termination?

Yahor Yefanau and Aleksey Ponomarev, GCs of studios who deal with these issues on a regular basis, review these challenges together with the regional experts Cameron Rogers (Australia), Peter Lewin (UK) and Ryan Black (Canada). Aris Damianou, an expert with hands-on experience in determining substance attribution across different regions, adds practical insights from the tax perspective.

Legal Radar: Portugal

LEADS:
Inês Teixeira (DLA Piper)
Inês de Sá (Bird & Bird)

ON STAGE:
Ryan Black (DLA Piper)
Will Deller (Bird & Bird)

Over the last few years, Portugal has become the new home for a substantial number of expat game developers, and a few global studios have set up local subsidiaries (other companies are in the exploration stage). Despite its challenges (a somewhat overwhelmed state apparatus, increasing cost of living in the capital region), Portugal remains one of the most desirable destinations in Europe for the talent working remotely, with an exceptional quality of life prospects.

Inês Teixeira and Inês de Sá introduce the region’s legal landscape, focusing on what impacts games industry the most: employment and migration matters related to remote employees; the corporate and tax realities of setting up a local office (and, perhaps, applying for local incentives); struturing deals with the Portuguese games companies or individual contractos (including the aspects of enforceability and dispute resolution); and, finally, the consumer protection aspects that are relevant to any global studio that has a part of its user base in Portugal.

Ryan Black and Will Deller add context for the role that the Portuguese offices of their law firms play in the global entertainment groups, and the dynamics of engaging with this (relatively new to our industry) region.