Latest issue Oct 6, 2026

🇵🇹 On Tour IV: Agenda, Q&As

Porto: the view from the venue of Summit On Tour IV on October 5, 2026.

Good morning from the city of Porto, where, following a brief bout of rain, we're looking forward to the sunny skies for the rest of the week (as the LLM agents like to write, with one honest caveat: we could still get 1-3mm of rain later tonight, if the wind doesn't blow the clouds off to the ocean earlier).

Early Arrivals / Rooftop Drinks

Monday saw a number of early arrivals get together for some cold sparkling water (and a tequila or two) at Timbre's rooftop. As always, these meetings provide a stress-free environment to find out what's happening around the world, both politically (uff, Brazil!!) and industry-wise (New Zealand's record continues to impress!).

The weather was perfect for an open air gathering...

...with the view towards the venue of the Summit, Alfândega do Porto.

By the way, if you ever get bored with the issues of IP and CP, you can take the historical train 500 and in 24 stops (about half an hour all in all) the line gets you to Matosinhos Beach, with half a dozen surfing schools and excellent fish restaurants.

Some people used the Monday meeting to put in more prep for their sessions.

Others, to align on the recent court cases.

(we're not sure what Phil and Jason are looking at here, perhaps the Dinosaur World Makeover in Crossy Road...)

Some people had fun...

Others pondered on what the future holds...

More fun...

And more thinking...

And then it was the time to wrap it up and head home for a bit of sleep.

Agenda

If you attend the conference, you will find the printed agenda in your attendee bags, which you get this afternoon at the Opening Reception (look for the Registration Desk with the enamel pins, stickers, and more).

There's also a list of all the panels on the web, and a (somewhat accurate) timeline online (the Summit's web is going to get a makeover following this edition of On Tour, please bear with us for the moment).

The Running Club

Today's Practice Run went as scheduled, despite the rain, and tomorrow's Relay Race 4.0 is fully on, with 30 lawyers competing in 6 teams of 5. For the full list of participants: here (no betting, please! 🙈).

Travel Update

A few people missed their connections to Porto thanks to the hourlong+ border control queues at FRA. As this is not the first time when this happens, we recommend to enter the EU at another destination, if you can help it. The reported time to pass EU in LIS was under 1 hour. Still a loss of time, but at least not as bad as FRA.

Because of today's thunderstorms, several planes got re-routed to Faro and to Madrid. There's little anyone can do to control for that, except maybe arriving a day earlier – but this depends on the overall work schedule, and could be impossible to arrange for some.

Video Game Law

Thanks to Emma Smizer's courier skills, we are now in the possession of 12 copies of the 2nd edition of Video Game Law. If you're in the audience at the start of each session, you stand a chance to win one – notice your unique 3-digit number at the top of the badge, we'll use these numbers when we roll the dice.

Weather Update

For those attending the Opening Reception tonight: the thunderstorm is over, and the sun is out again; but the forecast still lists a probability of a short shower between now and midnight.

We made the executive decision to place all the food and drinks stations under the roof, you will find them in the big hall called Piso 0. However, we will place cocktail tables and sofas outdoors, in the quay, so that as long as it doesn't rain, we can be out and about. Inshallah, we will succeed in being outside, with the view of the river. And once our certainty in the rain being off the forecast solidifies, we'll bring out also the long wooden tables for people to sit under.

As to Wednesday and Thursday, the weather snapshot shows 0% chance of rain, and we look forward to being outdoors at all times (currently shows 0%, I must add).

Q&As with Panel Leads

And now, to the main dish of this issue: over at LinkedIn, during the last couple of weeks we have released a series of interviews with the leads of each panel on this year's agenda. These Q&As give you more information about the leads themselves, and about the reason they chose their topics for the agenda. The interviews also have direct links to every presenter's profile, if you want to connect with someone during the event. I believe that having such a prep ahead of the conference gives you more context and better framings of the topics.

The Q&As are linked below in the order in which these sessions will run at the conference:

DAY ONE

What's Left of Copyright?

Marc, Christian and Andy discuss whether copyright protection for video games is on the way to becoming less useful in the age of broad LLM adoption. One of the longest interviews that we've done this year:

UGC: User Generated Challenges

Peter talks about how the UGC field is different from the core of the games industry, and what this changes in the business:

Legal Radar: China 2026 合规通关

Tracey talks about the evolution of China's games industry, and why we are now in the stage at which compliance is the focus for most games companies there:

Legal Radar: Hong Kong SAR

Sher Hann introduces Hong Kong, and its special powers:

The IPO Game

Brian talks about pros and cons of listing a games studio, and discusses what changes when you list or de-list:

BREACHED!

Brian and Katya talk about their ambition for this session – more of a theater play, look for the playbill in your attendee bag! – which comes down to putting you all in the front seat of a crisis:

DAY TWO

Age Assurance 2026

Anna talks about the turbulent times that the industry finds itself in, and what to expect in the short term in the area of protection of minors:

Playing Non-Zero Sum Games

Greg and Olivier discuss the challenges you come across during negotiations, and whether games industry has something to learn from/to teach other sectors:

Consumer Protection 2026

Konni and Alisa talk about the (over)regulation of this area, and what's going on with the enforcement these days:

Hidden Obstacles

Tobias explains how he came up with the idea to look for the laws and regulations that affect most studios, but that typically fly under the legal radar:

Distributed Talent, Consolidated Risk

Egor talks about the realities of running a studio that has employees and contractors all over the world, and the dynamics to disperse and consolidate at the same time (based on the skills you need and the approach of creative leads):

Legal Radar: Portugal

Inês, Ryan, Inês and Will talk about what makes the Portuguese legal landscape special, and what place the Portuguese offices of the multinational firms have in the global practice:

We are grateful to the leads and their panelists for all the prep work done in the run-up to the conference, and for investing so much time and effort into sharing their experience with the community. The Summit exists only because of this collaborative spirit, this is how we live and how we die.

Get Your Pictures Taken!

A friendly reminder that our veteran photographer Simas Bernotas is on-site during all the days of the Summit, and you can ask him to take a group shot of your team, or you and your friends, which will be available in the public gallery. Time flies! The galleries from the 2015-2025 editions are the memories that we have created together, forever. Let's create some more? (bonus point: your colleagues in marketing, I may assure you, will be exhaled if your photo is in front of your firm's brand).

Partner Firms

Just as the program of the Summit would not exist without the community that takes the lead, researches and refines the program, the all-inclusive social+professional space that we build for each edition would not be possible without the support of our partner firms – because of their commitment, we are able to make a small step forward with each Summit, fine-tuning this and that, to make it work for the attendees.

Thank you, dear top-tier partners –

Thank you, our core supporters –

And thank you, our regional experts –

Summit On Tour V

In the conference program which you will find today in your attendee bags, you have the crossword that contains the name of the city where we plan to run Summit On Tour V in October 2027:

We challenge you to crack it without resorting to LLM!

That's it for now – and see you in 2 hours at the Opening Reception!

= Sergei | Charlie Oscar =