Summit IX: Roundup
As Keanu Reeves once told the audience at an E3 presser, "You're all breathtaking!".
This sentiment is firmly shared by our hotel and service partners: to them, the Summit's attendees are remarkably different from the visitors who come for other kinds of conferences, whether it's tech or legal – and in a good way.
My hunch is that it comes down to the diversity, the friendliness and the pronounced lack of hierarchy in our community.
Like fish not seeing water, those of us fully immersed in the legal segment of the games space can't really spot this difference from the inside. But let me tell you that the signs are definitely here: normally, when a restaurant emails the organizers after a group of attendees went there, it's about lost & found, unpaid bills or damaged property. This year, I got an email from Sue's Indian Raja that simply said how much they loved having a group of our guests return for the dinner.
Mind you, we are not in the US, where it may be routine client comms. Here, in Eastern Europe, you just don't send emails like this, unless you truly enjoyed hosting the people.
This, essentially, has been my experience with you guys: the more the world leans right, dipping into nationalism and drowning in militarism, the more this community stands out as the home of intelligent, emphatic people who, working together, create a diverse and collaborative environment.
As Jung Kook (정국) sings: please don't change!
In this issue
Throughout the event, we send out daily updates on LinkedIn – but as we don't reach everyone there, we also do a roundup issue of the long-form newsletter to put together all the info. This is exactly what you're readying right now.
We also have the updated stats of all the studios & firms who attended, and a few more details to share about our plans for 2025 – you will find these below.
Summit IX: Studios
It turns out that we hosted legal teams from a bit over 70 studios who came from nearly a hundred of different offices around the world, making up 40% of all attendees this year:
We hope that you got to know more fellow counsels whose brains you can tap for some friendly advice, whether it's about a new region or a new kind of legal matter.
And if you know counsels at studios that are not listed above – please let them know, that they are very welcome to join one of the 2025 events.
Summit IX: Industry & Associations
As always, there's a sprinkling of business people who join our legal circus, as well as counsels from the service companies (tools, platforms, funds, banks, brokers) that play a crucial role in helping the industry perform at its best.
We also hosted several executives from the industry associations and boards, and two professionals looking after comms at international law firms:
My first shout-out is to game, and specifically Henner, Claas and Kai, who hosted a Germany-focused workshop just before the Reception Dinner. The association has over 500 members, including some of the leading law firms with substantial practice in video games, and now accepts member who may not have a direct presence in Germany – but who have an office in another EU country.
Another shout-out goes to Ann and Anselm at Video Games Europe who contributed to this year's talks on online safety and monetization, including a discussion of opportunities and limitations of self-regulation. A digital copy of VGE's industry manifesto, which you may have seen in your attendee bags, is available HERE.
As we read this week's news about a major European country bringing back border control within the previously free-flow Schengen area (one of the first dominos to fall in the game of de-globalization and populism-driven politics?), it's industry associations like these two, that are our best instrument for constructing a collaborative, inclusive future of our industry – against a background that is bound to become more challenging.
Summit IX: Law Firms
Law firm experts of 96 firms, who arrived from 125 different offices (including Norway and UAE for the first time), accounted for 54% of this year's attendees:
Most of these counsels have been recommended specifically by their studio clients on the basis of completed projects, and come fully vetted by the industry.
Doing Business in Latin America
Talking about law firms, there's one project that I'd like to highlight – Video Games Law: Doing Business in Latin America, a research effort lead by Vanessa Pareja Lerner with the help of a group of other community veterans, focusing on 6 LatAm countries in the context of our industry:
The book is available HERE as a .PDF, and represents the sort of a cross-country, cross-firm collaboration that is our community's golden standard.
Hall of Fame
As far as golden standards are concerned, things don't get better than being inducted into the community's very own Hall of Fame.
This year the community board inducted 4 law firm experts and 2 in-house counsels – congratulations, Karin, Marc, Sean, Greg, Nic and Henner!
You can see all the inductees HERE.
The Red Carpet Gallery
This year, for the first time, we built a proper Red Carpet area and had a dedicated photographer taking 'official' attendee photos.
The gallery is available HERE.
We'll bring it next year as well, for all those group shots made with friends and colleagues from across the globe.
Daily Recaps
If you're after the session photos, we have every speaker on the books in the daily recap posts. And if you have not attended the conference yet, these recaps give you a pretty good idea of what to expect.
Day Zero –>
Games Industry Law Summit
Day One –>
Games Industry Law Summit
Day Two –>
Games Industry Law Summit
The full gallery is currently in the works, and needs another couple of weeks.
Audience Choice Awards
This year's winning panels, by popular vote, are:
- Risk Assessment in Content & Operations
Boğaç Erozan (Riot Games, lead)
Kinga Palińska (CD Projekt RED)
Brian Chadwick (Devolver Digital)
Jan-Peter Ewert (Valve)
- Compliant Engagement of Minors
Anna Morgan (Bird & Bird, lead)
Anselm Rodenhausen (VGE)
Nic Murfett (Take-Two)
Shanna Pearce (Epic Games)
Timothy Ma (k-ID)
Amy Lawrence (SuperAwesome)
- Enforcement of Consumer Protection Law
Konni Ewald (Osborne Clarke, co-lead)
Leonie Schneider (Osborne Clarke, co-lead)
Eric Weiss (Perkins Coie)
Katya Nemova (Wargaming)
Since we started with these awards, it's been mostly Germans and Americans who lead the most appreciated panels.
– On Tour I in Warsaw?
– Germany, USA, Germany
– Summit VIII?
– USA, Germany, USA
– On Tour II in Limassol?
– France (hurray!), flanked by... you got it, leads from USA and Germany.
Summit IX, however, turned the tables: 2 out of the 4 leads hail from Ireland – wow! (the other 2 are Germans, but of course).
We've put online the list of the winning panels, and the wonderful presenters and panelists who contributed to these sessions, from the 4 events of 2023 and 2024: HERE. Thanks for raising the quality bar even higher!
Summit On Tour III
Rome is everything, and then some.
When I went there to scout the venue in the summer, I bought flowers from a nice woman who told me about the muslim community of Trastevere; picked up a couple of books for kids from a nerdy French store close to the Quirinale, where a group of politicians was being interviews in the street; and barely resisted the urge to go into a pastry shop that makes one thing, and one thing only: tiramisu, right there on the premises. One can easily spend an entire year in Rome, and still remain in awe of discovering the many sides of this city. What, then, to say about the prospects of spending just a few days there, on a legal conference?
In the coming weeks, we'll talk at length about our plans for Summit On Tour III in Rome where we aim to build closer connections between Italy's games industry and the global community, as well as to give you a glimpse into (and connections with) Italy's other creative industries – film, television and fashion.
For now, what's important is that the dates are locked: April 1-3, 2025, Tuesday to Thursday, and the venue is confirmed (as we do this in cooperation with the region of Lazio, the official announcement will take some time to come through).
To register, apply here:
With Rome, the biggest challenge is going to be with booking the place to stay: next year is the year of the Jubilee (the official app has a name in Latin, 'Iubilaeum25', and the official website is hosted on the .va domain, how cool is that? Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum viditur).
At the moment, there's plenty of options still available – but please hear me when I say that you want your hotel locked by the end of November 2024, as booking last-minute may become extremely stressful.
Summit On Tour IV
What? Really? Yes, indeed.
We took Summit On Tour from Warsaw to Limassol, and now to Rome, for a reason. 3 things are crucial for the concept to work:
- to keep it low-cost so that associates, younger counsels and smaller firms & studios may still attend and integrate into the community;
- to engage the local industries, expanding our reach into new regions (you get to meet counsels who don't normally travel to the international events);
- to offer a location where the core community of veterans/GCs can spend their valuable time productively, catching up without commute and with plenty of opportunities to have meetings in smaller groups.
For 2026, we entertained the ideas of bringing On Tour to Hamburg (cold!) or Nice (bigger city!), but thanks to the involvement of all of you that have a stake in 🇵🇹 Portugal (whether because you live there, or because you love visiting), we are now looking into staging the 4th edition in the ocean-side Cascais.
I once spent a month working from there, and we loved everything about it: the town is walkable, the food culture is magnificent, there's a running track along the ocean – and the weather should be good enough for us to build a custom outdoor venue. There's also plenty of direct flights to Lisbon, and there's a young but growing national association, Associação de Produtores de Videojogos Portugueses, which we'll try to engage.
While this is not set in stone yet, I wanted to air this early – and if you, too, have a connection to Portugal, then please let me know.
That's all for today, and I'll be back when we're done with the photo gallery.
/ Sergei @ Charlie Oscar
