Summit X: four weeks to start

Uno due tre... いちにさん... One two three... This is the Summit's radio station, back on air to broadcast a few updates before the conference starts four weeks from now.

In today's issue: the first 12 news items, including a bit of stats, a glimpse into a few things in production, and an overview of the timeline.

1. Stats

Let's start with the stats: this year's Summit is shaping up to become the biggest community gathering that we've seen so far. We're very happy – as well as very conscious of the responsibility, and the efforts that we need to put forward in order to allow every attendee to make the most of the conference.

340 Attendees, 50/50 law firm and studio counsels

We are at +10% to last year's numbers, currently at 340 attendees. Roughly 50% are from law firms, with the other half working at studios (as counsels or executives), and a dozen of young lawyers representing the top four teams of Legal Challenge VIII.

As of today, we stopped accepting new applications with the exception of the under-represented regions (e.g. Croatia, Vietnam); if you know someone who would be a valuable contact for the community, and who still hasn't applied – please send them our way.

208 studios & firms represented

150 in-house attendees represent 89 different studios; and 178 law firm attendees represent 119 offices of 94 different law firms (how this works: we count DLA Piper as 1 firm, but as 5 offices – as their team comes from 🇨🇦 Canada, 🇮🇪 Ireland, 🇫🇷 France, 🇫🇮 Finland and 🇬🇧 UK; Ryan Black and Alexander Kolmakov work for the same firm, but bring expertise from different regions).

In terms of gender balance, the in-house group displays a more balanced mix (40% are female) than the law firm group (24%), or the overall list (30%).

If you're a senior partner or a GC who puts a conscious effort in keeping your team's doors open to qualified candidates of any nationalities and genders, we salute you! In many ways we are downstream from the society at large (access to education, childcare, etc.), so the numbers don't always reflect the efforts (as you may recall from the session in Limassol, where we spoke about the candidates that don't even make it into the hiring pool to begin with...) – which makes our industry policies even more crucial, for the overall balance.

44 countries

This year, we're at 43 different countries/44 different flags (the flags represent the location of the attendees at the time of registration). In 2025, we will miss Belarus, Chile, Estonia, Nigeria, Russia and UAE, who were represented in some of the previous editions (some counsels have moved, some had scheduling conflicts or travel challenges); on the upside, for the first time we will have the pleasure to welcome a counsel from Malta: 🇲🇹 Paul Micallef Grimaud.

Vietnam, Malaysia and New Zealand remain in the plans for the coming years – we're very much aware of the huge challenge represented by the cost and time of travel to Europe.

2. Pickup Service at the Airport

As before, we offer a complimentary pickup service from the Vilnius airport to each and every attendee– if you would like to arrange it, please provide your flight details to Alma.

In the cases where we don't have your flight data, we assume that you/your team arranges the transportation on your own. Bonus point: this year for we'll use mostly electric vehicles for the pickup (one of these is shown above).

3. Fast Track Passes

As before, we do not arrange drop-offs – please coordinate with your hotel or with the taxi company of your choice (Alma has the contact details of the ones we recommend).

But for each attendee who flies out of the Vilnius airport, we have arranged for the complimentary Fast Track Passes that you are welcome to pick up at the Summit's camper in the Museum.

4. Hotel bookings

If you have booked one of the partner hotels with a flexibility to later adjust the arrival/departure dates, the time to finalize the dates is now. Depending on your hotel of choice, your booking will soon carry a penalty in case of a change.

If you have not yet booked a hotel: an updated map of the remaining hotel options is available from Alma.

5. Limited edition pins

This year's enamel pins are already manufactured, featuring the key art of the conference. These will be available for free from the Summit's camper (while the supplies last).

We've also replenished the supply of the classic Red Wolf pins, these will be available at the registration desk (complimentary).

6. Conference notebooks

The conference notebooks are currently being printed, and we already completed the test prints of the cover to balance the colors (it took a few iterations).

One new thing this year: we've added an "ID field" to the front, where you can write your name or whatever else will help you identify this notebook (in the photo above, you can see my baby-level hiragana in that field).

Also new this year: you will be able to get extra notebooks (including a few from Summit On Tour III in Rome) from the loot boxes of The Red Wolf Roulette – see below.

7. The Red Wolf Roulette

For this year's social game, we decided to give you the taste of our industry's own medicine: it involves a proper roulette table (with two professional croupiers), Summit's own casino chips, and a system of loot boxes (true to industry form – though much less predatory than, say, PvZ2 from Electronic Arts).

The Chips

Each attendee will receive a coupon that can be exchanged into 5 Summit chips (each session panelist gets an extra coupon, and at the end of each session a member of the audience with the best answer to the question on the panel's subject matter earns another one).

The chips can be used to purchase a loot box at the Summit Camper – or to play the roulette, if you want to try scoring some more.

The Roulette

The roulette table in the Museum courtyard operates like the regular casino roulette (it is, in fact, a regular roulette table), with a limitation of 5 chips max per each bet placed.

Unlike most studios, we will not sell additional chips for money. But, like on the Steam Community Market, you can trade or buy more chips from your fellow attendees as you like (unlike games platforms, we will not charge you with a transaction fee).

The Loot Boxes

Loot boxes come in 4 types – Special (5 chips), Deluxe (10 chips), Rare (20 chips) and Legendary (50 chips) – and contain prizes that range in value from €5 to €250, including 60 books from the amazing publishing house Bitmap Books and 1 Bordeaux Jeroboam (5L) of Maratheftiko bottled specifically for the event by the Cyprus winery Zambartas.

Last year, when you claimed a prize in the social game, you had the choice of the specific item within the category. This year, we are serving you the loot box experience that most players get these days: a random something, hopefully on the expensive side – but who knows? Perhaps you would like a copy of Too Young To Die, but you're getting a magnum of promara (and you don't even drink alcohol... oops!). We encourage you to maximize the trading opportunities within the community to optimize for the items that you personally find desirable.

// The detailed rules of the game will be available at the venue. //

8. Anniversary cups

To mark the anniversary of the Summit, we went back to Japan for the second collaboration with Asemi Co. to produce a limited run of the red cups.

Handmade in Japan

These cups are handmade in Japan, and it took us a few iterations to get to the desired design (on these photos you can see different specimen, the final product is being shipped from Japan next week). The cups are red on the outside, and – unlike the previous run from a few years ago – white on the inside, to highlight the color of the beverage, whether it's a sencha or an oolong.

A limited run of 100

We commissioned a total of 100 sets, 2 cups in each set (small and large; on the photo above are two sets; we went for the cups with a burnt edge, shown here on the left).

If you attend the Summit, you can pre-purchase a set for €70 (incl. 21% VAT) to pick it up on the spot. If you do not attend this year, but would like to order – please talk to Alma and she will arrange a payment link that also covers the delivery cost.

2 of these sets will be included in the prize pool of Legendary loot boxes, with the stock that hasn't been pre-purchased on sale directly at the Summit.

9. The Relay Race

On September 3 (Wednesday) we're doing the Relay Race in teams of 6 people, each running 550 meters twice – with the departure at 07:00 from Hotel PACAI and a hard stop at 07:45.

To balance the teams, we ask that each participant completes this form. As of now, the first 25 runners have already signed up, and we expect to have at least 6 teams in the race. The runner from the top 3 teams will earn extra chips for The Red Wolf Roulette!

!! Please note that to join this race, you must complete the form, otherwise you won't be assigned to any of the teams.

10. Conference partners

We have completed the onboarding of all the partners for the anniversary edition of the Summit. This is the part of the budget that allows us to take the conference further – including all the new and upgraded features (more on this in the next issues).

We're grateful to Fenwick, Frankfurt Kurnit, LathamTECH, MSK, Osborne Clarke and Perkins Coie for another year of supporting the Summit at the top tier level!

We also greatly appreciate the substantial support provided by ADVANT, Bird & Bird, Chrysostomides, Cooley, DLA Piper, Hogan Lovells, k-ID, Lewis Silkin, MGL, Miller Thomson, Norton Rose Fulbright, Taylor Wessing and Wiggin – this allows us to plan with confidence!

We welcome new and returning regional sponsors: ALBOR, Ashurst, Baker McKenzie, Brehm & v. Moers, City-Yuwa Partners, Greenberg Traurig, Harbottle & Lewis, IHDE & Partner, Karamanolis, Kim & Chang, LCA Studio Legale, Leopold Meijnen Oosterbaan, Odin Law and Media, Ozdagistanli Ekici, Planzer Law, Reed Smith, Sheppard Mullin and SSW, as well as the organizational partners at game and Go Vilnius.

Thank you for allowing us to take the hospitality of the conference a notch higher!

11. The Timeline

The general timeline is available on the website – no sessions listed yet, but at least a basic idea of what's happening when (most things are as expected, including the three runs of the running community).

A new item on the timeline: on September 2 (Tuesday), from 14:00 to 16:00 in the restaurant of Hotel PACAI, we will open a small Welcome Center for the first-time attendees (this year there's 90 people who attend for the first time), with a few industry veterans offering helpful advice and facilitating introductions.

If you are in town already at this time, and you're at the conference for the first time – we'll be thrilled to see you there for some beer (including 0%), chips, and a few tall stories.

12. The Agenda

The final news item of today's issue is about the agenda:

We have finalized 12 sessions so far, and may end up having 2 more (it depends on the negotiations with a few panels to carve up more time 😄). The first announcements will go out already this week.

We'll cover DFA, platform liability, lawsuits around claims of addiction, the intersection of privacy and advertising in games (as a model and as a tool), and the practical aspects of AI policies at studios.

We'll also talk about age assurance, and run the sequel to the most voted panel of the last year's conference – compliant engagement of minors 2.0.

Two sessions currently involve not 5, not 10, but close to 20 (!) on-stage and off-stage experts from all over the world: a cross-country panel on preliminary injunctions, and a cross-country panel on cultural heritage and risks around sovereignty, cultural norms and politics in video games – these sessions will set a new record on the thoroughness of the cross-country analysis.

Great news: after years of pitching, we'll finally have a panel dedicated to audit, with a veteran in the field flying in specifically to share insights and best practices (a few lawyers in our community have worked with him in the recent years, and learned a few things already).

Another industry veteran, lawyer-turned-investor-turned-writer, will host a review of the current games industry trends that are likely to affect the legal work in the sector (such as the rise of UGC).

We will also have a fireside with the GC of a studio that used its legal skills to make the playing field more level for every team that develops and publishes video games, learning about Epic Games vs Apple & Google first-hand.

The two sessions that are still in the works and may or may not happen, involve the challenges of working with influencers, and the possible discussion of how to work with the top industry talent when the level of talent directly correlates with, how shall we put it mildly, the level of craziness? We'll see if these make the cut.

And that's it for today!

Thanks for reading, and see you in the next issue – coming later this week.

Sergei / Charlie Oscar