Aug 25, 2025

Summit X: juste une semaine

Today, the weather in Vilnius is miserable: as wet as the tears of an indie team failing to rack up wishlists after announcement, as cold as the response of a publisher to the idea that the developer wants to retain the game's trademark.

But in a week, we are promised ☀️ sunny skies in the daytime (20C/70F) with a few showers limited to night-time only (15C/60F). Fingers crossed, this forecast turns out to be more accurate than the LLM-generated legal documents.

In today's issue: a collection of action points and useful links.

The agenda is online

All the sessions are now listed on the web and credit not only the on-stage, but also the off-stage experts – highlighting the amount of research and diligence that went into the prep work. Thanks to everyone who contributed!

Yolanda's Special Edition is here

The chocolates from Yolanda's Chocolatiers over in Nicosia (CY) have arrived, and we're doing our best not to eat them all before the conference kicks off. Each attendee gets a box in their conference bag, as our small birthday gift.

You're getting 6 different flavors: salted caramel, peanut and banana, raspberry, passion fruit, almond and honey, and pistachio. More boxes are available as a part of the Summit's Social Game (yay!).

"Coupon" sounds like something out of Costco or Tesco, and yet here we are, using the same term at the conference for the lack of a better alternative (I just realized we should have called them "クーポン", everything always looks better in katakana!).

This year's Summit Social Game in a nutshell:

get prizes out of loot boxes (value of €10 to €250)
to get loot boxes, purchase them with the red chips
everyone gets a few chips; speakers and quiz winners get more
to multiply your chips, play in the Red Wolf Roulette (risky!)
to gain more without risk, trade or purchase chips from other attendees
to access the top categories of loot boxes, join forces with others

This is what each attendee gets at the registration:

A red coupon that's good for 5 chips (show here for illustration; you get coupon, which is exchanged into chips; you do not get both the coupon and the chips).

And this is what each speaker gets, in addition to that:

One session where you are on stage = one green coupon extra.

So, for example, Nic Murfett helping both Konni Ewald and Anna Morgan means Nic Murfett getting 10 extra chips (and before anybody tells Nic not to spend them all at once: a single bet at the roulette table is limited to 5 chips per person; if you have 15 chips to spend, that's a minimum of 3 rolls).

Finally, the third option to score more chips:

Special golden coupons.

There are two ways to obtain them: provide the best answer to the quiz at the end of each session (we asked the leads to prepare questions that are (a) factual (b) not too easy; I've seen a few, and I cannot respond to none, which I take as a good sign); or be in one of the top-3 teams in the Summit's Relay Race.

Speaking of which...

Summit's Relay Race

The sign-ups are open, here . We're happy to see runners of any level (current status: 32 runners on the roster). We plan to compete in teams of 6 people, with each person running 500 meters – then taking a break – and then running another 500 meters. Here's what the schedule looks like:

07:00 – Departures from Hotel PACAI, easy downhill run to the riverside
07:15 – Start of the race
07:45 – End of the race
08:00 – We're back at Hotel PACAI

The runners from the top 3 teams get one special coupon each – imagine that!

Now, back to the Social Game...

Loot Boxes

Loot boxes (or, to be more exact, 2D loot boxes also known as envelopes) come in 4 denominations, and feature a pool of prizes. I'm not going to elaborate here about how we can misrepresent the probabilities – let's just say that we're being about as fair as only an indie developer without any earn-out clause or revenue-based compensation package can be. These 2D boxes look like this:

Level 1 costs 5 chips, so that every attendee, without being on a panel or playing a roulette, can get something (think of Crossy Road issuing you a bunch of coins in the Korean level if you play for the PSY-inspired Daddy character – same vibe).

Here's an example of the loot from this level:

Moving on to Level 2...

Level 2 costs 15 chips, it's what we call "the Christian Rauda level" (Christian speaks at 2 panels this year, so his starting position at the conference is already at 15 chips). This is the sort of a loot box that may have a box of chocolates inside, or a magnum of promara, or a bottle of Rioja.

Level 3 – 25 chips – is where most of the 60 books (from Bitmap) are locked at, including all the collector's editions.

And now for the ultimate level –

Level 4 costs 50 chips, and will come either as a result of cooperation (say, all the people on one panel will decide to chip in) or as a result of a successful gamble at the roulette. The prizes include a few t-shirts from On Tour in Rome, one rare Summit 2024 hoodie, and two giant 5-liter bottles of excellent wine (I had to resort to the fisheye mode to make the bottle fit):

Special thanks to Pieter Koornhof (24 Bit Games, and Legal Challenge VIII's presiding Judge) for the South African part of the prize fund, currently en route to Vilnius –

The big question...

The big question is, what happens if you wanted I'm Too Young To Die, but instead got an issue of Interactive Entertainment Law Review?

First of all, welcome to the classic user experience of a player: oftentimes, the good stuff is either downright expensive or mixed up with the skins or characters that you don't really need.

Secondly, this is where the social angle from the Summit's Social Game kicks in: try swapping with someone else, and maybe both of you will be better off.

More session announcements

Since the previous issue of this newsletter, we announced 4 more sessions, and you can hook up with the experts directly on Microsoft's social network (including those credited for the off-stage contributions):

Rest Assured! XC (on age assurance, including the legal x tech angle)

Privacy, Advertising & Data Monetization in Games XC (a cross-country as well as cross-sector look).

Industry Radar 2025 (where we'll bring you a number of good news, based on reliable data points); and

Black Lists & Red Lines: Issues of Culture & Sovereignty in Games XC (also known as "if you haven't seen a scandal in a particular country around a game doing this or that, it's probably because there weren't that many games about it yet").

Hotels : Cancellation Deadlines

Today is the day when at most of the partner hotels any cancellations or changes in the dates of stay stop being penalty-free – make sure that you have synchronized your plans with them.

Flight Details

If you have informed Alma about your arrival flight, we have a pickup scheduled for you. If you still haven't, but would like Titas and his crew to meet you at the airport – please send the details through. The deadline for coordinating the pickups is EOD Wednesday 27/08.

Monday Dinner

We're looking at about 20 people having dinner on September 1, Monday, from 18:00 onwards. To join the group, please alert Alma and/or Sergei.

Legal Challenge IX

The next season of the moot court is almost upon us. We have confirmed 12 out of 15 judges (with Felix Hilgert presiding this year), and are working with the remaining 3 to complete the panel this week. The upcoming case deals with the right of first refusal, and revolves around Świętopełk Świątek and Marek Adamcik, developers from Poland and Czech Republic, as well as Marko Marković and Clive Wong, publishers from Serbia (though US-based) and Hong Kong, working on games such as Funeral Parlor Simulator and Top Slop: Lou Fo Tong.

We aim to announce the case, and open the season, by the end of September.

And that's all for now – see you in a week!

// Sergei at Charlie Oscar