Games Industry Law Summit #85 – LC results, registration, Super Pass news

When I started to travel to NYC from Moscow first (which was a while ago), we had two options: Finnair via Helsinki, where people gulped KOFF like they didn’t expect to land; and with Aeroflot directly, where passengers in the back rows calmed their nerves by smoking Java Gold non-stop.

For a few years, flying for me was synonymous with smoking: as a youngster, I didn’t know how to gamble the booking system neither at the point of purchasing the tickets, nor at the registration desk, both of which at that time had more to do with a bazaar than with an airport experience. And so we always ended up in the back, sampling the second-hand smoke from various brands.

Occasionally, a passenger would even light up a Partagás, which then lead to an escalation with the flight attendants as even though you could smoke 3 packs of cigarettes en route to JFK, smoking cigars was verboten (you could drop one on the carpet, and it would stay lit up long enough to burn through the plastic).

If you told me back then that smoking will soon be phased away, I wouldn’t believe you. I am observing the same thing now with COVID-19: while some regions are at the forefront of prevention and, eventually, eradication of the pathogen, most of the world – for this brief moment – seems to have embraced the decreased life expectancy and the risk of scoring a chronic illness as a given.

On a recent trip from Vilnius to Hamburg, I observed the stark contrast between the FFP2-wearing 🇩🇪 Hamburg and the YOLO approach of 🇩🇰 Copenhagen. While friends in 🇰🇷 Seoul are proud of their low excess mortality record and continue to wear masks in the public space (current EM: +1.82%), friends in 🇱🇹 Vilnius consider the whole thing to be over and cram into full bars (current EM: an astounding +20.99%).

All of this is to say that our approach to the pandemic control at the Summit 2022 remains that of the true believers in the bright future where we embrace improved ventilation and masking in high-risk areas in the same way that we embraced the ban of in-flight smoking: it will happen for sure, just maybe not today or tomorrow. But it shouldn’t stop us from already acting like the people from the future who care about their health, and the health of others, just a tiny bit more than today’s “normal”.

And now, onwards to the updates –>

In 2022, Legal Challenge – the premiere moot court of the international games industry – ran for the 5th time. Each year about twenty teams compete for the 4 spots in the semifinals, and then battle it out in front of the expert judge panel.

Every team that qualifies to the semifinals gets a complimentary ticket, and a hotel room, at the Summit, proving an excellent opportunity of discovering the international games industry from the inside.

Thanks to everyone who helped us spread the word, this year we saw competitors from 🇺🇸 USA, 🇮🇳 India, 🇲🇾 Malaysia, 🇧🇾 Belarus, 🇷🇺 Russia, 🇵🇱 Poland, 🇫🇷 France, 🇪🇸 Spain, 🇵🇪 Peru, 🇹🇷 Turkey and 🇬🇧 UK (teams from 🇺🇦 Ukraine couldn’t compete due to war – we hope to see them in 2023, when the Russian invasion is curbed for good!).

Four teams qualified to the semifinals in 2022:

Team ⭐️ Elixir (Laura Barerra Cano) challenged team ⭐️ Two Times Elusive (Dmitriy Lyasovich and Igor Riabtsev) in front of the judge panel of 🇬🇧 Paul Gardner, 🇦🇺 Michael Boughey and 🇩🇪 Christian Rauda, and has prevailed.

Team ⭐️ Pisco & Curries (Abhinav Kumar, Juan Alberto Pulido Lock and Avi Bhandari) challenged team ⭐️ Diamond Hands (Pua Min Han, Yap Wen Jiek and Mohamad Zafran) in front of the judge panel of 🇪🇸 Andy Ramos, 🇱🇹 Katya Nemova and 🇨🇾 George Mountis, and has prevailed.

In the finals (that just wrapped!), team ⭐️ Elixir challenged team ⭐️ Pisco & Curries in front of the judge panel of 🇵🇱 Anna Kobylańska, 🇩🇪 Konni Ewald, 🇺🇸 Sean Kane and 🇨🇦 Ryan Black (🇺🇸 Karin Pagnanelli had to rush to an emergency hearing at a federal court), and the winner is… the winner is… the winner is:

🥇 THE WINNER:

Abhinav Kumar, Juan Alberto Pulido Lock, Avi Bhandari

Additionally, the following prizes were awarded:

🥇 BEST ORALIST:

Pua Min Han, Yap Wen Jiek, Mohamad Zafran

Dmitriy Lyasovich, Igor Riabtsev; and

Juan Alberto Pulido Lock, Abhinav Kumar, Avi Bhandari

We thank everyone who worked on making this year’s Challenge happen – from the team over at Wargaming that created the case to all the counsels who volunteered to judge – and we look forward to seeing every finalist at the Summit in September, when the actual, cast-iron wolf statuettes will be presented on stage by the Mayor of Vilnius. You were all amazing!

In May 2022 we planned to run the first edition of the inclusive legal event over in Warsaw, called Games Industry Law Unpacked. Many of you have contributed to the discussion of the program, and many have helped us on the ground in Poland during this winter as we were looking for a great central spot that would allow us to build a properly ventilated tent (Elektrownia).

Then, just a few days before opening the registration, 🇺🇦 Oleksiy Stolyarenko and I have bantered about how nothing short of a war would stop us from running the event (unthinkable!! science fiction!! are you crazy?? come on, this is the twenty first century!)… and then Russia invaded Ukraine, and Oleksiy switched from writing memos to assembling first aid kits.

While technically we still could run the Unpacked in mid May, as intended, we felt that this would be improper for a number of reasons as most of Ukrainian lawyers wouldn’t be able to attend and the mood in Warsaw – and in Europe in general – is currently far from celebratory. Hence we decided to re-schedule the conference, which now is set to happen as per the below –>

Where: Elektrownia , Warsaw (PL)

When: May 9-11, 2023 (09/05 Reception, 10-11/05 Conference)

Seats: 200 max

Registration opens: September 10, 2022 (right after the Summit)

We look forward to seeing you next year in Warsaw, where we will do our best to help you discover this fantastic city while discussing all the major aspects of practicing law in the international games industry.

Moving on to the upcoming Summit in Vilnius, which is 4 months away: we are currently very close to the limit of the event, and at this time are only registering the in-house counsels, with very few exceptions made for new law firms from under-represented regions.

If you emailed us and got a confirmation, but haven’t paid the invoice and booked the hotel, we will be reaching out in the next few days to either finish the registration or cancel it, as we have currently 42 attendees on the wait list.

The today’s split between law firms and in-house counsels/business development stands at 53% vs 47%. We expect to hit an almost perfect 50/50 by the time the registration is closed.

There are a bit over 100 attendees who will come to the event for the first time, and overall we expect lawyers from 37 countries (plus there are 3 additional countries represented by the semifinalists of the Legal Challenge).

We expect to accommodate 250-275 attendees and because our priority is in minimising any delays between the content and the hospitality aspects, we went ahead and rented a second venue – so that Hotel PACAI is where we’ll serve lunches and dinners, while the courtyard of the Lithuanian Art Museum is where we’ll run the actual program. Here’s the map:

There’s about 500 meters between the two venues, which will allow us to prepare all the food without disrupting the presentations – while requiring only the minimal time from the attendees to move from one place to another.

Both squares will have custom-build tents, and the Museum area will have both seats and tables (and security detail!), so that you can leave you notebooks and coats while you dart out and back for food.

For those of you who have booked Super Passes, as a reminder: you either get the set of artisanal cups made in Japan for the Summit –

– or a Summit hoodie made here in Vilnius –

Important! If you haven’t confirmed your choice by May 13, we will consider your choice to be the Japanese cups.

And for all the Super Passes booked after May 13, it will be too late to commit to the cups (as it takes 2 months to make them, and 2 months to ship them), so the goodie of choice will be the hoodie.

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With this, we congratulate the winners of the Legal Challenge one more time, and wish you a good weekend ahead – in the next issue, we will focus on the travel rules and vaccination requirements, as well as start introducing the partners of this year’s Summit (it’s been on-going on the Summit’s LinkedIn page for a while already).

Stay safe!