MGI AT GAMES INDUSTRY LAW SUMMIT - VILNIUS 2024

Between 3-5 September, Veronica and I attended the main Games Industry Law Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. The conference is now in its ninth year, following on from its second ‘On Tour’ event in Limassol, Cyprus, in April 2024. Once again organised by the wonderful Alma Giedraitienė and Sergei Kilmov, the summit brings together legal experts from all over the world (58 different countries, to be exact!) to discuss the latest legal challenges facing the video games industry. MGI was proud to sponsor for a 3rd year.

From the moment we touched down in Vilnius, the sun shone, and our Lithuanian hosts also beamed with friendliness. Before the event properly started there was just the small matter of the morning run – led by our running pro, the ‘Cypriot-Scot’ Evelina Georgiades. The plan was increasingly difficult runs for each day of the summit, but the first day’s ‘easy’ level (5km) ended up being 12km! And all before breakfast…

“With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility”

As with previous events, the sessions were fantastic, ranging from consumer protection law, IP and M&A regulatory challenges to an around the world tour of Artificial Intelligence (AI) litigation as well as the importance of cybersecurity and monetisation hurdles. There were also entertaining ‘country panels’ on the video games market in both South America and India - did you know that India is the largest games market in the world with a user base of 568m and 9.5bn app downloads in 2023? Complemented with delicious food, drink, and networking opportunities, the event is now the ‘must attend’ global event for video games legal and policy pros.

Two sessions stood out:

‘Compliant Engagement of Minors 2024 XC’ chaired by Anna Morgan from Bird & Bird. The session explored the new era of global regulation to protect young people. Anna was joined on stage by Dr Anselm Rodenhausen from Video Games Europe, Shanna Pearce from Epic Games, Timothy Ma from KiD and Amy Lawrence from SuperAwesome. It also featured the standout quote from their fellow panellist, Take-Two’s Nic Muffet, who summarised the discussion with the words: “with great power comes great responsibility”. His words were an acknowledgement of the impact of video games on global society and the industry’s duty to deliver on trust and safety.

The following session – ‘Online Safety XC 2024’ – chaired by Wiggin’s Paul Gardner, focused on similar but more specific issues. Paul’s panel of experts included Cam Rogers from Cam Rogers Legal, Ann Becker from Video Games Europe, Ryan Black from DLA Piper, Isabel Davies from Wiggin, and Kayla Page from Epic Games. The debate focused on global online safety legislation and the protection of society, including the evolving debate on age verification and age assurance.

Key Take Away: Engaging with Design and Engineering Teams

The session on Online Safety featured my stand-out message of the event and – for me - the key summit takeaway: the need for lawyers and policy professionals to engage with design and engineering teams at the earliest opportunity to ensure trust, safety and privacy protections are built into the product process at the outset. Undoubtedly, the Games Industry Law Summit is the premium event in the video game legal calendar. However, if we take anything away with us from Vilnius it is this: the need to feed insight and expertise into business colleagues at an early stage so that all their design and engineering innovation can be underpinned by the protection of players, thereby fostering greater industry trust.

More About the Games Industry Law Summit

An official overview of the event can be found here on Games Industry Law’s newsletter page, and you can find them here on LinkedIn. The Games Industry Law Summit will be back for its third ‘On Tour’ year in Rome on 1-3 April 2025. All the details are here. MGI will be there so ci vediamo a Roma!