GAME - Law & Business

Guest/Co-host: Allan Kirkeby, Senior Business Developer at EA Dania, Former CEO of Unity Studios, and hosting the IDSU podcast: https://www.idsu.dk/podcast (in Danish) Episode Content: In this episode we delve into the world of publishing contracts with Allan Kirkeby. We look into some key components of publishing contracts and talk about how publishing contracts have changed over time to adapt to the evolving industry landscape.  Personal Insights: Allan enjoys listening to 80’s music, such as Depeche Mode, while cooking. He’s also an avid gamer, currently playing Spacemarine II and exploring many indie titles. Robert has an eclectic [=wide-ranging] music taste including contemporary Italian jazz, enjoying artists like Nicola Conte and Antonio Faraò. In the gaming world, he’s currently engaged with Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor.  Quotes and References: Please note our nod to the nostalgic era of old school physical media storage, including CD-Rom, floppy disc, and cassette tape (used as data storage in the 80’s for systems like VIC-20, Commodore 64, ZX 81, ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC). “Come back I can still bite you” - is a quote from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), and “One Contract to Rule Them All” is a of course a playful reference to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.  Future Episodes Teaser: Stay tuned for the next few episodes where we continue to explore the theme of publishing from various perspectives, featuring experienced industry professionals. Produced in collaboration with Podcaster.dkRecorded by Dennis G. M. JensenEditing and mix by Dennis G. M. Jensen/Podcaster.dkMusic by Henrik Pahlke Møller

From one-man-band to rock star. The creator of Necesse, Mads Skovgaard, has taken the full journey, starting 12 years ago from scratch in every sense, even building his own game engine to support his vision of a fun and interesting game experience. Getting in touch with influencers, building updates, community management, and much more until at one day reaching the front page of Steam to discover that a vast number of players are willing to invest in spending time with their friends in the emergent worlds of Necesse. We also talk about next steps after growing from indie to indie+ (or true independence), having a team to share your vision with, and how to develop your IP and stories in an emergent world sandbox game. Thank you for listening. Please contact me to share your comments and ideas; LinkedIn: Robert Jønsson DAHL, Discord: video.game.lawyer, or email: roj@dahllaw.dkSpecial thanks to DAHL and Dennis from podcaster.dk who produced this episode.Produced in collaboration with Podcaster.dkRecorded by Dennis G. M. JensenEditing and mix by Dennis G. M. Jensen/Podcaster.dkMusic by Henrik Pahlke Møller

The Bjerregaard, Cindercats - First Person Boot-strapping I have been looking forward to sharing this story; Producer at CinderCat Games, Thea Bjerregaard talks about life as an start-up indie studio and reveals the teams passion for dark humor that will be imminent in their upcoming First Person Booter misadventure - Glum.We also talk about being a pick of the Danish angel investor, Three Little Pigs, getting initial funding from and working with Danish investors, being part of a large founder team and about the future of Danish Games industry.After the recording of this episode, the Cindercats recently raised a pre-seed round. Congratulations! Also, the Danish games industry business association "Games Denmark" has been founded.Exciting times ahead!Thanks to Podcaster.dk for kind assistance.Also huge thanks to DAHL law firm for supporting the podcast series.I really appreciate feedback in any form, preferably via LinkedIn, Discord video.game.lawyer or via email to roj@dahllaw.dk. Produced in collaboration with Podcaster.dkRecorded by Dennis G. M. JensenEditing and mix by Dennis G. M. Jensen/Podcaster.dkMusic by Henrik Pahlke Møller

Quirky fun is on in this episode - but what else to expect from Niels Wetterberg, CEO of Invisible Walls. Niels recommends some games suitable for playing together with your kids; Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime and It Takes Two. And he revels to have an eclectic taste in music! You may discover interesting facts about how Invisible Walls was ‘just getting acquired’ by Amplifier/Embracer Group, and what has followed since.Niels takes us through his background from the film industry, where he was brought up with the dogma never to take a “no” personally as there is always someone that wants to give you money. We talk about strategy and military focus on the goal; Building a business on a vision rather than just creating a game project.Invisible Walls founders’ investment vehicle called Three Little Pigs ApS has made its first investment in the Aalborg based studio, Cindercat. Main focus is about supporting and giving back to the industry.Finally, we discuss the current situation in Danish games Industry that is about to organize by itself.Please write to me with comments and ideas via LinkedIn or mail.Special thanks to DAHL Law firm and Podcaster.dk.

In this episode, I have two guests in the studio; Tim Garbos from Triband and Jakob Sillesen from Multiverse/Adventure Box. They actually met each other at SYBO sharing an office space in the early days of Subway Surfer production.Triband provides a level editor in What The Car? and Multiverse has the game building platform KOGAMA. Both Tim and Jakob talk about the massive amounts of content that is being produced on their platforms - with most of it being of very little value to the public; Still, they see the beauty in the creativity and expressions of their users.We also talk about infringing content and abusive content created by users; most of this will never get much attention as Tim and Jakob both point out that it is actually difficult to create a good game (level) that gets attention, and the majority of undesired content will quickly sink into the vast abyss of poor attempts that are soon forgotten…Finally, Tim and Jakob share some thoughts on the future of user generated content; Maybe we will see some labels like “hand-crafted” or “artisan” on user generated content - in opposition to (AI) machine-produced content?I really enjoyed the company of both Jakob and Tim, and I think it is interesting to hear different perspectives on the topic.As always, I want to thank you for listening. You are also invited to contact me sharing your comments and ideas; LinkedIn, Discord, email or any other means…Thanks to DAHL law firm, in particular Rasmus and Marcus for their research Special thanks to Gorm, Henrik, Dennis and Casper from Podcaster.dk who produced this episode

In this episode Ulas Karademir is my guest. Ulas is CEO of TMRW Denmark ApS, working on RealityOS; and former VP of Core Engeneering at UNITY.Ulas recently played Mount & Blade and is listening to jazz from Mali.We learn about Ulas’ background, coming from Turkey to Denmark; playing basketball at a high level (pun intended!), learning C++ and ending up working in Danish Game studios.Ulas shares some deep insights on game engines and also on the three pillars of a successful game studio. We discuss the idea of an “Everything Engine” that Ulas refers to as the “feature soup”. When we talk about legal issues, Ulas is using the Danish word “boremaskine” - it simply means drilling machine (but you probably already guessed that…)Finally, we touch upon the future of (game) engines, where Ulas discloses some interesting information about his current project with RealityOS.If you want to work with Ulas on the Next Big Thing, you are hereby invited to contact him on LinkedIn.You are also invited to contact me sharing your comments and ideas; LinkedIn, Discord, email or any other means…Thank you for listening!Thanks to DAHL law firm, in particular Rasmus and Marcus for their research assistance. Thanks to Gorm, Henrik, Dennis and Casper from Podcaster.dk who produced this episode.Produced in collaboration with Podcaster.dkRecorded by Casper ChristensenEditing and mix by Dennis G. M. Jensen/Podcaster.dkMusic by Henrik Pahlke Møller

In this episode, modl.ai CEO Christoffer Holmgaard is visting DAHL's office in Copenhagen that serves as pop-up studio for our podcasts. Christoffer's music playlist turns out to be space pilot/crunch proof, and his recent played RTS game is currently on sale - I will check out playability on my Steam Deck… We talk about applying AI in video game development. If you think the start is a bit slow, keep on listening - we will get into some really interesting corners of this topic!The discussion is setting out from modl.ai’s own AI engine, that can create virtual players from player behavior data. This is a total different application of AI than the widespread use of generative AI, and the legal issues are also somehow different; The modl.ai engine does not use a LLM trained on public accessible data, so text- and the data mining copyright exception (TDM) is not so relevant. We are taking this further to discussing image rights and virtual players in a wider perspective than just using them for QA testing. Please enjoy.Kindly note that the series is in English language as this is customary in the (Danish) game development community; Please bear with us when we make grammathical mistakes and tend to a low variation in expressions. Thanks to Podcaster.dk for kind assistance with producing this episode that was recorded 27 October 2023. Also huge thanks to DAHL law firm for support, and a round of applause to Rasmus and Markus for their research. I really appreciate feedback in any form, preferably via LinkedIn, Discord or via email to roj@dahllaw.dk.Produced in collaboration with Podcaster.dkRecorded by Casper ChristensenEditing and mix by Dennis G. M. Jensen/Podcaster.dkMusic by Henrik Pahlke Møller

In this first episode of GAME - Law & Business, Søren Lundgaard, CEO of Ghost Ship Games is visiting. We talk about one of their next games, and about the background for this particular game, that was initially a hobby project to teach Søren’s son about coding and creating his own games. We also discuss the range of copyright protection of a game (idea and expression), clones and genres. Some leading Danish court practice is referred to; The “Netto commercial” court case (U2014.888), that ruled a tv commercial concept (for the Danish supermarket chain, NETTO) as copyright protected. The case regarding the tv concept, “Who wants to be a millionaire” (U1999.1762) is not awarding copyright protection to the tv concept, that is considered a collection of ideas, but rather protection by the Danish Marketing Act.The episode was recorded September 18, 2023 and we touch on the “UNITY-gate”. UNITY on the same day apologized and announced its revised runtime fee. Please note that the series is in English language as this is customary in the (Danish) game development community; Please bear with us when we make mistakes and apply too little variation in our language. Thanks to Podcaster.dk for kind assistance.Also huge thanks to DAHL law firm for support and to Rasmus and Markus for their research.I would appreciate feedback in any form, preferably via LinkedIn, Discord or via email to roj@dahllaw.dk.Produced in collaboration with Podcaster.dkEditing and mix by Dennis G. M. Jensen/Podcaster.dkMusic by Henrik Pahlke Møller

The purpose of this podcast series is to dive into interesting topics together with friends from the video games industry, and give listeners a deeper understanding of what is going on behind the scenes and how business is made. Each episode, Robert Jønsson, Video Game Lawyer at DAHL law firm, will be joined by a guest that gives practical, real-life angles on the topics, and together they aim at shedding light on some interesting business and legal aspects of topics such as legal protection of video games, user generated content, fan art, AI in game development, trademarks in video games, investments and publishing, and much more.The idea to this podcast came from late night discussions on a bar in Copenhagen with a group of friends from the games industry. Based on this, the name of this podcast series should have been “Frog Talks”, but in the following work with the concept, a more conservative and descriptive name seemed more suitable. Special thanks to all members of the “Mr. Burns” group for inspiration and encouragement.Making the podcast a reality happened after conversations with DAHL partner Frederik Bruhn, who is the Danish football law expert and a legal powerbank; We pledged to each create a series that would be of interest to the industry that we represent and are passionate about - Game development and Football. Enjoy!Host:Robert JønssonAdvokat/PartnerM: +45 4049 0551@: roj@dahllaw.dkProduced in collaboration with Podcaster.dkRecording, editing and mixing: Dennis G. M. Jensen / podcaster.dk