Ep.7 Legal Level-Up: How To Protect Your Game (with Alexandra Kurdyumova & Alina Davletshina)

I think it might be a little bit weird if I say it, but for a lawyer to say it. But I think that the less the regulator puts efforts in making laws, the better for the industry. Hey there, don't forget to comment, subscribe and share this episode. It's really important for us. And now, to the episode itself. Hello ladies and gentlemen, my name is Stan. I am VP of Product at AppMagic. And I'm Yesa, Senior Game Designer at Product Madness. So where are your co-hosts here on the Names and Games Podcast? A podcast where we talk about games and people in time. This podcast is brought to you in partnership with AppMagic, an analytical tool for analyzing mobile markets and gaining actionable insights. On today's episode, we're talking about the game industry's legal labyrinths. But we're not alone on this journey. Our guests today are Alexandra, the co-founder of Versus and Futura, consulting companies uniting more than 100 experts. And Alina, head of digital and game dive. Welcome. Hi. Hello everyone. Alexandra Alina, welcome to the cast. So, Alexandra, why don't you just introduce yourself and your company to us and our audience? Yeah, thank you guys for invitation. I'm so delighted to be here. And yes, I'm co-founder of Quite Big Consultant Group. And we have a separate team of floors who are focused only on game development, FinTech, Media and Technology Sphere. We operate practically worldwide from Singapore, Hong Kong, Manna, European Union, and try to help game dev or AT companies. So about me, originally I'm from St. Petersburg. So I'm used to grey sky and grey ground. But now I'm living in Dubai and I survived my first summer here. So as a team, we have very wide range of skills. But my core expertise and passion is intellectual property. I'm practicing intellectual property law approximately for 12 years before it was Eastern Yunk and now in my own company. And I love everything related to creative business. And especially when we talk about games. Cool, that's really great. Yeah, Alina, what about you? Can you introduce yourself? Yeah, sure. I'm working with Alexandra at the Versus-It-For-Torror Companies and heading the game dev development section. So mostly I've been doing law for more than 10 years and specifically doing game dev for more than five years. And I assume that doing and practicing law in game dev is the most fun the lawyer can have generally in this career. None of this can be compared to doing the the lawyer in the game devs here. So I really love it. And also I'm a game, a little bit gamer myself. I mean, I cannot call myself a true gamer. I cannot probably compare to you guys or our listeners. But I really love I love the games. I love playing them and I love doing them at work. So basically it's a win-win situation for me. And I live in Dubai as well right now. So yeah, currently suffering from the lack of forests and grey sky. But it's okay, I love it. Wow, amazing. Both of you welcome. Welcome to the cast. We're really excited to dive into this topic with you guys because I think it's something we don't hear about all too often. The legal component of this industry, which has grown over time, right Stan? Yeah, it is so like we are a big business right now. We're a big bozen girls and gaming industry is measuring. It's a serious thing. But yet there are still a lot of grey areas there, especially considering different legal procedures. So is it possible to copyright or make a patent on your gaming panic or game at home? What to do when you find a clone of your game and it earns more money and more revenue than your original game? What is the procedure in general? How you can help yourself and how can you protect yourself from troll patterns? So these and much more we want to discuss today. Disclaimer here. I know very little about this topic. I'm sailing in waters truly outside of my expertise and that might be the same case for many of our listeners. And for me as well. So we're in the same boat here. Sailing it again. We're very happy you're here because without you this topic wouldn't have made much sense. Right? So let's first unpack that first thing. That thing that Alexander was talking about. There's a lot of laws out there on the books from parallel adjacent industries, film, perhaps other kinds of media. And we can see that those laws can be applied to the gaming industry in some extent. I want to kind of mix that and Alina, a follow-up question to you. What are some instances in which we see these laws being applied in gaming that you would consider to be almost like causing problems? Is that the case? Like what are the pitfalls of taking parts of law from one industry and applying them to games? I wouldn't say that there's a pitfall and I wouldn't say that there is something wrong with that. Actually, this is how we work right now. We take the laws from other industries and apply them to game dev. And I can't say that that's gone wrong. In my opinion, it's actually again, I wouldn't say that there is a law for movie industry and I wouldn't say there is a law for media industry. There are general laws that just govern the moral as the same type of relationship. There is a copyright law and it applies both to movies, it applies both to journalists, it applies even to influencers that we have right now on Instagram. So the laws are moral as the same and they apply to just two different types of industries. And game dev is not an exception here. Of course, there are certain specific might be specific laws for the movie industry because there is like, there are just different types of relationship there that are quite specific for the, like there is a producer, usually there is usually a director, there are usually actors, and of course it has just some similarities with the gaming because we also have more or less the same type of roles in games because we have the voices, we have the guys who do the voicing, we have people who engage together in one team to do the code, to do the art? And the idea, again, more or less the same, it's just how we implement it. I hope it's understandable. Yeah. Yeah, and just to add, what you need to know about intellectual property law is that, generally, it's international law and it's only about tools. As Alina mentioned, we have copyright, we have trademarks, we have buttons, and we have know how. And that's it. We have only like several instruments how to protect your intellectual property. And I think that all famous countries, and not only famous, but like approximately all countries in the world, they use these tools. Some of them has know how, some of them doesn't have this tool, but trademarks and copyright are quite common. Moreover, we have a bearing convention, which was created more than 100 years ago, and it has over 180 participants. So a lot of countries includes all Asian countries, like China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and etc. All European countries, all America, Latin American countries, and so on. Like more than 150 countries. Participants of this convention, so we have quite very similar tools how to protect intellectual property. And intellectual property anywhere in game dev or in any other creative business. It's how it's in books. In practice, sure, we have very different approach, which is different in any country. How any country implement this rules in its jurisdiction in its procedures. You know what? I think that's the moment when our boat was a little bit shaking. So maybe that's the best time to just go through all these four terms Alexandre you've mentioned. In simple words, explain each and every one of them. Like, if I recall it correctly, copyright, trademark, know how, and pattern these four, right? So let's go word by word. The first one was copyright, I guess. So what's that? So yeah, basically we have these four concepts, and as Alexander has mentioned, most of the countries recognize them as the concepts that work in their countries as well. So yeah, copyright is something that rises right from the start when something was invented. So let's say you create a piece of art, piece of literature, piece of music, whatever. So from the moment something creative was started, from that moment you become the author of the creative work, and basically you get the copyright. And actually this is the biggest distinction between copyright and the rights of the copyright from trademark and patterns because in order to get rights for pattern and trademark, you have to go and register it. So once you go to the state authority or whatever, and you get the paper, I am the right holder of this pattern, I am the right holder of the trademark. From this moment only, you can also claim the rights. This is the difference from the copyright. You become the author and the copyright holder, right from the moment you created something. So basically most of the games we know don't really need any registration in order to be valid for protection or whatever. So basically you already, the authors of these games, the authors and the people who collected the rights to themselves, are already able to protect them. They are ready to promote them, to get money from it, and whatever, just to enjoy the full copyright. So basically that's the difference. So what can I copyright? Like what falls under the protection of copyright? Yeah, that's a good question. Basically the original answer would be anything that is creative and original. So usually pieces of music, literature texts, the scripts, level design maybe, usually the documents that level design is implemented in, any art, any code, any piece of code. So basically a game is a complex object that consists of different elements and all of them are copyright objects. And together it's a complex hard to maybe understand, but it's a complex of many objects, not just one object itself. And yes, there are usually a lot of authors that create the game itself because all of them have their own specialization. And yeah, usually there is one person or one company that collects all these copyright rights on one company or one person, why are the contracts or employment contracts or whatever. And usually either is one right holder to the game because you should do the right job to collect all these rights from all their authors of the small pieces of this game. All right, that's copyright. So what's a patent then? How's that differ, Alexandra? Can you describe the difference there? Alina told us about copyright. And as I mentioned, we have a general copyright act bearing convention, which has participants like 180 countries. So when you copyright something like you created your code, your game, your interface or anything, image, you already have this copyright. Never mind where you are in London, in Dubai, in Ballysee or anywhere. When we talk about trademarks or patents, you can possess a right to this patent or to this trademark only on the territory where you have registered your right. So it's much more complicated and you need to choose when you want to register your trademark or you want to register your patents. You need to choose countries which you are focused on. And first of all, you need to check if anybody has a similar trademark or a similar patent. And only then when you're completely sure that nobody has something similar, you can possess your own patent, you can register your own trademark, your own patent. So it's much more complicated procedure and how to protect intellectual property via this method. So I have a question. If everything down to the code of my game could be protected under copyright and copyright is valid everywhere, everywhere within the signatories of that treaty that you were talking about or that agreement that you were talking about, rather than Alexander, what do I need to patent? What kind of things do your clients, people in the game of industry, what kind of things do they patent? I would step up here. I would say that usually the idea of patenting is that when you protect an invention. And here is the core idea is what is an invention. An invention should be something that nobody has done before and the concept of it should be completely new to all the users. So basically when you write a code, of course it's unique, of course it's original, nobody has written it before. But it's usually not an invention itself. It's not something like the concept that changes the game industry itself or how the users you should play or something. So for this reason, patent is really something that is really rare because really through R&D centers usually work to create patents, not just software developers. And second of all, as Alexandra has mentioned, you have to patent it in different jurisdictions and it usually takes years to patent something. It's not something you can do it in one month or two months. This is something that should go through very thorough expertise of the local authority that's in charge of patenting a specific country, first of all. And second of all, it's really expensive. I wouldn't say that it's something that every company can afford. Really do one patent in one jurisdiction can cost you a fortune and do it at several. Only really big companies can afford them. And I'm sure we will talk about that in the end or maybe we can bring it up now. But really, only the most prominent companies right now in the game dev industry like Nintendo or Warner Bros. can afford patenting, especially not just in one country but in several. Say, we are a small studio. We are creating mobile games. And we ended up with a very interesting idea of core gameplay. Very sticky, very, very unique. And then there is a big company out there who just decided to copy it, changing one line of code or one image. And even though our game is copyrighted, we can't see them. So it basically means that from the moment we're in global launch so any other company can download our game and can try it. They can totally copy it, change, for example, the appearance of the main character and then using their power, their marketed budgets, earn much more than us. Is it correct? I would say 552. I would say on the one hand, it is correct that, yes, anyone can take what you make public, whatever you disclose. And yes, if the changes are great enough and the changes are really crucial, then you probably will not be able to have any rights to claim. However, again, it's the matter of what we say but quite copying. Because sometimes a copying just one little thing, of course, it doesn't change anything and you can still see the guys. However, if the copies, if the changes are so, there are many of them. And the original is really different from whatever is in the outcome. Then it's probably hard to say that the copyright really can protect you because the changes were introduced. And there are so many of them that you cannot really recognize the original from the copied version of the game. So it's hard to say right now what will be the outcome of your example because we need to look at both games. And usually this is what we do. What our clients bring to us lawyers, they come to us, they bring us, oh, our game was completely copycat. There is a complete copycat, it was completely copied. But we look at them and we see two different games with the real copy. And sometimes it's really hard for us to forecast what will be the outcome because the copying wasn't that obvious for us. Yeah, at the end of the day, we're talking about them as if these are hard and fast rules that always apply black on whites. But at the end of the day, you guys are in this industry for a reason. You're interpreting the law, you're interpreting the creative things that you see the games in question and of course comparing the two and seeing where they answer lies. So it's a bit of a grey zone, right? At the end of the day. Yes, I agree. And I would also add that of course there are more hyper casual games in the world than triple A projects, of course. And hyper casual is such a genre where games come out so fast and they of course copy each other in this order that way. And sometimes it's really hard for us to understand whether it's a real copycat or two different people just had the same thought in different parts of the world at the same time. Why not? It's possible. So we were just inspired by the same movie or the same other game that they had to look at. So basically, yes, it's pretty hard to say sometimes whether it was copycatted or just you know it came to your mind simultaneously with another person. And as for the hyper casual games, I would like to add one thing. Is that of course sometimes it's hard to claim whether there was a copy right for a violation of the one hand or the other hand. They were just misleading or you know, lit coping of a game so that another user would mislead your game who had another game. So it's another practice that some you know that faith players in game Dave Market used. So on the one hand, hyper casual is the first genre that you think of when you think that oh my god, it's impossible to protect anything there. But on the other hand, we know some cases and you know there are some companies like Wudo and I believe that you had an episode with a guy from Wudo. Yeah, yeah, we know it's redids. So they are actually one of the one that have really great lawyers probably working on that case. So they had several cases especially in French courts where they proved that their gaze, they were copycatted sorry, but also that they there was a specific misleading situation where certain app was trying to mislead users so that their game was original Wudo's game, you know, so that was a really interesting case. So I believe it was concerning the wood turning. The game about the wood carving. So basically the whole thing was about carving different wood objects and so they had their original game wood turning and their copycate game called Woodshop and the idea of the game was the same carving the wood. But it's self, it wasn't copied. So the art wasn't copied, you know, the music wasn't copied, the code wasn't copied, just the idea was copied. And Voodoo somehow managed to claim and they succeeded in this case that the idea of the game was theirs and the copycat app was just trying to gain the popularity based on the popularity of the original Wudo game. That's a real outstanding case, but they won. That's something interesting. Very interesting. But I mean, that is Voodoo, right? Voodoo with Voodoo level resources is able to win that case. Envoyers. Yeah, yeah, Voodoo level lawyers, you know. But this is, yeah, Alexandra. I just wanted to add that it's not about intellectual property, how to protect it. It's about more about unfair competition and we can say that it's the fifth instrument, how to protect your game. It's not about how to protect methodical code, but it's about competition. When we see two games, they are completely different, but we see consequences. We see behavior of your opponent and this behavior is unfair because it misleads consumers, it tries to benefit from your games, from your reputation and in legal sphere, it called unfair competition. We talked about art, we talked about code, but is it possible to pattern, make a know-how for game mechanic or game design system? Is it? And if yes, what are the criteria? This is the hardest question in the legal world. I mean, it probably will be hard to disclose it here in the format of this podcast, but just to try to outline. Yeah, general rule is no. It's not possible to protect mechanic itself because the idea, as we said, because it's mostly the concept, the idea and it actually can be thought about by different people in different parts of the world at the same time. However, at the same time, there are certain cases where mechanics are possible to be patented, not copyrighted, but patented. And it happened. I think I already mentioned that Nintendo has one of the biggest portfolio of patents in their career and more than 8,000 patents Nintendo has. Warner Bros. had a lot of patents, so they are really, really working on that. They have really their own R&D centers. They have thousands of lawyers who are in charge of this. And yeah, I mean, this is a strategy that they've been choosing and probably successful strategy. However, at the same time, I would say that although they have so many patents, they don't really make money on that. This is something they use on their own. And I haven't seen actually a lot of court cases where Nintendo would go and sue someone for using their patented technology, because, as we said, it's open, anybody can take it, since it's patented. However, at the same time, so although they have these patents, it doesn't mean automatically that they go and sue everyone in the market. But at the same time, I've read a lot about their strategy and most of the game dev industry are not happy about it. Most of the comments I read were really aggressive. They are really limiting the freedom, they're limiting the creativity, and lots of game dev people that we've been talking about say that this effect of this patenting will likely discourage developers from adopting features that have been inspired by the patents of Warner Bros. on Nintendo, the big guys, or, of course, have the money to go sue everyone else. So, it's just a answering your question. Yes, it's possible. I wouldn't say that it's 100% possible. It's always something at the discretion of the patent authority who is in charge of examining the patent itself. So a lot of patents are turned down. A lot of patents are not actually patented in the end. As I told you, it's a long process for two, three years in each separate country. So a lot of requests just don't succeed in the end. But yes, of course, there are certain patents, especially in game industry that it happens. But at the end of the day, I can't say that there is a profound practice of patenting everything you have, or go protect everything by patent. I would say that it's still an exception rather than a rule. And only the big guys can afford it. So thinking of examples, you've mentioned boarden brothers. And if I recall it correctly, they had their ennemies system patented. So the one from Shad of Mortar and the SQL game, and they spent a lot of time trying to patent it. So they've began it in 2K15. Only succeeded a couple of years ago, I think. So it just was like seven or eight years, a lot of time. And the system itself is pretty complex. So I had a look in the original patent, and it's, well, it's a little stuff, legal language. So it was a bit hard for me. But in general, it seems that there is a higher chance for having a patent for both something new and complex. So not just one game mechanic, but a complex system of game mechanics interacting with each other, because it's usually mean that there is a bigger chance that it will be unique in the end. Yes, I agree. And yes, you were correct mentioning that patent. This is one of the most prominent ones, especially like what game the lawyers talk about. This patent was really, it took really long for that patent to be registered finally. I believe it took like five years or something. And I think it was granted the patent rights only in 2021, if I'm not wrong. So yeah, basically, it took them really long to get it registered. And at the end of the day, that's a really interesting technology, which if I understand it correctly, is all about teaching the non-player characters to react to the certain way, to the way the user plays with it. And it learns from the previous behavior of the player to get stronger and stronger so that the players get harder to be the bosses in the end of the day. So I don't really think that this is something crazy unique about it. I believe that a lot of game dev developers might have thought about it at least and maybe even implemented something more or less in that way. I don't know what will be the strategy of Nintendo towards it. Will they see everyone or will they let it go? Interesting. Let's see how it goes. But I haven't seen about any court case concerning this specific patent or any other Nintendo patents in the past couple years. Of course, there were cases. I know that they've been in court for several times for that as well. Also, they were sued for some patents. So it's a long battle. Sometimes you get sued, sometimes you use someone. It's okay. It's a real shame. In an industry that thrives on iteration and inspiration between extremely creative teams of people, these patents kind of feel like just shutting that down. Especially in the case of the Nemesis system, I actually have a personal connection with it. I wrote my master's thesis all about this system and about how brilliant it was, kind of reinventing how games can tell stories. And unfortunately now, only Warner Brothers can effectively or cheaply, I suppose, iterate on that system. So the iteration of that idea will slow down. What are some of the motivations that a company has for patenting, do you think? Can you guys speak to that? Alexandra, perhaps? Yeah, I think that there are two sides to this coin. And I suppose that the first and the most crucial one is not about protection, but is maybe about how not to infringe other rights. For example, when we talk about big companies, I told with lawyers from this big companies and they told me that it's very important for them not to infringe other rights. And they have a lot of cases with patent trolls, which I just don't know about these cases, because it's quite confidential. But very often, these big companies suffer from patent trolls or from unfair competitors who try to sue them for infringement of trademarks, of patents, or something. Because it's quite big money, especially when we talk about big markets like America, for example, it's quite big money, compensations for infringement of somebody's trademark or patent. And I suppose that a lot of companies don't want to sue somebody. And I think that fact that Alina said, we don't see a lot of cases when we see, for example, Nintendo with a side of big portfolio, so you know, the companies now, we just see that they have this portfolio. And I think it's about this infringement. They want to be first and they don't want to suffer from these suites from another companies. Okay, okay, interesting. Another metaphor here. So like these big companies, like Warner Brothers, like Nintendo, are like whales, right? They're huge and they're really creative. Of course, they're generating all these things. There are all these patent trolls, which are like little annoying fish that want to claim that they made the thing before the big guy did it. Before, for example, Shadow of Mortar came up with this, the designers came up with this brilliant system. And they would go attack, attack model, it's our Warner Brothers, whoever is the patent holder, it is Warner Brothers, right? Yeah. Yeah. They would then claim that Warner Brothers stole the idea from them. So actually such a patent for the Nemesis system is less of like a big, you know, f you to the rest of the industry, you're not allowed to play with this. And more of like a defensive move for such a large player, am I understanding that correctly? Yeah, yeah, like a shield, like also a normal shield. Cool, interesting, well explained. Thank you very much, Alexander and Elena. It's a good moment to turn into more practical side of the question. So say, we've got a little thing here with Yessa, try to imagine that we are a small studio making games and asking stupid questions. So say, we're a small studio making games. We want to be protected as much as we can. So in advance, for example, there is a game we want to launch. What should we do? How can we fight the upcoming clones of our game, for example? Or should we make a trademark and use part of all we're revenue right now for it? So what will you recommend? If you don't mind, I will start. So first of all, I would say that before even you go into fight someone else and protect yourself from the outer world, you should think about the inside world of your game and think about how you would structure your relationship with the developers, with the art people, with the soundtrack people, with everyone who create the game. And as I told you in the beginning, the company who has the right holder, who is the right holder, is usually someone who collects the rights from the authors of small pieces of the game. And this is the first thing you should start with. You should start with collecting correctly and legally correctly all the rights from all the authors that work for you. And I would say that this is the first and the most crucial thing because sometimes you know, you create code with 10, let's say, software developers and one leaves and steals the code. This is something you should first think about before you even launch your game or before you even start thinking about protecting your game from third parties. So yes, I would say that first thing to think about is how you manage your people, your employees, your contractors, you know, firstly from the leakages and secondly, just how you correctly collected. And this is something to think about even if there is no violation because let's say you have a publisher later on, you have investor and investors, you know, before they put the money into you, they hire lawyers to check that everything is correct from the intellectual property site. And of course they hire someone like us and we come and see that there is no contract. Everybody was paid in cash, you know, nobody really signed anything no rights were collected. And then yeah, you know, we tell this to the investor and investor says, oh no, I don't want to deal with this and the this deal won't happen. And I would say that this is the first thing to think about how you correctly correct all the copyright on the company that you started or yourself if there is no company. So this is not the first thing to think about. Second thing, yes, once you get launched, just to register a trademark is a great idea. I think we will read it, talked a lot about how important it is and at least in one or two locations. I would recommend starting with the United States and European Union as just two most, you know, popular jurisdictions where most users are and most players and most revenue comes from. And first of all, and secondly, because most of the stores that we know about are the American companies, you know, Apple, Google Play, you know, Roblox, Steam, all of them, some American companies and they are buy by the American laws. So starting from registering your trademark in America is a great thought to have. Yeah, I would say that these two steps can already prevent most of the trouble that you might get into. But of course, then if you've done this and you are like, I have extra money for the lawyers, what can I do next? Of course, we can come up with a lot of ideas what you can do next, but this is something that first to talk to things I would recommend doing. An example, maybe you could add up something now or is it correct? I think that's a base. Yes. Well, I do have a follow up and I'll directly you, Alexander. So something you mentioned in passing, Alina is, you know, the big stores and platforms, Steam, Google Play, Google, I guess, or Alphabet or whatever we call it these days. An apple are based in the US. They abide by the US laws. Now, that's something you mentioned in passing. So if I register myself with a patent or trademark, let's say trademark in the US, Steam, of course, being a US based company. Does that mean that Steam will recognize my trademark in all jurisdictions that it is being like that it's on like computers like in wherever whatever continent it is be it South America, Africa, Australia, any any nation in any of those places or am I understanding that incorrectly? Alina, okay, so listeners for those who cannot see Alina just made the international handsign for like sometimes yes, sometimes no. Yeah, yeah, it comes up. Okay. And they know what you want to say. I thought that the question was for you. Okay, no problem. So yeah, my point is that of course, since the most of the stores are the American companies, of course, they like first of what they are looking at if you have American registration of trademark or you have American patent or whatever, but it doesn't really mean that once you register the American trademark you're good, you know, because since I told you and Alexander told you that trademarks and patents they register for each country specifically, you cannot have a trademark you can if you're rich enough to register your trademark in all countries in the world, but usually you just choose the top priority countries and register there. And what does it mean in terms of these stores? It means that once you have your trademark and there is another game coming up with something very similar to a trademark and trying to violate it, probably you just you just create a request for the store to delete it and usually they abide by it. But as a rule is we're talking only about the trademarks, they will delete it only from the market where you have the trademark. So basically, if you have American trademark, they will ban it only in America and will still be valid for all the other countries. But it works another way for the copyright. We already talked about the difference between that as copyright works all over the world. There is a special system that helps battling copyright protection and it's called DMCA. Basically, it's an American digital millennium. It sounds like a son name, like DMCA. Wait, it's a guy, it was a guy, they have a copyright on him. Yeah, that's correct. So basically, that's a law in America. It was introduced like 20 years ago, it was like end of 90s, I believe. So yeah, that's why it's called millennium. So yeah, the idea is that this is a law that protects the copyright and most of the platforms have to abide by it. And if you are sure that your game was stolen, you can go via this system and ask the platform to delete the copycat game or whatever. And it will be deleted from everywhere. That's the difference with the trademark. If you go have a claim with the trademark, it will be delete only from the country where you have the trademark. And if you go with a copyright claim, it will delete everywhere. This is something lawyers usually use. This is something really important to know for those who come to foot lawyers and want to do that themselves. So GMCA claim system is really great and it is really working. But this is a US law. So it applies to US companies. However, those US companies, aka all the big at least Western platforms to download games are based in the US. So DMCA is a great tool to be able to take down copyright infringement across the world. Yeah, I have a case. I have a case. I want to bring it up. So basically, as we told you that usually if you have a copyright violation, you go to the store and it deleted. And usually if the store doesn't do it, you go to the guys on the court and you get your decision. However, there's one case that's really outstanding. And I haven't seen anything like this before. So it was Ubisoft. I believe it's just 2021 or 2022. So it's a recent case. So they decided not just to see the bad guys, so the guys who allergely copyrighted their game. But they also sued the apps store and the Google Play together. So they were all like cool violators, you know, like they all of them together and they succeeded actually. So the idea, I think that why they did it, like I'm trying to understand the logical their lawyers, why did they decide to do that? It was maybe easier for them to see you know, to to raise one case. And you know, the next day all the platforms deleted the the alerts, you know, copyright violation. They just wanted to raise an awareness. Guys, we're here. We're really serious about it. So I think that this was just this strategy not to go to each store specifically and battle with this game in each store separately, but rather go to one court and show to the whole world community where after those guys. So that was really effective. And actually, that wasn't just, you know, cheap clone or something. It was a game called Area F2 and it was really successful. It gained roughly six million users across the app store and they had their revenue about half a million dollars for first month. So it wasn't just, you know, like a cheap game. It was a big game that they just turned down. It was crazy big. Yes. And so they sued not only the owners of that game, but also the Google Play and App Store together. So they were like, call my leaders. Wow. Hopefully setting some precedent for the future so that other companies are a little bit less likely to try the same kind of trick, right? Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, I think so. So we've got only one thing left. As usual, we've got a real neat tradition here. We tried to come up with one game recommendation. It might be a mobile game, a PC console, an oldie, something brand new, anything that you love and you want to share. So maybe I can start at this time. So I was thinking about a low-hearing fruit and talking about acetory series, but it will be cheap. So I think I will go with a lower-based game as well, but another one is called AV Area Tori. Not sure you've heard about it. So it came, I think five years ago. So it's based in the mid-18th century French and it's all about birds, like anthropomorphic birds, seeing each other and finding each other in the court. So it's kind of like acetory, but the visual style is absolutely different. It's closer to the 18th century grovures and it's just so stylish and so interesting and so funny because we've got all these birds, yeah, with canes, in cylinders, cursing and trying to see each other, what's the next thing we're talking about? Like, who's nest is? Yeah, who's proper? Yeah, exactly. Who's acetory is it? It's a cuckoo egg or something about that? Yeah, so that will be my choice. Yes, what about you? What's your choice today? So I was thinking about this as well, kind of in line with the topic and not necessarily a game about lawyers, but a game about law and choosing whether to break it or follow it. The game papers, please, if you're familiar with it. Of course, a beautiful game about ethics and decision-making and consequences. Of course, set in a kind of authoritarian state where the main character needs to both feed his family, but also deal with the people who are trying to get in, you're an immigration officer. It's a very kind of old game. We all are nodding. We all kind of have heard of it before. I'm sure our listeners are like, you don't need to explain papers to us, but just in case, I think it's a great game and maybe worth re-evaluating it for thinking about truth and law. I think we all have soundtrack from papers. Please write now playing in our hands. You know, this heavy soundtrack. Yeah, like glory to War Tosca. I think that's what's in the country. Yeah, and also just talk about soul-crushing aesthetics. It really, the game visually and indeed with sound as well. There's a great job of communicating the experience of what it must be like to be that customs agent at Bordegrad. So, Alexandra, do you have a recommendation for us? Yeah, it's not new. I think that everybody knows this game, but it's my favorite one. It's Detroit become human. I love it. It's nice. Yeah, it's very beautiful. It's very beautiful visually. It's very beautiful. And I love in this game that it's about choices. And it's like in life, you know, a lot of choices and a lot of consequences. And maybe as a lawyer, I think about a lot of options and consequences. In this game, you can choose different and it's based on choices you made. So, I love this type of games and I love this one. Nice. Great recommendation. Yeah, it is. I think this game is still our science even. After all these years, it's one of the most complicated narrative system all there with different choices and consequences of this choice. So yeah, Alexandra, great one. And it's very beautiful. It's very beautiful visual. It is true. It is true. Elena, what about you? Yeah. I have two games in mind. If you don't mind, if I can come up with two. Yeah. So first of all, of course, I'm famous for loving this game. It's called Discolism. I mean, I cannot come and pass without not recommending this one. Also about choices. Also, an narrative game. I believe I read somewhere that the tax in this game in this volume was more than three war and pieces altogether, like in the amount of pages that this tax was about. And it's a crazy game. I love it. And there is nothing been playing it like four or five times in the row. Every time I have different outcome, you know, every time playing it differently. So it's really nice. But another game that if we're talking about Antiotopias, and I believe that Bapers, please, the Detroit Becoming Human, not sure about the lawyer ring birds game, but probably maybe close into this category as well. So the game I would recommend is Rogue 96. It's a game I've been playing recently. You know, all major world events kind of inspires to play this game. So basically, it's a game about the America turning evil, turning into totalism. And you play as a teenager trying to escape it. And there are a lot of ways to cross the border and a lot of choices that you also have to make. So I believe that the games are recommended today. I have all choices. So yeah, maybe the right choice. Cool. Great. Congratulations. Thank you. All right. Then I think we are set. We've got a wonderful set of recommendations. We had a wonderful talk with Adelaide at Alexandra. So ladies, thank you for coming and sharing your knowledge. I definitely feel much more enlightened right now and at least understanding what is going on in the legal world a little bit just a little bit but still. So thank you for being with us today. And yeah, and I'll tell the viewers and listeners out there. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for just staying up to this moment. See you next time. Take care. Bye. [Music]