The Beverly Hills Bar Association has invited our founder, Cedar Boschan, to speak about copyright damages at its upcoming May 31, 2017 program.  Click the link below to sign up:

https://www.bhba.org/index.php/component/jevents/icalrepeat.detail/2017/May/Wed/625/-/comprehensive-copyright-infringement-remedies

Cedar plans to share her experience and insights about topics such as:

- How how she renders an opinion regarding actual damages suffered by a Plaintiff as a result of infringement
- Factors she considers when it comes to apportionment (i.e., allocating profits derived from the infringement)
- How she has been able to show that an infringer’s gross revenue is or is not reasonably related to infringement
- Document requests and interrogatory questions she suggests attorneys make in order to help prove damages

See you there!

2016 Year in Review - Tech & Game News

Professionally speaking, in 2016, I found articles about in-app purchases, the value of interactive game deals, pricing of bundles and discounting to be most relevant news to my practice of auditing game publishers and distributors, while right of publicity cases like this and this were most relevant to my forensic accounting work.

Further, followers of my tech feed on Twitter - especially game developer CFOs and attorneys - were most engaged by the following news in 2016, especially news reported by Gamasutra and VentureBeat:

• Sony kicked off the year in January by trying to trademark "Let's Play" and upsetting the Internet (per VentureBeat)
• In February, a Studio was sued for some video game tattoos (per Kotaku) and a Steam developer engagingly wrote about why his game is worth $20 (per Gamasutra)
• Gamasutra and VentureBeat pieces on an indie dev's crowdfunding fail and Disney's mobile games business, as well as a Polygon post on an old mobile game that earns $100 million in China every month engaged Twitter & LinkedIn during March
• A judge in April found Amazon liable for in-app charges racked up by kids (per VentureBeat) while, per Gamespot, a former Grand Theft Auto exec sued Take-Two Interactive for $150M in royalties (his case was allowed to proceed this week)
• In May, a Lexology  post on Canada's Quebec Superior Court's case, Seggie v. Roofdog Games Inc., titled "Who is the Author of Videogame Software for Copyright Purposes?
• NewZoo in June released its free "2016 Global Games Market Report," which included the following takeaways:
• China is now the global leader in video game revenues, but Latin America is growing the fastest
• Mainstream media companies want in in the esports action
• Virtual reality is not changing the business that much
• Gamers wish "to collect collect, create, show off [virtual items], and ultimately earn money from doing so"
• Handheld is down, but mobile is up
• Projection that the game market will grow from $92 billion in 2015 to $119 billion in 2019 (Note: according to a more recent report from SuperData Research, the game market hit $91 billion in 2016, so estimates vary.)
• Nintendo released Pokémon Go in July and pieces about its profit model and rollercoaster valuation were popular: while App Annie marveled that it was making $10 million every day without cannibalizing other games, an expert blogger on Gamasutra investigated the answer to the question: "Can Pokémon Go Monetise?"  Nintendo's stock rose $9 billion on the success of Pokémon Go, then corrected. Mashable reported, "Nintendo admits it's not making much money off 'Pokémon Go', loses $6.7 billion in market value."
  
  Also in July, Blizzard sued an Overwatch cheat-maker per Gamespot.
• In August, I spoke at the Beverly Hills Bar Association about legal issues with superstar experts in the game business.  

  

  Beverly Hills Bar Association Panel at Lawry's Prime RibL-R: Ivy Kagan Bierman, Roy Rosenthal, Keith Boesky & Cedar Boschan (Jim Charne not pictured)

  
  

  

  Beverly Hills Bar Association Panel at Lawry's Prime RibL-R: Jim Charne pictured on the screen, Ivy Kagan Bierman, Roy Rosenthal, Keith Boesky & Cedar Boschan

  Click here to watch our discussion for 1 hour of specialized CLE credit (although the panelists listed on the linked site are incorrect)
• The biggest news among my September news feed followers was Lindsay Lohan losing her Grand Theft Auto V right of publicity lawsuit (per Kotaku)
• Nielsen in October released a report, covered by VentureBeat: "Mobile games live and die on how fast developers can crank out new content"
• By November, followers were most interested reading about the video game voice actors strike (this article per Gamasutra), which continues as of the date hereof.
• So far this month (December 2016), Twitter followers are most interested in more articles from Gamasutra: a post recycled from June - What does $1 million buy in game development?  Also, in case you missed it, YouTuber Pewdiepie trolled us all and deleted his "alternate" channel.

There were many shares of information that did not engage readers, so I did not mention them.  What was the most interesting games earnings news story not mentioned here, especially those that pertain to royalties and/or damages?