Kombat-batyanya – Newspaper Kommersant No. 49 (7494) of 03/23/2023
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The organizers of the Games of the Future championship, supervised by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko, have announced agreements with foreign video game publishers. Such agreements are optional for local tournaments, but are required for major and international events. For example, the games of the American WB Games (Mortal Kombat) and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang from Chinese developers are announced as championship disciplines. Kommersant’s sources believe that agreements have been reached with Chinese companies.
ANO “Agency for the Development of Computer Sports and Other Sports” (ARKIVS, organizes the “Games of the Future” championship) managed to conclude agreements with the copyright holders of foreign video games. This was announced on March 21 at the E + Games conference by Kristina Kolesnikova, director of education for the Games of the Future project, in response to a question from Kommersant. “With some of the copyright holders, publishers (publishers.— “b”) license agreements have already been concluded, and negotiations are underway with someone, ”she explained. Ms. Kolesnikova did not specify with which specific copyright holders the agreements were concluded and whether they imply the payment of license fees.
The Games of the Future in Kazan are scheduled for 2024, and since 2021 their organization has been supervised by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko. The competition is positioned as an international one and unites the competition in mobile and video games at the same time. Among the video games announced on the Games of the Future website, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, Mortal Kombat 11, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, Beat Saber are mentioned as disciplines. Their publishers are American Valve and Warner Bros. Games, Chinese Moonton and Czech Beat Games did not respond to Kommersant’s requests. ARKIVS Director General Anton Kara declined to comment.
The organizers of the Games of the Future began concluding agreements with the copyright holders last summer, a Kommersant source familiar with the organization of the championship clarified: “I can’t say with whom exactly they managed to sign, but there was such a question.” According to him, agreements are required due to the fact that the event is international, not local.
Copyright holders can allow or restrict the use of games in any way, “situations are individual and depend on the decisions of specific copyright holders and the licensing conditions for specific games,” said Vladislav Arkhipov, Professor at St Petersburg University, Nextons Advisor. He noted that the use of games in tournaments is often governed by an “open” license, but in some cases, especially when it comes to large competitions using logos and images in advertising, it requires separate agreements. In practice, it happened that the organizers held tournaments without an “open” license and without the permission of the publisher: “In the latter case, the copyright holders do not always actively legally pursue the organizers, but from a formal position this creates risks.”
Organizations wishing to hold eSports tournaments in Russia should not have problems with copyright holders, “unless they declare their direct support from the game publisher,” says Vasily Ovchinnikov, head of the Video Game Industry Development Organization. He added that Games of the Future did not announce the participation of high-ranking esports teams and “do not formally belong to esports.”
The organizers of the “Games of the Future” hardly had problems concluding agreements with Chinese publishers, a Kommersant source in the industry believes: “Companies from China, such as MiHoYo (the publisher of the game Genshin Impact.— “b”), made contact with Russian partners even after the events of 2022.” He admits that contracts were also concluded with publishers from other countries, both directly with ARKIVS and through intermediaries.
Foreign copyright holders do not formally risk violating the sanctions regime, because it has not been introduced with regard to video games, emphasizes the interlocutor of Kommersant in one of the Russian-speaking game studios. “But we have repeatedly observed how pro-Ukrainian activists, having learned that foreign developers or publishers are collaborating with Russian structures, raised an international scandal, publicly forcing them to abandon such projects,” he explains. “It is difficult to predict the reaction of foreign publishers in this case, alone will be ignored, others will see the reputational risks as too great.”
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