This blog is a continuation of an earlier Kluwer post ‘Getting paid to play? Copyright, contract, and the rewards for UGC’ and is based on the findings of the You Can Play project.   When does a ‘creative work’ become ‘user generated content’ (UGC)? My recent research on video game UGC policies suggests the thin…

Users are increasingly prolonging the lifespan and value of a video game past its initial release date through user-generated content (UGC). The little-understood phenomenon of ‘watching other people play games’ is now a commonplace fact of life online. This phenomenon is responsible for creating game influencers, and those game influencers have also in turn created…

Introduction When we launched the Copyright Evidence Portal, our ambition was no less than to create a catalogue of all existing empirical studies about copyright. This ambition, and the resulting huge body of work (over 850 studies), inspired us to think about new ways to interpret this empirical literature, and to offer a state-of-the-art overview…

Interest in eSports (‘electronic sports’ or competitive video gaming) has accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. With many traditional face-to-face sports suspended, eSports have become an attractive viable competitor for self-isolating new and existing fans alike. With no geographic discrimination, an all-digital medium and even ‘anyone allowed to play’ tournament models, eSports is now a nascent…