Games Law Briefing - Special Edition: Gamescom, Cheats & China

Dear Reader,

We must admit it has been a while since we last wrote a Games Law Briefing. Not that we have been lazy – quite on the contrary, you have kept us very busy this year, and that is great.

But sometimes it takes an external event to spark us into action – and that has been a decision the German Federal Court of Justice has delivered on 31 July 2025, and some alarming news reports about it. We will come to that in a moment.

But first:
We will be at Gamescom. Get in touch with us!
We will be in Cologne from Tuesday, 19 August to Thursday 21 August (or maybe even Friday 22 – let’s see….). You can meet Peggy, Wojtek, Daniel, and me. 

And here is the reason which made us send this mail quickly:
Keep calm and fight cheating. It is true that Sony lost its case against the distribution of cheat software before the Federal Court of Justice (Der Bundesgerichtshof - Presse : Pressemitteilungen - "Cheat-Software" für Spielkonsolen verstößt nicht gegen Urheberrecht, soweit sie Objekt- oder Quellcode der Spielesoftware nicht umschreibt). The decision came as no sursprise, as Germany's highest court did pretty much what it had to do after the ECJ ruling last year in the „Action Replay“ case. But that does not mean you cannot fight cheating any more. The case was limited to a tiny fraction of arguments you can raise against providers of cheat software for multiplayer games. In fact, the arguments the ECJ and the Federal Court of Justice turned down are arguments we normally did not even raise when taking action against the providers of cheat software for multiplayer games. Last year I wrote a short article for Gamesindustry (Why the European Court of Justice's decision on cheats is not a milestone | Opinion | GamesIndustry.biz) – everything said therein is still true. A brief summary of the case can also be found on Gameswirtschaft (German language Streit um Cheat-Software: Sony verliert auch vor dem BGH (Update) - GamesWirtschaft.de). So if you have a cheat issue, please contact us.

For those of you who are interested in investing in China, my colleague Susanne Rademacher from our Bejing office has written a blog post.

Game on – and see you in Cologne! You can download the briefing here.