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Lawyers Evolve with Industry Changes in Video Games

By Drew Combs
June 29, 2009

As the video game industry gathered recently in Los Angeles for the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), there was a great deal for those in the business to be optimistic about. Last year, video game software unit sales increased 15% in the United States, according to market research companies. And one report released in May 2009 revealed that nearly two out of every three Americans played a video game of some kind within the past six months, compared to only about half of U.S. consumers who went to a movie over the same period.

All this activity hasn't been lost on the lawyers whose practices are focused on the video game industry. “Games remain very popular and video game companies are relatively bullish,” says Mark Skaist, a Newport Beach, CA-based partner at Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth who has been representing video game publishers and developers in transactional matters for 17 years. Skaist adds that while many of his clients have lately been asking for discounted rates, he hasn't received those requests from those in the video game business.

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