CEDEC 2026 Talk Maps Game Dev Contract Disputes and Fixes
The lecture converts 15 years of game development litigation into contract design guidance, naming the four dispute points most court cases center on.
Reporting from 1 source: GameBusiness.jp.
Two lawyers from PHI Law Office, Hiroto Ando and Yuki Togami, presented a contract practice lecture at CEDEC 2026. Drawing on roughly 15 years of game development court cases, they identified four typical dispute points: specs, spec changes, acceptance, and PM obligations. The talk covered the legal distinction between work contracts and quasi-mandate, the 60-day payment rule, disguised subcontracting risk, copyright transfer, exit design, and generative AI clauses.
The lecture opened with why game development is hard to litigate: the deliverable resists objective evaluation, unlike a building with a visible defect, and the information gap between client and vendor lets agreements drift apart. Game development adds elements like world view and character movement that can only be judged by running the product. The lawyers advised stating the contract's legal nature in writing, since courts sometimes judge by actual practice rather than the written label. For unsettled specs, they proposed either listing undecided items with a finalization date, or splitting the deal into a basic contract plus individual contracts, with spec finalization run as quasi-mandate work first.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.