Scott Steinberg · Consultant, Video Games Analyst and Business Strategist
The gaming industry runs on contracts and layered commercial arrangements most outsiders never see: content suppliers, platform providers, aggregators, developers, distributors, publishers and operators, each taking a share and each dependent on the others. A consultant to 3000+ organisations across technology and entertainment, Scott Steinberg addresses how industry trends, norms and relationships work and where they break, among other areas.
Expert reports, declarations, deposition and trial testimony on PC, casino, console, MMO, digital, online, mobile, social and F2P or live service games as well as topics like operator and supplier arrangements, platform and content distribution, player account management systems, integrity and geolocation technology, and market entry practice.
Video games, online casinos, gambling practice, game design, PC, console and more.
Content flows from studios through aggregators to operators under revenue share arrangements, exclusivity windows and performance commitments layered across several agreements.
Work looks at things like commercial structure convention in the sector and what each party in the chain customarily bore and received.
Platform providers supply the systems operators run on, and disputes examine integration obligations, uptime commitments, content placement within lobbies and switching costs when a relationship ends.
Testimony addresses platform arrangement convention and what migration would realistically have required.
The account system holds registration, wallet, bonusing, reporting and customer data, and disputes examine data ownership, reporting accuracy and what happens to the player base if the provider changes.
Reports look at areas like account platform practice and what the systems record establishes about activity and entitlements.
Operators depend on geolocation, identity and integrity systems supplied by third parties, and disputes examine accuracy, false positives, vendor performance and who bore the consequence of a failure.
Consulting on subjects such as vendor practice in this segment and what the system records show about performance during the period.
Entering a newly opened market involves partner selection, technology readiness, launch timing against competitors and forecasts built on limited comparable data.
Testimony addresses entry practice and whether the preparation and projections at issue reflected what a competent operator would have assembled.
Acquisition in this sector runs on cost per acquisition, promotional spend, lifetime value modelling and affiliate arrangements, and disputes examine how those figures were built and represented.
Looks at things like acquisition economics convention and whether representations to partners or investors fairly characterised performance.
Tiered programmes allocate benefits, dedicated management and rewards according to activity, and disputes examine programme terms, benefit changes and how account managers were incentivised.
Work on things like program structure convention and what participants would reasonably have expected.
Operators running across markets face divergent product requirements, brand arrangements, payment infrastructure and partner structures in each.
Testimony addresses multi-market operating practice and what running a compliant product across jurisdictions commercially required.
Industry arrangements are assembled from layered agreements between parties who each understood the economics differently, so mapping the structure is substantial early work. Any party may instruct.
Written opinions on PC, console, mobile, casino, MMO, live service, platform policy, video games, etc.
Testimony untangling who supplied what, who took which share, and who bore responsibility in layered chains.
Responsive analysis of revenue attribution, market opportunity claims and characterisations of industry practice.
Non-testifying mapping of supply chains and commercial agreements, plus discovery scoping across parties.
Scott Steinberg is an analyst, consultant and business trends expert with over 25 years of experience providing management and strategic consulting services to more than 3,000 businesses and brands ranging from startups to government agencies and Fortune 500 firms.
He has testified in sample areas including intellectual property — copyrights, trademarks and patents — patent infringement, marketing, branding, video games, mobile applications, consumer product development, and the growth and monetization of online distribution platforms.
He is the author of over 30 books and has published more than five thousand articles addressing areas including but not limited to marketing, technology, leadership, innovation, advertising, digital transformation, data privacy and social networks. He appears regularly on ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC, and has led seminars and training programs for organizations including Wells Fargo, the PGA Tour, Century 21, Ford, Dell and Procter & Gamble.
His consulting work has been broadly recognized. He has served as a thought leader for the American Bar Association and Corporate Counsel magazine, and has received honors from the International Association for Scholastic Excellence, Fortune, and the 21st Century Icon Awards, among others.
It depends if they're looking at casino and gambling or video games. For instance, an expert might focus on PC, console, F2P, mobile or MMO online games. Another might look at how content flows from studios through aggregators to operators, what platform providers owe, how player account systems work and who owns the data, how integrity and geolocation vendors perform, and what market entry and acquisition economics involve.
Some consider consumer-facing products: interface design, promotional terms, advertising and player protection. Others address the business behind them: commercial arrangements between companies, operational systems and market strategy.
No. Regulatory interpretation and game certification are separate specialties requiring their own credentials and accredited laboratories. Other experts address commercial structure, design, development, operational systems and market practice.
Because the chain is long and the agreements were drafted separately. A studio, an aggregator, a platform provider and an operator each hold contracts with different definitions of revenue, different performance obligations and different assumptions about who bears a failure. Mapping the actual structure usually reframes the dispute.
Ownership and portability, most often. The account platform holds registration, wallet, bonusing and player history, and when an operator changes provider the question of who owns that data and what can migrate becomes commercially decisive. Reporting accuracy from those systems is the other recurring issue.
Initial conversations about scope, timing and conflicts are without charge. Helpful detail includes the parties and their roles in the chain, the markets involved and the period in dispute, plus any expert disclosure deadline already set.
A conflicts check is run before any substantive discussion. An initial note listing the party names and a one-line description of the dispute is enough to start; please hold privileged or confidential material until the check clears.