We continue to summarize the outgoing year alongside representatives from gaming and related companies. Up next is a conversation with Natalya Tolkacheva and Irma Novikova, representing the legal firm Prospectacy.
How was the year 2025 for your legal firm? What achievements were made, and what challenges arose?
Natalya Tolkacheva, CEO and partner at Prospectacy: Speaking about the Russian sector, I think in 2025 we felt some tension in certain business areas, a slowdown in pace. Clients became more conservative, including in terms of investing in new projects. As we also deal with personal investments of company founders in new areas not only related to the gaming/digital industry, we've noticed an increased caution and in some cases a withdrawal from projects (including in real estate). Still, we managed to expand our team, especially in the accounting and financial departments, as there is traditionally growing demand in these areas due to increasingly complex regulations.
In the foreign market, there is a noticeable trend of expanding bank compliance, which also occupied our attention in 2025. We also actively supported projects in the Arab Emirates, whose popularity dynamics change from year to year. We observe a growing trend toward a comprehensive approach in solving cases: business does not operate in isolation, it is always linked to the personal interests of its founders, their investment/spending plans, and living in specific locations. Therefore, what businessmen engage in must work as a whole — a connection of legal, financial, accounting, and logistical solutions. These aspects were at the core of our tasks in 2025. Regarding operational moments, we abandoned certain advertising methods as they proved ineffective, while the most effective growth formula remains unchanged — providing quality work that clients would recommend to a friend.
What key changes occurred in the legal support for gaming companies over the past year?
Irma Novikova, international law attorney at Prospectacy: In short, legal support for gaming companies has stopped being a set of separate services and is increasingly turning into a strategic function. Previously, requests often boiled down to company registration or choosing a convenient jurisdiction, but now it's almost always about building a cohesive international business architecture. Taxes, IP, team, payments, compliance, and future scaling are considered only in aggregate.
It’s important to note that many companies that relocated in previous years have by 2025 truly settled in new jurisdictions. They went through the adaptation phase, learned to work with banks and regulators, and started leveraging the opportunities the relocation intended to provide. This includes obtaining long-term statuses for founders and key employees, more flexible international hiring, and access to investments and markets previously closed to them.
From the client's approach perspective, there’s been a qualitative shift. Gaming companies are increasingly coming not for quick fixes but with inquiries about "how to do it right": where the company should be located, in which jurisdiction it makes sense to hold IP, how to arrange relationships within the team so the structure doesn’t collapse during growth or transactions years later, and so on. Legal strategy has become a part of business planning, not just post-factum servicing.
Regarding relocation, 2025 saw a noticeable trend toward jurisdictions that are purposefully investing in IT and the gaming industry. Cyprus remains a key hub. The UAE, despite introducing a corporate tax, continues to develop a specialized infrastructure for game development (projects such as the AD Gaming Hub or DMCC Gaming Centre are starting to function). Parallelly, there is growing interest in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and other regional countries actively adapting their legislation, visa regimes, and incentives for technological businesses. We believe this trend will only strengthen.
What issues did gaming companies most frequently approach you with this year?
Irma: First, there is the choice of jurisdictions for products with a high level of regulation. In addition to games "for adults," we are increasingly receiving requests to work with projects involving cryptocurrency elements, NFTs, gacha mechanics, gambling elements, or other sensitive monetization models. These require consideration of licensing requirements, regulator positions, platform rules, and payment provider restrictions.
Second, the volume and complexity of inquiries related to the distribution of rights and revenues (IP-share, revshare, etc.) have increased. These cases are almost never standard. Each project has its internal team dynamics, varying participant contributions, and different future business expectations. In practice, this requires precise, thoughtful legal configuration rather than template solutions.
There remains a high demand for accompanying international transactions and building contractual models with distributed teams. Separately, questions about tax residency of founders and taxation of their personal incomes arise, especially considering planned or actual places of residence and controlled foreign company (CFC) rules.
Additionally, in 2025, there's an evident trend towards registering IT companies abroad solely to bypass operational restrictions (blockages of Russian companies by international platforms and services) while maintaining the main development team in Russia.
What legal risks do you think gaming companies underestimated in 2025?
Irma: In our view, a key mistake in 2025 was the overreliance on "simple" solutions. For example, registering a company in a popular jurisdiction without considering the actual presence of the team, tax ties to other countries, and income sources. Such constructions often start to fail at the level of banks and tax authorities.
A separate risk zone is the requirements for economic presence. Absence of an office, local director, staff, or real activity while applying preferential regimes almost inevitably leads to additional charges, fines, and denial of benefits.
And, of course, there remain issues with fragmented intellectual property ownership and weak contractual bases with developers, contractors, and other specialists.
What strengthening or emergence of legal trends do you expect in working with gaming companies in 2026?
Irma: In 2026, we believe legal work with gaming companies will become even more architectural. It will not be about formalities but about designing sustainable international models.
We expect further development of hybrid models with IP, operational activities, and teams divided across different jurisdictions. There will be significantly increased focus on legally structuring AI components, rights to data, and generation results.