Join us for an exciting panel focusing on e-sports and the law. Our esteemed panelists include:
- Dwayne Sands, Software Engineer at Riot Games;
- Jeff Chau, GM/Head of Sports at TSM;
- James Liu, Counsel at Krafton, Inc.; and
- Natasha Sivananjaiah, Corporate Counsel at Amazon (Moderator).
Our panelists will discuss their background and emerging issues arising from the intersectionality of gaming and the law, including governance and regulatory concerns, the commodification of games and the intellectual-property rights of players; the role of influencers; and the impact on the e-sports industry as a result of COVID-19, among many other topics.
Dwayne Sands is currently a Software Engineer at Riot Games. He is a technologist, a gaymer, and a social justice supporter. During a break in college, he competed at a high level in several fighting games competitions around the country and remains a semi-pro competitor to this day. About two years after starting his competitive journey, he began his career in software engineering. Recently, he found his voice as a supporter of social justice reform and now works to provide an on-ramp for future Black technologists. Three years ago, he joined Riot Games as a software engineer on the Player Accounts team, where he builds and maintains web systems that power player logins around the world.
Jeff Chau currently leads Esports at TSM for its key esports titles: League of Legends, DOTA 2, TFT, Mobile, etc. teams. Jeff has almost a decade of esports experience building rosters that won 6 championships across 4 games and 4 countries/regions. He's been at ground zero for the beginning of mobile esports and was GM/Head of Mobile TSM, GM/Head of Mobile Immortals Gaming Club; Team Liquid; Analyst Commentator for the 18th Asia Games Jakarta-Palembang, World Cyber Games Xi'an 2019, Tencent Games, Supercell, Red Bull Esports, Super League Gaming, and Super Evil Megacorp; and former esports professional player, head coach, esports org founder/owner, Twitch Partnered Streamer, and mobile game tournament & league owner/administrator. Jeff has been an invited speaker for: Esports Insider's Digital 2020 Summit, Sports Business Journal's 2019 Lagardère Sports Esports Rising, World Cyber Games (WCG) Xi'an 2019, moderator for Inven Global Esports Conference 2019, and panel speaker at GamesBeat, PAX West, and XLive Esports Summit.
James Liu is counsel at Krafton, Inc., the publisher of PUBG: Battlegrounds. James has been at Krafton since July 2022 and focuses his work on Krafton's esports program. Previously, James was a litigation associate at Orrick, Herrington, and Sutcliffe where he worked on a handful of video game related matters. James is a self proclaimed "hardcore" gamer and was previously on UCLA's esports team for Hearthstone.
Our moderator Natasha Sivananjaiah started her legal career at Major League Baseball’s MLB Advanced Media, MLB’s media and tech division. There she partnered with not only the media and tech teams that support all of MLB’s media and tech endeavors but also, MLB Advanced Media’s then start up, BAMTech, which provided on demand streaming services for not just MLB but also for a variety of clients such as Hulu, Twitter, the National Hockey League, and WWE. She helped build vital strategic relationships for both companies, up until MLB sold BAMTech to Disney, which they rebranded to Disney Streaming Services. Natasha then widened her scope at MLB, working with not just MLB’s tech teams on high visibility projects, but also strategic agreements that benefited the entire League and all its Clubs. Natasha is currently Corporate Counsel at Amazon. She counsels the teams that underpin almost all of Amazon’s products on a multitude of issues that include privacy, marketing, and consumer protection issues.
