RULES
RULES FOR DIGITAL VIKINGS AWARDS 2026
(hereinafter referred to as “Rules”)
[GENERAL]
1. The Organiser of the Digital Vikings Awards (hereinafter referred to as “Awards”) is Digital Vikings Team ("Stan"., organized and existing under the laws of Poland, registration number 361650037, address: Rubinowa 4 Str. 4, Olsztyn, Poland;), hereinafter referred to as Organiser.
2. The purpose of the Awards is to select and award the best independent games during the DevGAMM 2026 Gdańsk (event details available under website link: https://devgamm.com/gdansk2026 )
3. The Awards starts on January 26th, 2026 and ends on June 19th, 2026 (hereinafter referred to as a "Duration of the Awards")..
4. The Awards is a part of a game industry conference organized by DevGAMM (DevGAMM LLC company incorporated in the USA under UBI 604 212 178 and EIN 82-4309941, having its registered address at: 1100 BELLEVUE WAY NE, STE 8A-317, BELLEVUE, WA, 98004, UNITED STATES), hereinafter referred to as DevGAMM LLC.
5. The Duration of the Awards consists of three stages: the qualifying round (hereinafter referred to as: “Selections”), the selecting nominations rounds (hereinafter referred to as: “Nominations”) and the final round (hereinafter referred to as: “Finals”).
[AWARDS PARTICIPANTS]
1. Any non-underage (a person under 18 years of age) natural person and any person registered as an entrepreneur or a legal representative of a registered company can participate in the Awards. (hereinafter referred to as: “Participant”).
2. No employees and/or representatives of the Organiser, DevGAMM LLC, and any other contracted co-organizers of the Awards or DevGAMM Gdańsk 2026 can take part in the Awards in the capacity of a Participant.
3. Should the Organiser find a person failing to meet the conditions for participation taking part in the Awards, such a person shall be disqualified from the Awards and divested of any prizes or awards received in the Awards.
4. Participation in the Awards is fully non-obligatory.
5. No games submitted should contain any illegal, offensive or harmful content.
6. All the games submitted for the categories “Best Indie Game” must be presented in a version that is playable through all stages of Duration of the Awards, from Selections to Finals.
7. We can only accept submissions from studios registered in the following countries:
Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Sweden and Ukraine.
8. Games that are accepted for the Awards are required to:
a) have an available game page on the Steam platform;
b) share a playable demo/build while submitting for the categories “Best Indie Game”
c) have a game released in the Early Access state or be fully released between January 1st, 2025 and May 7th, 2026 for the “Best Indie Game” category.
d) games have to be planned for release after June 19th 2026 for the “Most Anticipated..” and “....Upcoming…” games awards) ;
e) be an indie developer, which means that the development team size of the Participant cannot be higher than 50 people;
8. The Organiser reserves the right to the conclusive selection of the games qualified to the Nominations and Finals, following the "Indie spirit" in the selection of entrants.
[SELECTIONS]
1. Participation in the Selections is free of charge. Independent games are submitted to the Selections by filling in the registration form available from: THIS REGISTRATION LINK
2. The game submitted can be either an original work or a game based on a legally licenced IP. The Participant has to have full rights to develop the game.
3. The deadline for submission is May 7th, 2026, time 23:59 (GMT+1).
4. There is no maximum limit on the number of games submitted to the Selections.
5. The submission must contain all of the following information:
Specific fields:
- Form of contact
- Game link to its Store Page
- Game title and brief description
- Game build link and 12 Steam Keys
- Link to video trailer and gameplay video
- Key art and at least 3 Screenshots
- Information about the game genre, platform, technology and current development and publisher status
- Team information including: name, size, country of origin, city and contact to parson responsible for contacts with organizers
- Game build comments regarding game access, if necessary
- Selection of categories the Participant wants to participate in
- Information about interest in Steam Sale and Game Steam App ID if the Participant is interested in Such Sale
- Information abount interest in other platform Sales (if available) together with App ID related to the platform.
- For Steam and other Platform Sales, developers and publishers should be aware of and will be responsible for any sales cooldown periods prior to the event. Please plan your games discounts accordingly.
- Approval of Rules, GDPR regulations and consent to the processing of personal data of employees and/or representatives of Awards Participants.
6. The keys to Steam games or links to game builds given in the application to the Awards must be active at least until 19th of June, 2026.
7. The Organizer will select a maximum 10 submitted independent games per each category. The selected games will pass to the second stage Nominations.
8. For each Selected game, the Organizer will make the effort to add presence of each game in the event on the Steam platform under the "Digital Vikings Awards" or "DevGAMM Gdańsk" or "Baltic Showcase" or similar branding.
[NOMINATIONS]
1. 1. The Competition Jury will select a minimum 3 submitted independent games per each category from the list of games that passed the Selection stage. The selected games will pass to the third stage Finals and gain the right to be presented as nominated games by the Digital Vikings Awards and DevGAMM Gdańsk 2026.
2. The Organiser will have announced the list of nominated Participants by May 9th, 2026.
3. The Organiser shall inform the interested parties about qualifying to the Nominations by email, the message will be sent to the email provided in the submission form. The studios that qualified for the Nominations are obliged to confirm participation in the Nominations within 48 after the email has been sent by the Organizer. The Organizers have the right to change the nomination to the next top scored game in case if no positive confirmation has been sent from the nominated game representative within the given period.
4.In order to receive a nomination at least one person from the Participant team or the Participant himself or game Publisher's representative need to attend Digital Vikings Awards at the DevGAMM Gdansk 2026 in person. Tickets and travel expenses to the event have to be paid by the Participant unless the Organizer announces or informs the Participant otherwise.
[FINALS]
1. The Finals of the Awards will be held at the Digital Vikings Awards during DevGAMM 2026 in Gdańsk, Poland on either June 18th or 19th, 2026 at the Amber Expo conference center.
Independent games qualified for the finals will be ranked by the score received from the Competition Jury in order to select best games in each award category.
2. All the games that rank 1st in each category will become the Winners of the Finals and will receive a special placement on the landing page of the Awards Website.
3. All the winners will be presented on a stage during the Awards ceremony at DevGAMM Gdańsk 2026.
[PROCESSING OF PERSONAL DATA]
1. The administrator of the personal data employees and/or representatives of of Awards Participants is the DevGAMM LLC (DevGAMM LLC company incorporated in the USA under UBI 604 212 178 and EIN 82-4309941, having its registered address at: 1100 BELLEVUE WAY NE, STE 8A-317, BELLEVUE, WA, 98004, UNITED STATE)
2. The data will be processed only and solely for purposes materially related to the Awards, that is, for the purposes connected to the organization and management of the Awards, publication of the list of Award winners on the event’s and DevGAMM and Drigital Viking social media profiles, websites, as well as for accounting and financial reporting, as set in applicable regulations.
3. Participants retain the right to access and amend their data, and request data removal. The data administrator informs that provision of your personal data is voluntary, yet necessary to receive the Prizes.
4. The data of Awards participants will be processed in line with generally applicable regulations i.a. REGULATION (EU) 2016/679 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation)
.
[COPYRIGHTS]
1. All Awards Participants must have full copyrights to the games they submit.
2. All Competition Participants retain full copyrights to the games they have created.
3. The Organiser reserves the right to use all and any materials submitted in the process of registration for the promotional needs of the Digital Vikings Awards, DevGAMM and the Awards.
4. Each participant retains full liability and responsibility for the game they present.
5. The right to data portability – You have the right to request that DevGAMM LLC transfer the data that we have collected to another organization, or directly to you, under certain conditions.
If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact us at our email:
Call us at: +15623315823
Or write to us: dataprotection@devgamm.com
How to contact us
If you have any questions about DevGAMM LLC’s privacy policy, the data we hold on you, or you would like to exercise one of your data protection rights, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Email us at: dataprotection@devgamm.com
[MISCELLANEA]
1. The Organiser reserves the right to change these Rules at any time without stating the reasons, should this not influence any rights acquired by the participants.
2. Throughout the time of the Awards, the contents of the Rules of the Awards will be accessible on the Awards website.
