Intellectual property rights in the game industry.

[Ion Flux]

How do most professional game development studios handle it if their employees are working on indie games in their spare time? For example, in my line of work, most employers try to lay claim to any ideas that have the potential to make money, even if it's clearly done outside of work. Do game studios usually do the same thing, or does it just depend on who you're working for?

 

[Phelot]

I think most game devs are essentially slaves who should "be happy" that they get to work at their "dream job" so they likely have little to no free time.

But, as long as you have proper copyrights in place then they shouldn't be able to touch your shit.

That doesn't mean that they don't make you sign non-compete agreements saying you can't make a game in the same style as the ones you're working on for the company. That's pretty standard for illustrators, for example.

 

[Ion Flux]

I kind of thought that might be the case. You hear so many stories from the big development houses that their employees have no life outside of work anyway, so the question is probably moot.

 

[Destroid]

Friends of mine work for THQ - the standard contract states that THQ owns ANYTHING you produce while you work there. This recently caused a lot of concern to artists there who obviously will usually have non-work projects on the go of various sorts.

They are currently working to get the contracts changed or for some clarifications to be made, not sure of the current status.

 

[ironyuri]

Intellectual Property in gaming is a strange thing.

I'm not IP lawyer but it's something that interests me- I'll use Fallout as an example.

Brian Fargo was head of the project; Tim Cain was saddled with actually developing the concept using the GURPS ruleset and the others involved on the project helped bring this to fruition.

IIRC from Tim Cain's Matt Chat interview he basically came up with alot of the ideas and took them to committee to discuss and further develop Fallout into the concept that it now is.

If Fallout were a novel, a song or a piece of art (painting/sculpture etc), Tim Cain and the people who developed the concept, world, art design would be credited with the IP and would for all intents and purposes "own" it, or at least receive royalties for it once the publishers who "own" the rights to distribute it take their cut.

In gaming however the studio owns the intellectual property (I'm not sure how Hollywood works but let's say this is the basic model they operate on, while the director and writer get alot of credit) not the developers and this leaves us with the situation whereby Tim Cain and the rest of the Fallout devs probably never see a cent of the resale of their games (ie: Fallout on GOG) while the publishers and IP owners (Bethesda / Interplay) probably get a cut.

This means that Tim Cain's intellectual labour on Fallout is not credited to him but to a studio and that with games in general this disincentivises new ideas put forward by devs but rather developments on currently owned intellectual property simply because they know their position and ownership of any ideas they have is tenuous at best.

I guess that's my basic take on it?

 

[Destroid]

It makes sense that the studio owns the IP - if a studio of 20 people wrote a book as a team, no individual would hold the rights, the studio would.

This is why small startup studios are usually owned by the producers/directers and leads. If they do well, they usually sell out to a publisher for a nice payday but from that point on they lose creative control.

The issue the op and my post discuss is that standard industry contracts lay claim to works you produce that are not related to any project being produced by the studio.

 

[Wang Lo]

The law is different everywhere, but usually all ownership of any work you do that is even somewhat related to your job can be claimed by your employer, even without any contract. You might have contract that requires you specify any projects you work on to exclude from that, specifically sign it all away or a million variations. Funny enough a lot of people quit jobs, go nowhere, and soon have a large scale project they started mere months ago that is 90% complete to announce so it is all easy to get around if you are not doing anything truly wrong.

 

[ironyuri]

It makes sense that the studio owns the IP - if a studio of 20 people wrote a book as a team, no individual would hold the rights, the studio would.

This is why small startup studios are usually owned by the producers/directers and leads. If they do well, they usually sell out to a publisher for a nice payday but from that point on they lose creative control.

The issue the op and my post discuss is that standard industry contracts lay claim to works you produce that are not related to any project being produced by the studio.

But then in the case of abandonware (genuine abandonware) whose rights are in limbo so to speak, the developers no longer receive compensation for the labour that went into producing the work.

When a publisher snaps up the rights to that sort of thing, like Zenimax did with Fallout, they are snapping up the intellectual property of Cain/Fargo etc but which was owned by the studio they worked for by legal default. In an ideal system the developers would own the rights to a game regardless of their studio and should be able to develop or sell the rights as they see fit but should always maintain some creative control.

As for works produced outwith what the studio is actually producing this is probably to limit say arts or code designers from giving code away to other companies or using the knowledge and skills they develop in-house to sell themselves out.

If you learn how to code with say Bethesda and then want to sell your skills to Bioware (yes, skills, bethesda same sentence OH THE IRONAY) who may not have the knowledge of the engine you've been coding with but would pay highly to be able to use inside knowledge of it, then anything you do while at the company becomes related back to the skillset the company helps you to develop.

Knowledge of their engine or coding is "their property". Art works are another story altogether, or at least should be...

 

[MetalCraze]

This means that Tim Cain's intellectual labour on Fallout is not credited to him but to a studio and that with games in general this disincentivises new ideas put forward by devs but rather developments on currently owned intellectual property simply because they know their position and ownership of any ideas they have is tenuous at best.

I guess that's my basic take on it?

Pretty much, just replace studio with the publisher that owns the IP.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

But then in the case of abandonware (genuine abandonware) whose rights are in limbo so to speak, the developers no longer receive compensation for the labour that went into producing the work.

Presumably they were paid during the development of the game...