I have a question concerning the legality of a publisher misrepresenting game credits. Assuming there is nothing particularly covering this topic in an employment agreement other than the "ownership of work", is there any precedent in a civil court that protects the rights of developers, employed by the publisher or contracted externally, from omission or alteration of their game credit from a published game or subsequest publications (articles, interviews, press releases) made by that publisher? The matter concerns me because a producer at a publisher is taking public credit for work I did as the game's producer.

IANAL, but I hear about this kind of thing a lot from IGDA. Aparently it's a big issue in the industry. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like you have a lot of legal protection on this sort of thing. Here is a post regarding someone else in a similar situation. You might want to take a look at the IDGA site and post your question in their forums. They have a whole SIG devoted to game credit reform. Good luck.

I assume you've already tried to work this out with the people in good faith. That is by far the easiest way to go. A few phone calls asking the tough direct questions might be enough.

At that point, you need to ask yourself what it is worth to you.

Call (with the telephone, don't email) a lawyer. Tom Buscaglia's firm comes highly recommended and if they couldn't handle it directly, could probably direct you to someone else who could.

You shouldn't mention the word "lawyer" until both the friendly and hard-line approaches have been exhausted. The moment law is mentioned everybody gets uptight. A legal nastygram it might be enough for them to change their mind, especially if they are already uncomfortable. OTOH, it will polarize them against you meaning you will never be able to work with them again. If you decide it is worth it (that's something only you can decide) you might want to go farther than just a legal nastygram and consider take them to court.

It's going to be a civil dispute, and if it isn't expressly stated in your contracted agreement, it could be argued that they should do it because it is "reasonable and customary". But it could be counter-argued that it isn't R&C and is expressly stated in their other contracts.

R&C implied elements are a really big thing in contractual agreements. It can be argued that something in a contract is impled even though it wasn't explicitly stated.


As Solias mentioned, this is a big issue lately and it promises to become even bigger as more companies are hiring international contractors, and as additional greedy/shady/evil/stupid companies enter the mix.

[Edited by - frob on July 18, 2006 2:48:49 PM]

A good lawyer might argue that it is defamation by omission - that their public statements contradict your resume and as such might damage your chances of getting a job. However, as stated it is a civil dispute and there isn't much likelihood of winning major damages so you are going to be paying a lawyers bills at the end of the day.

Read all of the above, I just wanted to add one thing not yet mentioned.

In general to secure such credit rights they should be put into contracts from the start. Obviously most people don't think of such things until they have been bitten before, but people in hollywood have had this problem for a long long time and now nearly all contracts for work include details about credits and situations which might alter such crediting.

Just to add to Frob, be entirely sure that you WANT to get into a legal fight. The industry is extremely small and tightknit, with far less than 6 degrees of seperation. Burning bridges by being known as lawyer-happy isn't necessarily going to be a good thing for your future career. Even if you're not at fault, rumours will still travel.

On the other hand, if they're into a habit of cheating people out of credits, rumours will spread on that as well.

I'd personally just ignore it, put my name up as the job I did, and if anyone asks why your name aren't on the credits, just state the facts. They'll most likely call your references (or their own connections) and sort out the details if they're curious, all without you having to go to court.

As a funny aside, one company I worked with did MMOGs. They had a policy that anyone who left the company during the 3.5 years of development were automatically dropped from the credits. What was more amusing/horrific was when they started patching the game (using the auto-patcher) to remove people who left AFTER the game shipped as well.... Some days the Industry can feel full of spitefull children; ignore them and be the bigger man.

Good luck,
Allan Simonsen

Thanks for the advice all. I am definitely going to put credit verbiage in all future contracts. As far as burning bridges ... with this place, I'm not worried. As far as legal costs, I'm just hoping the individual at the company will stop representing himself in interviews and such. I was hoping that a strongly worded letter from an attorney might wisen him up, but per your advice, I will try the softer approach first, then the veiled threat, before sending a letter.

good luck and please keep us up to date.