So I've been in a few development teams that aren't specifically companies, nor do they have any contracts. I've also spoken to leaders of similar groups and none seem to be worried that anyone is going to run off with anything. I'd just like to know, is it really something we should be concerned about? How safe is developing games without contracts or official companies? Also, what kind of contracts are necessary to protect the leader of such groups as well as the project? I wouldn't want someone coming into my team and simply running off with a piece of the game or suing us and then crashing the whole project. So what kinds of things can be done to protect yourself without a lawyer? And if there's no other way, how expensive is a lawyer for such a project? Thanks in advance.

Frek wrote:

>is it really something we should be concerned about?

What is "it" and who are "we"?

>How safe is developing games without contracts or official companies?

What kind of danger are you worried about? Is it this:

>none seem to be worried that anyone is going to run off with anything.

Like what? Equipment? Software? Code? Intellectual property? It is not clear from what you've written what your concern is.

>How safe is developing games without contracts or official companies?

What dangers are you worried about? Maybe you ought to read my articles on contracts:
http://sloperama.com/advice/article58.htm
http://sloperama.com/advice/lesson39.htm

>I wouldn't want someone coming into my team and simply running off with a piece of the game or suing us and then crashing the whole project.

Yeah, you definitely need a collaboration agreement.

>So what kinds of things can be done to protect yourself without a lawyer?

You can write a collaboration agreement. But it's like putting tin foil around a space ship and calling it a "force shield."

>And if there's no other way, how expensive is a lawyer for such a project?

Call'em and ask. Check out the lawyers directory on obscure.co.uk and read the FAQs for this forum.

Quote: Original post by Freki
So I've been in a few development teams that aren't specifically companies, nor do they have any contracts. I've also spoken to leaders of similar groups and none seem to be worried that anyone is going to run off with anything.

I have no legal knowledge, but my gut feeling it that it becomes more of a problem when you try to split up the profits. Suddenly you may find yourself wishing you had decided up front who owns what.These group leaders you mention, have they actually worked like this on finished and profitable projects?

I have no contract with the artist on my project, but then we are not aiming to sell our game (it's just a hobby). But I'd imagine things would be awkward if we did decide to sell it now.

Say you are working with someone and they decide to take their ball and go home. They own the copyright to anything they did. Any code you wrote that is based on their code is a derivative work and they can sue you for that too. Now they can't take everything when they leave because they would infringe on the copyright of whoever did the other work. However going to court over any of it becomes a murky pit unless you have lots of proof of who did what.

Most small groups don't care because they are doing it for fun. If someone leaves and takes a copy with them it doesn't hurt the original team any more than the member leaving did. If they are doing it as business then they are fools who are planing to fail.

If I join your team, then any work that I do for you belongs to me, unless I specifically sign a contract that says otherwise. That means if I leave, I can choose to take whatever I've done with me when I go.

In practise, what usually happens is that when I leave, I'll still have copies of all the code/artwork/etc on my machine. In general, a normal person isn't going to try and use it in other projects, though. Most people who leave a team won't demand that you delete all of their code/artwork either (unless it was a particularly bad falling out, perhaps, but then that's as much the team leader's fault as anybody else's).

In the end, it all depends on your goals for the project. If it's just for fun/learning with no expectation to sell, then you probably don't need to worry too much. But if you're planning to make any kind of profit, people will expect you to be a lot more thorough (in particular, I'd expect you to at least have a business plan drawn up, collaboration agreements and so on).

Hello,

my experience tells me that you should never work with anyone without some kind of :
- Non Disclosure Agreement, because you don't want employees, partners, customers or providers to go around and talk about your secrets.
- Agreement, toward partners, Providers or customers, because as in any love story there will be good times, bad times, and awfull times, and we will not want to be caught into bad times without anykind of agreement.
- Exclusivity or Non-competion agreement and rights transfer agreements, with employees as to guarantee that they will not work at the same time for you and for your major competitor, or that they will not become your competitor knowing everything there is to know about you. And finally, that rights do not belong to companies but rather to people that transfer the explotation rights to the companies (while the company is alive).

Even in open source projects, you have somekind of agreements to protect the rights of the main author of the idea and all the collaborators that have helped moving the project forward.

It is true as well, that agreements are only as good as the people behind them, but it is better to have one than none.

Regards,
GD.

The cost of a lawyer is a function of their availability (Billable Hour) and the time necessary to actually provide you with the paperwork. If you have a simple matter and can find a relatively inexpensive attorney, then the cost will be (Hourly Rate) x (Number of Hours to prepare paperwork) = Cost. If you don't have funds or expectations of payment from sale of the game then the value of lawyer will go down relative to cost to protect the code.

You might be able to find a collaboration agreement online which grants the right to use works contributed to the project if a team member leaves and how the the division of profits will be allocated if the game is ever commercialized. However finding a good boilerplate can be hit or miss on the internets.

Quote: Original post by kdog77
You might be able to find a collaboration agreement online which grants the right to use works contributed to the project if a team member leaves and how the the division of profits will be allocated if the game is ever commercialized. However finding a good boilerplate can be hit or miss on the internets.

The problem with using a boilerplate agreement, though, is that if you can't afford a lawyer to draw one up for you now, you're probably not going to be able to afford a lawyer to enforce the agreement when the time comes. In fact, you wouldn't want to get to the point where you need to enforce the agreement (say, somebody has left the group and is demanding all of their contributions back) and have your lawyer say, "well, this agreement isn't really legally binding, after all."

In the end, either the team/source code/artwork/ideas/etc are worth it for you to hire a lawyer to fill in the required paper work now, or it's not going to be worth it for you to enforce a "boilerplate agreement" anyway, making the agreement essentially worthless.

The biggest issue is that you cannot sell (or transfer) what you don't own.

With no contracts or agreements in place, each of you individually owns the stuff you create. You do not own what the others have created. Unless and until agreements are in place or rights have been trasferred, you must collectively sell and collectively negotiate and otherwise have complete consensus before taking any legal action.

Without complete consensus from everybody who worked on it, you cannot release the product to a publisher, nor can you sell it to any company.

If any one of you leaves the project or becomes unavailable, things get really bad.

Copyright laws cover derivative works, so anything derived from the work are also owned individually and collectively by the group. That includes the missing members. There is no easy way to remove them from the project.

You cannot remove the missing member's stuff and derive a replacement based on what they had created. If you did do this, publishers and others will probably refuse to pick it up because you do not own the derivative work.


There are many additional legal issues, but that is by far the biggest.

Codeka, you got my point! The OP however asked how to protect himself without a lawyer or in the alternative asked for a method of calculating the cost of an attorney which depends on whether the expense is worth it. This is a function of the commercial viability of the product and the intent of the parties involved. As many posters are pointing out, without something in writing the OP cannot claim ownership of the entire project or distribute the code without each participant's permission. If he decides to hire himself as counsel and pull something off the internet, then that is the risk he assumes for himself and the project.