[Name deleted] owes me money - Looking for advice

scoretosettle · 2015-11-18T06:41:55

Hi everyone, First of all its been a long time since I visited this forum, but I'm glad to see that it's still alive and kicking. Everyone is as passionate today as they were when I used to spend far too many hours here daily, and not coding all those years ago For the moment I want to keep my identity anonymous, but I am veteran game developer and worked on various platforms and titles from late 1995 - early 2004. The events I am about to document occurred in 2003. Soon after I decided to depart game development and "broaden my horizons" so to speak. Since then I have rarely visited any of my old hangouts or followed news and events in the industry and that is probably the main reason I have not uncovered this wrong doing until now. I'll take it from the top... Earlier today when taking a break from my daily tasks and aimlessly roaming the web, I stumbled across a rather negatively titled article referencing an individual I had worked with in the past. Recognizing the name, I read the article and was aghast at the content regarding actions made by this individual over the course of time. Curious, I dug into it a bit more, and was further amazed at the seemingly endless and relentless pursuit of litigation towards anyone and everyone. Before long I was knee deep various transcripts from court proceedings and it was at this point that I read a statement that quite simply made me livid. I don't want to give away too much detail right now, but the basic breakdown of events is as so... Back in 2003 I had the unfortunate honor of engaging in conversation with this individual. Being young, naive and blindly ambitious, said individual seemed like exactly what I was looking for so we agreed terms, royalties and such, exchanged contracts and I started work on development of some games. Not long after things started to become awry, with constantly moving goalposts, endless carrot dangling and myself expending what must have been 100s of hours of work in an attempt to meet his requirements. As far as I was concerned the work I was doing was good and met every requirement asked....until it changed, or non-existent bugs were reported and all manner of other things to keep me on "hook". After a few months of this it was decided by the other party that the relationship was not working out, and that the games would not be published the games and called off the deal. Not having much experience of contract law, nor any money (as I'd spent what little savings I had from previous development contracts living with the expectation of a payday) to hire a lawyer, I was left with few options. I kept my eye on him for a while, but not too long after I got a job offer I couldn't refuse, I left game development and I forgot all about it. Fast forward to today... It turns out that the games I had worked on around a year or so after our "disagreement", were offered for sale, and have been for at least the past 10 years. Looking on wayback.com, these games have been listed on the parties website from at least 2005, and according to a statement in one of the aforementioned transcripts, it was stated that these games in question had made significant sales. Now, I'm no expert on contract law, I know enough to get me by in my current profession and for anything else I hire a lawyer, but it seems obvious that this is a slam-dunk. My only concern is with the amount of time passed, I'm not sure if that has bearing on any rights that I may have had, but I intend to take this all the way if possible. I can prove that I was the original developer. I am in possession of the source code including multiple revisions, the original graphics files, none of which I delivered to the party at any point other than the compiled versions for approval. I also hardly ever discard anything, so I'm confident with a brief search I can locate the contracts, and probably most, if not all email correspondence between us. I'm asking for advice and contact details for contract lawyers, specifically specialising in game development contracts. I figured if I want to find the best with a good reputation, and find them quickly, here would be the best place. I can then determine swiftly if I have a case worth pursuing, or even a case at all. Thanks for reading.

Games Business and Law Business

Started by scoretosettle November 17, 2015 04:05 AM

10 comments, last by Tom Sloper 9 years, 1 month ago

scoretosettle

Author

107

November 18, 2015 12:42 AM

Thanks all for the quick and detailed responses, the posts here mirror what I am being advised in 1-1 conversation but it seems there are a few possible options.

I've been advised to edit the posting, and even though it is the truth I agree with the advice here and externally that its in the best interest right now. Unusually I let emotion get the better of me and it was a little rash in hindsight, but times back then were particularly difficult for me personally and even the most resilient of us have a snapping point.

If a moderator could edit the post topic to something suitable it would be much appreciated.

Thanks again!