Hello,

So Recently I've been thinking of helping some of my game dev friends, many of them have unfinished projects, most will never see the light of day. The teams fell apart for some reason or other. Resurrecting their projects may be a big ask, but I know the pain of an unfinished project, and I've seen this time and time again.

I know at least 3 team leads with unfinished projects who were never able to return and get their project to some kind of playable demo.

With the historic layoffs in the industry, I can't help but think the talent is out there to some degree.

but THE QUESTION IS , is the money there?

And legally how is this to be done if it's a viable concept?

I think I posted something like this a bit ago, and most said it would never work, as people work on their own ideas not the ideas of others. Also, if there is no money then what's the point?

Well, we have always said their are more candidates in the job market than jobs in the industry.

While people search for paid roles, perhaps some of them would be willing to volunteer their time?

what do yall think?

Legal rights would be the biggest for me.

The typical poisoning of hobby projects is legal rights. Did everyone assign all the rights needed to bring the product to market, and assign them to the correct legal entity? Alternatively, did they contribute it to the project explicitly under a compatible license? Did they build it themselves? If they bought assets or downloaded them, did they keep an adequate trail to document the source and legal rights?

Often they have people they can't track down, people who they can track down but are unwilling to sign legal rights documents, and assets of questionable origin. Get it wrong and publishers won't touch it, plus it becomes a ticking bomb before it is discovered if it is successful.

If you are able to secure all of the legal side, and have people willing to spend the time and effort, go for it. There's quite a few open source projects that do the needed steps and aren't in it for the money.