Task 5 Contracts of Employment

Contracts and Agreements

An Employment contract sets your terms for your employment and it tells you what they expect from you and what they will do for you. In the gaming industry the contract will include clauses about benefits, confidentiality and about not competing with the company during or after your term of employment.

Publishers tend to hire game developers to design and create a game for them, they will also use a development agreement which shows the standards and conditions of the development contract.

Terms - Terms is an agreement which basically shows you time frame the developer has given you and what the developer will receive in return for his services, also the developer will receive a royalty bonus.

Ownership - Ownership is when a publisher or a developer is named and clarified as the owner of the IP.

Warranties - Warranties is when a developer must agree to never copy and use someone else's sources, while the publisher must agree to the developer that he has the rights to crate the game.

If a Publisher wants to make a game from a movie or from other origins, they must make a contract that shows them the terms of the license.

What's being licensed - This contract explains to the publisher what he/she is given rights to do and make use of.

What the license may be used for - The contract\agreement specifies what console\platform the publisher is allowed to design a game for i.e Xbox One, PS4 or PC.

Territory - The contract will specify what parts of the world the game can be released and published. Publishers usually try to get worldwide rights, but that is charged more higher by licensers.

Terms - A Terms contract don't last forever and will only exist for an average of 5 years.

NDA stands for a Non Disclosure Agreement which allows you to do business with other company's, however if they plan to do business with each other they must share company secrets (game plans, project ideas, etc) but in return both companies cannot share these secrets with others or damage can be dealt to the first party. If a secret is shared, legal action can be taken against the second party for violating the agreement.

Collaboration Agreement - When a Indie game is being created by a large group of people and these kinda games might not even make any money, so a agreement is need to cover any issues of ownership and any compensation of the game. Many Indie games are likely to fail due to many issues such as funding but it mostly thanks to disagreements to who owns what, who is supposed to do this and that and who is getting what. So a collaboration agreement is used to set terms of how the game will be managed such as who the IP belongs to, how the game will be used and how any finances will be handled.