Picture a creator on a tight deadline. The sponsored post is due tonight, a trending song fits the post perfectly, the brand’s talking points are sitting in the inbox, and the only thing left is to hit publish. Most creators have lived some version of that moment. This post is for them. Courts, competitors and …
Every Brand Deal Is an Ad: Three Lawsuits Every Creator Should Know About Read More »
Often in development, a typeface gets approved early and becomes part of the interface without a ton of thought beyond the look and function. Months or years later, a studio may discover that the font license never allowed distribution inside a commercial game or that a renewal of the font license changed the rules for …
Contracts are full of magic words, and two of my favorites words are ‘perpetual’ and ‘exclusive.’ In a grant of rights, ‘Perpetual’ speaks to how long that grant lasts. ‘Exclusive’ turns on whether anyone else, including the creator who made the work, can ever use that work again. Each word does a lot more work …
‘Perpetual’ and ‘Exclusive’: Two Magic Words Doing More Than First Appears Read More »
Marketing a game is becoming ever more important as platforms get flooded with new games daily. Developers, especially those with smaller marketing budgets, have to get increasingly creative with how they market their games, lest they get pushed to the back of the search results. With great creativity comes great responsibility. There are an infinite …
Roblox has had a busy stretch. A new payments product, continued growth overseas, a noticeably different investor base, and an announcement that could change what “Roblox” means as a platform. Here is what each one means for the people actually building on top of it. Roblox Wallet: A Payments Product With More Questions Than Answers …
Post-Roblox Developer Conference Debrief: Four Things We’re Watching Read More »
Today’s content creators can choose from myriad platforms to build their careers on. For short-form vertical content, creators have found audiences through TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, while for livestreaming, creators can choose between or multi-stream on Twitch, Kick and Rumble. But for long-form content, YouTube remains the primary platform, and a diverse array of creators, …
My favorite board game, Agricola, has been turned into a mobile game app twice. The first time, Lookout Games had rights in the board game and, presumably, entered into a license agreement with Playdek to develop the mobile app. The result was an excellent adaptation of the board game with a few bugs. Later, Asmodee …
Many creator payment disputes begin the day the contract is signed. By the time payment becomes an issue, the work has already been completed, the campaign has gone live and leverage has largely disappeared. Many of those disputes could have been avoided if the payment provisions had received the same attention as the headline business …
Why Most Creator Payment Disputes Are Lost At Signing Read More »
An indemnification clause is a provision in an agreement that shifts risk from one party to another. In a game development agreement, it often appears near the end of the document and receives less attention than payment terms or ownership rights because it looks like legal jargon. But when a dispute arises, this clause can …
Indemnification Clauses in Game Development Contracts Read More »
On August 12, Twitch shifted the default settings on every channel so that a broad range of content (including live streams, VODs, clips, highlights, and the text and images on a channel) can be used to train Amazon’s generative AI models unless a creator opts out. The shift has drawn plenty of attention from the …
Twitch’s New AI Terms Affect Developers, Too: How to Mitigate Risks to Game IP Read More »