[Dasilva]

I wanted to know how the heck did Steve Purcell get the rights from Lucas Arts? If he can, why can't Tim Chaftner or Ron Gildbert get the rights to their games? And what about all the games that VU owns? Hech about about Half Life?

[RLacey]

Steve Purcell always owned the Sam & Max IP because he created them outside of LucasArts. They merely had the licence to make games based on the IP until it expired.

[Dasilva]

Ah. So he coulden't make a SnM game until the Lucas Arts contract expired.

[Kolzig]

Exactly.

[Dasilva]

Originally Posted by Kolzig

Exactly.

So Ron would of been wise enough to lease his ideas rather than selling them?

[RLacey]

Originally Posted by Dasilva

So Ron would of been wise enough to lease his ideas rather than selling them?

Generally, if you create IP for a company, that IP then belongs to the company. I suspect that Ron has never legally owned the IP himself for this reason, so they were never his to sell.

[Karmillo]

And if LA ever decided to sell the rights there would be no gaurentee the they would end up in Rons hands, they would go to the highest bidder

[Dasilva]

Originally Posted by Karmillo

And if LA ever decided to sell the rights there would be no gaurentee the they would end up in Rons hands, they would go to the highest bidder

LA won't sell it. They're would of sold it by now if they didn't want them. They're planning something.

[RLacey]

Originally Posted by Dasilva

LA won't sell it. They're would of sold it by now if they didn't want them. They're planning something.

Yep, that devious plan by which they sit on the rights and do nothing with them .

[rtrooney]

Somebody needs to ask Josh Mandel about this topic.

At one time we considered trying to acquire the rights to FPFP from Vivendi. This was wayyyy prior to the SQ debacle. Josh probably knows more about this topic than anyone else on the forum. If you want a definitive answer, Josh probably has it.

[Karmillo]

Originally Posted by Dasilva

LA won't sell it. They're would of sold it by now if they didn't want them. They're planning something.

Theres a chance that they will sell it, if a huge ammount of interest grows about one of the IP's they own, not big enough to garentee a huge success but big enough to make other developers interested then they would probably consider selling it for a quick buck

Either that or they are keeping all the IP's so they can make a game based on them when times are slow, doubt it would be an adventure game though...

MI would probably become a platformer
Full Throttle would become a beat em up
DOTT would possible become a comedy survival horror wich would be as close as LA would get to making an adventure

[Lucien21]

If you develop something while working for a company then the rights are owned by the company as they are paying you to develop the IP. i.e Working for Lucasarts, paid to make new games, therefore the rights are theirs not the person with the idea. You give up the rights of the IP in exchange for a salary.

If you independantly develop the IP and take it to a publisher. I think it is fairly standard practice that the publisher who funds developement insists on the IP being theirs as part of the contract.

The only way to retain IP rights would be to independantly come up with the idea and either self finance developement or lease the gaming rights to a third party.

Steve Purcell had developed the Sam and Max cartoon by himself and leased the idea to Lucasarts for a set period of time. (Which has now lapsed)

[Richard]

There's a few other cases of note - for instance, Jane Jensen had to get permission from Sierra to write the Gabriel Knight novels. I'd imagine Aaron Conners is the only one to get a license without too much fighting, given that the Tex Murphy games he converted were not only part-designed, part-written and part-produced by, but also starred, Access' money guy.

[fov]

Originally Posted by Lucien21

If you independantly develop the IP and take it to a publisher. I think it is fairly standard practice that the publisher who funds developement insists on the IP being theirs as part of the contract.

Not necessarily. A lot of games are published by different publishers in different regions... this wouldn't be possible if the first publisher did what you're suggesting.

Even within the same region, look at Syberia - the first game was published in North America by TAC, and the second by MC2. TAC obviously doesn't have any claim over the Syberia characters. (But Microids, the developer, probably does.) Same with Runaway or The Longest Journey... just because TriSynergy published those games in North America doesn't mean they have any claim over them. Or if you want to get away from bigger publishers and look at one man projects, look at RHEM. GotGame doesn't own that IP, Knut Muller does... even though GotGame happens to have published both of them (in addition to him self-publishing them).

Obviously it's up to a developer to decide on the terms of their contract, and maybe some do sign away their rights, but they shouldn't have to. That's the beauty of being self-employed... you get to hold on to your own creations.

[Lucien21]

Originally Posted by fov

Not necessarily. A lot of games are published by different publishers in different regions... this wouldn't be possible if the first publisher did what you're suggesting.

Even within the same region, look at Syberia - the first game was published in North America by TAC, and the second by MC2. TAC obviously doesn't have any claim over the Syberia characters. (But Microids, the developer, probably does.) Same with Runaway or The Longest Journey... just because TriSynergy published those games in North America doesn't mean they have any claim over them. Or if you want to get away from bigger publishers and look at one man projects, look at RHEM. GotGame doesn't own that IP, Knut Muller does... even though GotGame happens to have published both of them (in addition to him self-publishing them).

Obviously it's up to a developer to decide on the terms of their contract, and maybe some do sign away their rights, but they shouldn't have to. That's the beauty of being self-employed... you get to hold on to your own creations.

Not sure about all of them, but I assume that most of them were self funded products and what they gave to the publishers was the right to distribute the property in various regions.

Where the publisher is providing up front development costs they will want the IP in return for funding your idea.

[AFGNCAAP]

Originally Posted by fov

A lot of games are published by different publishers in different regions... this wouldn't be possible if the first publisher did what you're suggesting.

It would be. The company which published the game in, say, United States may be the copyright holder and yet grant permissions to distribute a game somewhere else to other firms, for whatever reasons (doesn't think it's profitable, doesn't have facilities to do that, etc.)

[RLacey]

Originally Posted by AFGNCAAP

It would be. The company which published the game in, say, United States may be the copyright holder and yet grant permissions to distribute a game somewhere else to other firms, for whatever reasons (doesn't think it's profitable, doesn't have facilities to do that, etc.)

eg. Majesco.

[fov]

Originally Posted by Lucien21

Where the publisher is providing up front development costs they will want the IP in return for funding your idea.

I overlooked where you said "funds development". Yeah, the publishers probably ask for more in that case.

[nikoniko]

Originally Posted by Lucien21

If you develop something while working for a company then the rights are owned by the company as they are paying you to develop the IP. i.e Working for Lucasarts, paid to make new games, therefore the rights are theirs not the person with the idea. You give up the rights of the IP in exchange for a salary.

Some companies are very aggressive about this, too. A developer I worked for tried to wrangle a bit of vagueness from our contract into meaning that they owned ANY software we wrote, even at home on our own time for non-company purposes. I prevailed in legal action with them, as I had worked on my project entirely at home and the court agreed the company was overstepping the bounds of our contract, but one of my coworkers was not so lucky, as he had worked on a personal project during lunch breaks a couple of times using company computers. The company asserted rights to his software and won completely.

Cheers,
doroposo

[Dasilva]

I guess you can never be too careful when it comes to contracts with publishers and developers.