2) then you can't use their work. Get it out of the project.
Even in a modding/hobby situation, you're actually committing copyright infringement by distributing people's work without a licence to do so -- it's just that no one will ever sue in that situation

BTW, you will need a business (LLC, etc) if you don't already. You can also try and pay people with shares in that company instead of cash...

hmmm

Guess I better just talk to a lawyer, if that was the case, then that would mean all the effort we did without those former members who left, would be a complete waste of time.

For example, if a person did a piece of concept art, then we made a model from it, running it through the rest of the art pipeline, that might make that model useless?, if the original concept artist left?

or

if a coder scripted some code, broke it, and left, then a new coder adjusts that same code to get it working again.

That can't be right?

Under pure application of #2, that would mean, every time a person left, we'd have to purge the entire project of all their work, which would not be feasible, nore logical.

I've been operating under the assumption that if a person leaves, they primarily surrender their work to the project, meaning they joint own it, but it still remains within the project, since others will likely have built on those foundations. (There's a document in our files, which they have access to which lays out expectations and how credit will be assigned, but it's not a "contract".

Most of the time, they leave and give no specific communication as to how they want their work to be handled, none have explicitly asked that their work be removed, and my point is, even if they did, in some cases, we'd not be able to feasibly oblige.

The best I can do, is not publicly release the work, keeping it all in house.

If someone really asked all their work to be removed, the only way that could be honored, is we remove all the files they did, and then also remove them from the credits fully, as if they were never part of the project. (still not practical, but if they were malicious enough to sue, for it, we'd need to evaluate the options.)

In the past, I actually have versions of our GDD, that document exactly from whom each "concept/ idea" came from, which was signed off by each core team member at the time. Guess, that would be the closest thing to a contract that we have.

Our GDD is no longer like that anymore, since we didn't feel it necessary.

In my mind, if a person leaves, in a bad way or not, and the rest of the volunteer team decide to still consider their work as critical, and Cary out the original intentions of that author, that's an honor.

It's like if a CEO steps down and the VP is promoted, and out of respect for the former CEO, keeps the company mainly the same, honoring all the past work, growing the company, and trying to do right by that person, it would be ridiculous of the CEO to come back, and say "how dare you continue my life's work, and try to respect my assumed wishes, I'm going to sue you for defamation of character, (or whatever), because I actually intended the company to fold without me."

For some weird reason, I'm not phased.

Thanks, now I have more work to do.

I'm serious, this actually sounds like the issue that will motivate us to square a lot of things away. (that we've been assuming were taken care of)

The art i can see how that would follow.

1. As for the code, in our case, the coder was scripting (piecing together existing code from the game engine), not writing code from scratch. Not sure if or how that changes things?

2. So to be clear, if there is no official legal contract, the author retains the rights, even if their a former member, and even if they’re are documented communications that explicitly state, in their own words, without prompting, that they're not interested, they don't care what happens to their work, and they have moved on?

(can that be treated as a surrendering of rights?)

Like if a parent has a child, then abandons the child, and then comes back when it's grown up and somewhat successful to try and claim anything. (in this analogy the parent even tried to kill the child before abandoning it)

Ya, years old dirty laundry, but that's what I'm mainly concerned about.

Short timeline:

A. project started by individual 9/2010,

B. Team formation 6/2011(me + current creative director join, rest of that original team all former)

C. Individual works on daily basis with CD on art, CD teaches him art, they collaborate.

D. individual leaves summer 2012 due to personal reasons, tries to delete the entire project, including source code, which he primarily scripted.

E. I talked individual out of it, but still leaves, leaving no documentation for any of his work.

F. Me & CD rebuild, relearn everything.

G. We tried asking individual for just a little help, piecing things together, individual refuses, and says he doesn’t care what we do (a few times)

H. New team formation 11/2014 (new core members)

I. Early January 2015, Individual contacts me about potentially rejoining the project, I respond by sending him to the current job ad (posted under gamedev classifieds), telling him to follow the application instructions. He doesn't respond.

J. I find out we're missing files during our asset inventory, contacted individual, end of January, he turns over what he has, (lots of files he did still missing, since he didn't keep them) Individual made it clear that this would be the last time we would likely talk, and to not contact him about the project again.

K. CD is suspicious if individual got help from other sources/ people he hasn't told us about. (given the type and amount of work he did in such a short turn around time.)

L. new team moves forward with asset reconstruction, and new asset creation.

M. now, at the threshold of 1st release.

So ya, that’s pretty much it.

Of course we have documentation collaborating all of these points, communications, and events.

K .is what worries me the most, is if this was the case, we have no idea who they are, or what they specifically did, I already tracked down one of these individuals, and sent him an email and pm on moddb, with no response.

It's been a long long journey, and although we never had any contracts at this time, I'd think under the circumstances, this individual has proved himself not a competent rights holder, nor entitled to any kind of reparations after such disgraceful conduct.

If, he was to one day come back and honestly apologize, and show documented efforts to make up, then I'd be willing to consider his status.

3. Would any of these details carry any legal ground in dismissing his intellectual property claims?

4. if there is no response to a formal request to sign these kind of contracts, is there any kind of statute of limitations? Or expiration date? (that would waive any potential claims of his?)

Ya, sorry, didn't mean to put all our old laundry out there, but it's been so long, and we're still paying for some of the mistakes made back then.

Right^XD.

I've revised the post, since your quoting the one with typos, Added M, revised K.

Maybe this wasn't clear in D, but that refers to threatening to delete the entire source SDK (meaning, not just his work, but the culmination of all our work, up until that point, everything)Since he was the only coder, he was the only one putting stuff together.(as far as we knew)

The assets were commissioned by the team, during our meetings, meaning, we discussed and came up with most of the concepts together.

We have clear public records of the quality of his work before we were part of the project, and there's a drastic comparison., across the board. (between A and B, which I had to get restored, after he took it down, (without consulting the team)

sigh,

Oh, and not to mention that time we had a team meeting brainstorming the next faction's structures, and a week later, they were all modeled & textures, back then most of us had no idea how long things took, the CD had suspicions, which were right, that the assets were already in progress before the meeting took place, meaning, he led us to the conclusion he already had, letting us believe it was a collaboration.

ugg

There's so many weird turns and complications (all documented), that even if I took this to a lawyer, or if he tried to sue us later, it would become quite the scene, and I get the sense he wouldn't want his name tied to this legally. I don't mind, I'll take this as far as I need to, for the good of the project, but I guess it comes down to, how much money would I pay to make sure none of this bites us later, and so we can start our own IP eventually....

Under pure application of #2, that would mean, every time a person left, we'd have to purge the entire project of all their work, which would not be feasible, nore logical.

Also note how it would have been cheaper and fewer headaches if you had talked with a lawyer back in 2010 or 2011. If you let it fester it will be even more expensive and more work later.

ya....

sigh,

if only...

We were less experienced when we started back then, I was in the middle of college, and we had no idea.

Guess I have my marching orders.

On a similar but separate note, I had a discussion on another thread about learning from other "games", that started as "mods", seems my specific case has run it's course, and I'd be interested in getting into that discussion again, regarding games such as Dota 2, Counter strike, Natural selection ,and also the case of DayZ?

@ Hodgman,

if you wouldn't mind continuing and reposting your points here, the other thread got locked, since Tom thought the cross over would make things overlly complicated.

if you wouldn't mind continuing and reposting your points here, the other thread got locked, since Tom thought the cross over would make things overlly complicated.