Game Developer's Bill of Rights at Gamasutra

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Gamasutra has published A Game Developers' Bill of Rights inspired by Comics Creators Bill of Rights and aimed at providing game developers with more freedom and a more equitable treatment from publishers. Here's an excerpt from the introduction:

It is common knowledge among game developers that our industry is in something of a “creative crisis.” Every week there is a new journalistic exposé about how game business models squeeze out new ideas, or another blogged rant about how the increased scale of next-generation games is going to kill game design experimentation.

A Game Developers’ Bill of Rights is part of this ongoing discussion, a provocation that draws attention to a set of important issues and challenges facing our industry. It highlights some of the problems that developers face as they try to create games and grow our industry, both creatively and commercially.

My personal oh so humble opinion is that what most publishers and distributors are doing is called a rip-off and as bad as warezing in respect of taking due profit away from developers. I understand they need to profit from what's their business, after all, and that if they support the project with money, they need to have a say, but the devs' situation is far worse than it should be and very far from what's right and proper, considering it's they who make the game. What do you think? Do you agree or disagree with any of the demands of that bill of rights?

Read the whole thing at Gamasutra.

 

I think that bill makes a good starting point. But, I got the impression that the bill adresses issues mainly in not-Western Europe, since the first point in the bill already says that it isn't that much of an issue here. Am I mistaken? I do agree that the ownership of the IP should remain with the developper, like with other media.

 

Yeah. Otherwise, it just looks like giving an already fat corporation (the publisher) another host of shares to play with and make even more virtual cash.