Contracts in gaming industry
We bring you what you need to finish your gaming project – the legal part. You most likely already did most of the work and you got serious about your project. As time is ticking and you get closer to release legal questions rise like who’s program it is at the end of the day, which contract with whom I need to sign, who is signing with the platform for example with Steam and what guarantees can I provide? The answer is here and you will obtain complete legal solution from our lawyers, just hit the contact button at the end.
Why does your gaming project need a quality contract?
Issuing a popular game for playing on all mobile, PC and consoles is becoming a bigger and bigger business these days. This article is mainly for creator of games who want to solve legal part of game release. The gaming industry means generating more and more money and gaming is gaining immense popularity among almost all age groups. Game production has its own specifics and often a large number of people from various corners of the world are involved in the creation of a game. The gaming industry is a sector for which borders are almost non-existent.
However, given how big a business it is, we strongly recommend that all relationships be covered by a quality contract. Although it may seem to you that gaming law is something complex and abstract, a classic civil law contract with minor modifications is often enough to set up legal relationships well.
What will gaming law contracts bring to your gaming project?
Gaming law contracts can have a wide variety of uses. Simply put, they are contracts that regulate legal relationships arising around video games, whether they are mobile, computer or console games, especially its ownership and monetization.
These contracts are often used to establish a legal relationship between the brand owner and individual developers. Game production often involves many developers from all over the world, who may not have any personal contact with each other or with the client. The brand owner, who wants to produce a game, assigns individual tasks to the developers, and they receive financial compensation for their completion, whether it is an agreed amount or a share of the profits.
However, gaming law has certain specifics and using classic contracts from the Civil Code without modifications will not work here. You must modify classic contracts for the needs of gaming law and be careful of some specific things.
What to look out for in gaming law contracts?
Game development is most similar in nature to a contract for work. There is a client who orders the work and pays a fee for it, and a contractor who creates the work (in this case, a game) according to the order and is entitled to a fee for this work.
1. Property law
In game development, an important question is who owns the resulting product. Whether the programmer or the client. This relationship is affected by the provisions of the Copyright Act on employee work. But in the case of software development, copyright is transferred directly to the client. The client thus owns the property rights associated with the game and can decide on its use.
However, we recommend that all these rights and mutual relationships be resolved in the contract to avoid subsequent complications. In some cases, the developer will not want to give up the copyright. In such a case, you can stipulate in the contract that the copyright belongs to the developer and the client will be granted a license to use the rights to the work.
2. Signing the contract and communication between the contracting parties
The Civil Code states that people can conclude legal transactions in writing by mechanical means (electronically) where this is customary. Nowadays, signing electronic contracts is quite common. However, it may be a question of how a court would approach this issue.
gaming law is applied in the vast majority of cases in an online environment. The contracting parties often communicate with each other only remotely, so signing a classic paper contract is not quite possible. Therefore, we recommend mentioning in the contract that the parties understand that an electronic signature is sufficient to conclude the contract. We also recommend stating in the contract that the contracting parties will communicate with each other by electronic means of remote communication (e-mail, discord , etc.).
3. Legal regime
As we have already mentioned several times, game production is a global affair today and people from all over the world participate in it. If you want to be sure that your legal relationship is well taken care of, we recommend that you include in the contract that the concluded legal relationship is governed by the law of the Czech Republic. This will make it easier to find legal help and solutions in case of complications.
4. Remuneration in the form of profit sharing
A common form of remuneration is the payment of a share of the profit. Such a share can be determined in different ways, but usually corresponds to the proportion of work done on the game. However, we strongly recommend that the maturity of such remuneration is well covered in the contract.
The development and distribution of a game takes some time. The start of the payment of the reward should therefore be determined only from the time the game enters the market and starts to generate some real profit. For developers, on the other hand, we recommend setting a reasonable payment period in the contract for the reward so that they receive their share regularly.
5. Translation
Concluding legal relations with entities from other countries involves the need to communicate in a foreign language. Therefore, the contract regulating legal relations is often written in a foreign language, most often in English. This is one of the reasons why we particularly recommend seeking legal assistance from an expert when drafting gaming law contracts.
Legal English has its own specifics and it is not enough to just throw the contract into a translator. A lawyer who speaks a foreign language will help you ensure that the contract contains the correct legal terms and that the contract maintains its quality even after translation.
We will provide first-class legal service for your gaming project
Gaming law is nothing that you yourself cannot handle. However, when creating contracts, you must consider some of the differences that the gaming industry has from other activities. Even with these contracts, it is much more worthwhile to seek legal help for their creation and not rely on poor-quality templates available on the Internet. In our law firm, we have gaming law experts who already cooperate with Czech video game creators on their gaming project. They will be happy to advise you in this area and tailor a contract for you.
Gaming law is a rapidly developing industry, but it is necessary to have the rights and obligations set correctly. The gaming industry has many specifics that you need to be aware of in order to have a mutually beneficial cooperation. Seek legal help and have a tailor-made contract created for your business.
Author: Petr Uklein, Tomáš Kolařík and Pavla Bachurová