Publishing agreements for games and apps

A publishing agreement is one document doing four jobs: it says which rights leave you, for how long, on what money, and what you promise each other about the game. So a review hunts the rights that leave quietly.

What the agreement must answer

• Which rights are granted, and whether the grant is exclusive — platform by platform, language by language.
• The term, and what the term is counted from: signature, release, or the day the money is recouped.
• The money: the split, what it is a share of, what is recouped first and what you may check.
• Approvals: what the publisher may change in your game, and what you can refuse.
• What returns to you when it ends — the build, the store listing, the accounts and the player data.
• Derivative works: ports, localisations, sequels and merchandise, each named or each excluded.

A term is not one number

A grant written “for the full term of copyright” sounds precise and is not. The convention floor is the author’s life and fifty years after it; where a country protects photographs and works of applied art as artistic works, their own floor is twenty-five years from making. Countries may run longer, and the term you get belongs to the country where protection is claimed. A term written in years of its own has one length; a term written by reference has one per market.

The clause on generated material

A publishing agreement can forbid material made by a model outright, or allow it on disclosure and approval. Wherever it sits, the clause is not only about the future: it is read together with your warranty that the game is original and infringes nobody, and that warranty covers work already done.

So the first question is not what the clause says but what your team already did. A studio that used tools during production and signs an unqualified ban has given a promise it cannot keep, and the breach starts on the day of signature, long before anyone finds out.

What the clause has to settle: what counts as generated material; whether a tool used inside the pipeline and never shipped counts at all; who records what a person contributed; whom you disclose to and when; and what happens if the answer changes after release. Where the question is what your tools commit you to in the first place, that is an assessment of how you use artificial intelligence.

What you send with the draft

• The draft, and every side letter or term sheet that came before it.
• What the game is made of, and which parts came from other people.
• Which tools the team used in production, and on which parts.
• What has already been promised to anyone else about the same game.

Where an agreement breaks

• A grant of “all rights” over a schedule naming three platforms, so nobody can say which governs.
• A term that never ends because it is tied to an event that may not happen.
• A warranty of originality given while part of the game came from a contractor with no signed assignment.
• Approval rights written for the publisher and silence about yours, so your credit is theirs to change.

The deal that decides who releases the game sits at publisher negotiations; permission from the owner of music, an engine or a character is rights holder negotiations.

Sources: the Berne Convention, article 7: the term is the life of the author and fifty years after his death; photographic works and works of applied art, in so far as a country protects them as artistic works, last at least twenty-five years from making; the term is governed by the country where protection is claimed.