BeeWare
Posted by Derek Yu Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:39:00 GMT
The website of the 2BeeGames competition takes a slight dig at the IGF by saying “unlike some events where every judge plays only a few games, our judges will play each and every game to determine the finalists (up to 10).” However, developers that are interested in the compo should be more mindful of this part of the official rules:
It goes on to say that the “Contest Entities” do not waive any “rights to use similar or related ideas without any restriction whatsoever.” In other words, if you enter the competition (just enter, not necessarily win), you are giving the casual games publisher Zoo Games a license to not only market and sell your game all over the world, but also make knock-off games using your ideas.
Classy stuff!
(Thanks to the various folks that pointed this out.)
They’re in desperate need of ideas, don’t be so inconsiderate Derek! Look at their games catalog, “M&Ms Beach Party” and “Deal Or No Deal Wii”, these guys need to steal something fun, and SOON!
I understand the concern, I’m just wondering if that’s really what the legal boilerplate says… MochiAds has similar language, but what it means for them is,
“By placing a mochiad in your game, that counts as a derivative work, and since we distribute your game to our partners, that counts as distribution, so we need your consent to be able to do our service for you. The game is still yours and we’re not going to make sequels for it and screw you over and lame crap like that.”
So, I’m no legal expert or anything, I’m just wondering if someone who is can weigh in on this and say whether this really grants them that power.
Not that I’m NOT suspicious of these guys or anything, because that kind of language usually does scare the pants off of me without an explicit explanation from the company about what their actual policy is.
I’m no legal expert, either, but it absolutely grants them the power. There isn’t really another way to interpret the language (which is kinda the point of “legalese” in the first place! ;).
Haha, oh wow, what a scam.
My first thought was “this is disgusting”… My second thoughts were somewhat along the lines of what Lars says.
I would guess that nowadays you have to pretty inclusive in these types of license agreements. I could see for example, that if you were really anal in the legal department, you’d want to protect yourself from getting sued for distributing a game made for your competition by the games developers. No idea why I’m giving this the benefit of the doubt.
In any case, a license like that would scare me right off entering anything into such a competition. Not that I ever make much worth “stealing” anyways… :[
$10,000 ummmm…
The troubling this, frankly, is not them taking everyone’s work without compensation, which they’re certainly entitled to do, but rather them not telling anyone about it.
The language Derek quotes (which I dug up when I was reading about the project) is not in the front page, the FAQ, or the text box you see when you submit the game.
You only get to the paragraph by going to the complete official rules, where it is buried almost exactly in the middle of a huge string of legalese. Other rules are bold-faced (see, e.g., Rule 4) or in all caps (see, e.g., Rule 9), thus drawing the reader’s eyes AWAY from what is plainly the most important provision of the rules.
The only explanation for this game of hide-the-ball is that they suspect a significant portion of game makers would not actually submit their games if they knew what the consequences were.
charming. it’s nice of some people to give them the benefit of the doubt, but I can’t think of any reason (besides the obvious) to have such an explicit description of which rights you are waiving.
Any compo with a rules list that long is amazingly lame anyways.
Jesus.
Wowser bowser! What a scam! No glam dawg
Derek, you may want to take this post down - Adam from Zoo Games made this post on IndieGames –> http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2009/03/zoogamesannounces10000indi.html#comment-867984
…Y-yeah…
If their intent is really benign, they need to make it plain in the contract. MochiAds has similar wording, yes… and they could at ANY time turn into complete and utter dicks about it. “Lets see… we’ll steal this… and this… and this… and there’s nothing you can do about it. Neener neener.” Doing that probably wouldn’t help their long-term business, but we see corporations doing that sort of thing every fucking day. All it takes is one short-sighted prick to ruin it for everyone. And lord knows there are plenty of those around.
Just as soon as I saw the [sic] I was already pissed. I couldn’t bother reading the whole thing.
F them to hell. Who do they think they are?
feel free to rage at them on their blog: http://www.2beegames.com/contest/blog
(fyi, it doesn’t like spacing.)
The fact that they’re doing this hide-and-seek is nasty, but if you’re entering a $10,000 contest and don’t expect some sleight of hand as they stick a finger up your anus then you deserve to be violated. It’ll make you wiser in the future. Not to mention make you walk funny for a little while.
However, knowing about it if I were a flash programmer I’d still go for it. I’d just make sure to use original or abstract characters and settings so that they don’t get “my” stuff by the balls. Which is a good thing to do anyways.
Doh, stupid with the e-mail in the address bar. Spam filter HO!
And there was a lot of crotch-centered analogies int that post. Hmm.
This looks like two competitions slinging mud at each other, which can’t be good for either.
Not that it really matters when there’s about 10 gaming competitions every day.
Is the prize even real? Sounds kinda scammy if they can’t afford a lawyer who can spell..
Actually I don’t see the slight dig at IGF in their text. So it’s not two competition slinging mud at each other after all, sorry for that.
Scumbags… there wouldn’t normally be anything wrong with this if they were up front about it. Some people might be willing to give up the rights to their game if it meant a chance at $10,000. But to be so deceitful about it only pisses off a big part of the community that would enter your contest to begin with, not to mention the reputation you now have in their eyes.
Zoo Games? Arrggh.. no comment.
Zoo Race Games > Zoo Games
It seems they’ve already changed the text? It’s still broad legalese, but it’s a little clearer what their intentions are.
Also, the part about using similar or related ideas reads: ”Contest Entities, do not waive any rights to use similar or related ideas that might be contained in a Game which was previously known to Sponsor, or developed by its employees, or obtained from sources other than Entrant, or rights to use similar or related ideas without any restriction whatsoever…” which is much better. I don’t see why this is necessary, but they’re saying they’re not going to just make a cheap knock-off of your game. They may, however, release a game using mechanics similar to yours if it’s not a new mechanic.
Also worth reading is a comment from an employee on their blog,
For people interested in it, it may be worth talking to them about your concerns. It does seem that they’re willing to listen & respond based on the feedback they get.
They’re a scam. A piece of crap shovel ware company that will resort to anything to get money and even ideas since they have yet to make anything of their own that is worth playing.
I cannot wait for them to inevitably go out of business. Hopefully nobody falls for their crap. These people deserve to go down, and go down hard.
Anyway, thank you Derek Yu for warning everyone about this. I pray that nobody falls for this and that this company comes up empty handed on this filthy scam.
Oh, and I just read the new legalese. It’s still scummy as ever. They’re still basically trying to leech off of you for ideas and reap all the benefits while they screw you over. Avoid this like the plague.
Yeah, they changed it but left in all the icky bits. :(
it is things like this that are why Dilbert is so successful.
I can’t believe this :/ Asking anything more than 10% is outrageous.
I think what’s a lot more troubling is the voting system to determine the winner. :\
console appeal?
My roommate is a lawyer, and I’ll ask him what he thinks about it tonight. Offhand, the language seems way more broad than it needs to be. If their intent is to display screenshots of the game and make it available for download on the site solely for the purpose of the competition, there ARE ways of saying exactly that in the contract. You don’t have to give yourself rights to everything to protect yourself. In any case, there should be something added there to protect the contest entrants, too, if intentions are good.
So, it’s possible their lawyers are bad. Either way, it IS important to consider who you’re dealing with, and whether they have good reason to abuse you. A casual games publisher is not a company I would like to hand these rights over to.
Obviously I don’t know enough if this to really comment either way. However after what happened with ‘platypus’, I’d definitely stay on the side of caution. Whilst that’s not the happiest position to take, I certainly prefer it to the alternative.
The FSF will have something to say about this!
hey guys, Tony from 2BeeGames over here. Wow you guys are jumping all over us. There is definitely a lot of vitriol in the posts. Allow me to try and clarify some things.
First of all, we’re not taking a dig at the IGF at all. I think the IGF is awesome. We’ll be at the IGS and GDC if anyone wants to chit chat about this.
I understand that you have to be cautious, but if we really wanted to just copy your ideas wouldn’t we be better off just scouring the internet and stealing ideas from other games instead of throwing a competition? How is this beneficial to us?
The wall of legal text is there to protect us from frivolous law suits, especially since this is open to worldwide entrants.
I understand how many people feel about Zoo’s casual games. Adam and I are starting this with their funding (hence the name 2Bee). This is completely separate from the casual products.
Why all of the hate? We’re trying to give indie games a home on consoles and a larger audience. We’re teaming up with Zoo as they like the idea and have a good distribution system. The end goal is to sign up a few good games with deals that make both parties happy.
If you want to chat about this some more - Just shoot us a comment at our blog or send us an email. We’ll be happy to answer your questions and concerns.
-Tony (2BeeGames)
Tony: Please read through it yourself. How does this benefit the entrants? Looks like this is all to benefit “Zoo.”
It’s very one sided and the legalese is so blatant in what it intends to do, and so broad that I cannot even believe that what they’re trying to do is even legal. Hell, the fact that their lawyer couldn’t even spell “derivative” itself makes it suspect.
Yes, there is a difference between protecting you “from frivolous law suits” and basically saying “hey, we’re going to screw you over and give you the short end of the stick while we take everything from you.”
I’d be fine if you wanted to protect your ass, but that hardly is the intent of this document.
I don’t know what ur taking about. If you win the contest then you negotiate with them on a publishing deal - what’s so horrible about that? You don’t like what they offer then don’t give them your game to publish. Pretty simple. Why don’t you read their stuff first? Their CEO even posted his email address - I bet you won’t see jr from ea doing that!
Shill much?
John T, then feel free to enter. Nobody is stopping you. Good luck, and don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Oh, and by the way, I hate sock puppet accounts, just wanted to let you know. Nice try though.
Warn me about what? So I enter the competition and I win or don’t. Please tell me specifically how I would be injured in both cases. As I read this if I enter the only rights I lose are for them to let people play the game and show some assets for promotion.
If I win then I negotiate a publishing deal. If I like what I get I sign it. If not I don’t. Specifically what’s my injury in both cases?
You’re just complaining to complain. I will enter.
My daughter recently entered Americas got talent - you sign your life away. But if she wins that a platform for other opportunities though I’m certain I’m not going to have to worry about that.
…
“Americas got talent”
Stopped reading there.
I’m not going to even bother replying unless John has something to say. I won’t feed the troll. Sorry.
er, I meant Tony not John.
Thanks John for the support. We actually have received some decent entries so clearly not everyone is so jaded.
What else are you guys still having big issues with? I’ll do my best to fix these issues.
We wanted to make it a contest in that there is nothing to lose. You lose nothing by entering. If we can’t come up with a deal for the winner that makes both sides happy then we just part ways. You guys make it seem like its a big conspiracy. have you seen rules for other large websites/contests?
Derek, you seem pretty level headed. Let me know if you want to have a chat to clear things up. Funny thing is I reached out to you to discuss possibly signing Aquaria a while back. Did we “steal” the idea after you never responded? Classy indeed…
-Tony
Didn’t mean to come off so harsh but its been a tough day
That’s right falsion - you simpleton - america’s got talent
here’s a link for you
http://www.nbc.com/AmericasGotTalent/
not american idol which is what you’re thinking
I’m not tony and I’m not responding to this shit anymore. I just read about the contest and am researching as much as I can before entering.
You don’t have an answer…you’re just bitching to bitch. Why don’t you answer my questions though for other people who read this?
Whatever.
That’s right falsion - you simpleton - america’s got talent
here’s a link for you
http://www.nbc.com/AmericasGotTalent/
not american idol which is what you’re thinking
I’m not tony and I’m not responding to this crap anymore. I just read about the contest and am researching as much as I can before entering.
You don’t have an answer…you’re just complaining to complain. Why don’t you answer my questions though for other people who read this?
Whatever.
That’s right falsion - you simpleton - america’s got talent
NBC I posted the url but it was flagged - google it and you’ll be there in two seconds
not american idol which is what you’re thinking
I’m not tony and I’m not responding to this shit anymore. I just read about the contest and am researching as much as I can before entering.
You don’t have an answer…you’re just bitching to bitch. Why don’t you answer my questions though for other people who read this?
Whatever.
Tony is implying that they would not steal anyone’s ideas, but the language in the original contract clearly gives them the license to do so, if they wanted. There are some phrases in there like “for any purpose” and “without restriction” that are red flags.
That’s all. Maybe they wouldn’t (at this point I wouldn’t suggest it), but I don’t know anything about Tony or Zoo Games. It’s some random competition on the internet, and you’re agreeing to certain terms when you enter. Just be careful. :)
Sorry, didn’t mean to start a flame war guys. I just wanted to clarify our position and find out any other issues people may be having.
Adam and i aren’t stodgy old videogame veterans only looking at the bottom line. In fact we’re pretty new to the industry. We’re a couple of 20 somethings that thought why hasn’t this been done before and figured it was an idea the community could get behind. I honestly don’t think many companies would support the whole indie games idea.
Our goal is to build a community of developers and gamers who wanted to see these refreshing games on consoles other than PC.
Thanks for giving us a chance John. Feel free to email us if you have any questions.
How come all of my posts are being moderated while others are not? I wanted a chance to reply and ask for feedback.
Okay, I’m no legal expert, but I’ve seen this sort of thing before and had to deal with it in terms for DevjaVu. I know it looks bad, but it’s likely a case of using boilerplate terms that default to cover their asses as much as possible.
If you give them content that they will then display publicly, they need certain rights to do this and the legal terms will sound very scary. For example, you’ll find something like this in terms for almost every online service you’re using that you post content to:
“By submitting Content to Company for inclusion on your Website, you grant Company a world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish the Content”
This is usually limited to some purpose, but if these guys are lazy, in a hurry, or just not diligent in regards to legal crap, the lawyers are going to default to “for any purpose” because if they don’t know what purposes, they need to err on the side of inclusive or they’re setting their client up for trouble.
Anyway, don’t give them such a hard time. Legalese is more than what it says in the words, it’s why it says them.
Well it appears my comments weren’t coming through due to a mistake in the blog field.
Anyways, I didn’t mean to start a flame war or anything here. I just wanted to know if there were any other points that are scary at the moment that we can try to work on.
I’m a little disappointed Derek, I contacted you a while back about possibly signing Aquaria but never received a response. We have not tried to “steal” your idea have we? I understand you have to inform your readers but you could have reached out to us for our side of the story before skewering us.
Adam and I (founders of 2BeeGames) are not stodgy old videogame veterans looking to steal from indies. In fact, we’re relatively new to the industry and thought, hey how come this hasn’t been done before? We thought it was a cool idea that the indies could get behind. A community of developers and gamers to determine the next big thing. We thought we could introduce some fresh new games while giving the developers more avenues to success. Success that would be shared as we do not have license to do anything with the game until we reach a mutually agreeable deal. We would work closely with the developer to enhance the game while keeping the original feel.
Thanks for giving us a chance John. We have received some decent entries so far so maybe some developers aren’t as jaded. Perhaps we just need to build up a level of trust as we are new to the scene. Maybe more tweaking needs to be done. We are always open for discussion and hopefully we can work on changing some of your minds.
-Tony (2BeeGames)
Sorry Tony, your and John’s posts got caught in the spam filter. I’ve released them.
Anyway, I didn’t mean to contribute to making your day hard - I’m honestly just trying to look out for the developers, who have the great ideas and put in the hard work, and don’t deserve to be dicked around. Understandably, you have to cover your ass from frivolous lawsuits, but the contract should provide protection for the competition entrants, too. From what I could tell, the first draft of your official rules did not provide enough.
So yes, you’re arguing your intentions, but I’m talking about the legal language in your original contract. The fact that you didn’t steal Aquaria from Bit Blot after we didn’t respond to your email doesn’t prove to me that Zoo Games wouldn’t exercise their rights to ideas that have been relinquished to them by unknowing entrants.
“I honestly don’t think many companies would support the whole indie games idea.”
A lot of companies are supportive of the indie games idea, including some of the biggest ones, like Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, Valve, etc. It’s actually the smallish, more casual publishers, like Zoo Games, that I’m most wary of, because they have more to gain from screwing around and less accountability for it.
Okay, I’ve shown the original rule #5 to a practicing lawyer. He told me that the rule says what it says - that by entering the competition you give 2BeeGames and Zoo Games non-exclusive rights to do essentially whatever they wanted with your game. It says “perpetual” and it says “for any purpose” and legally, they can do so. He says that it’s an extremely broad statement. The fact that you retain ownership of your game will not prevent them from potentially doing whatever they like with it, including selling the exact same rights to another party (hadn’t thought of that).
NOW, again, this speaks nothing of intent, or whether this kind of thing is standard in the games industry (in which case, maybe the standard should change in favor of the developers)… it’s about who has what rights after you enter the compo. Rule #5 is really, really broad and gives them a lot of rights. After reading it, you can only trust that they won’t exercise those rights.
“This is usually limited to some purpose, but if these guys are lazy, in a hurry, or just not diligent in regards to legal crap, the lawyers are going to default to ‘for any purpose’ because if they don’t know what purposes, they need to err on the side of inclusive or they’re setting their client up for trouble.”
That is probably the case here, but that wouldn’t really make me feel any better about entering the contest and possibly working deals with these guys (who by that point could do the deal without your involvement). It’s also pretty easy to at least state what purposes you WON’T be needing, like selling the games without permission. Tony is saying “No no, we’re only going to use it for this and that,” which should be made explicit in the contract. And maybe it is explicit now, but it wasn’t before…
For future reference, you may not even care about who has what rights when you first enter a competition, but you may care later when you realize what a great idea you came up with.
I was thinking about joining the contest but that rule #5 really raises an eyebrow… Tony, how about changing it throwing off “for any purpose” or modifying it to “for the only purpose to publish the submitted material to the 2bee contest site”?
Yes tony clarify it. I personally think this is a cool concept but it has to be fair for everyone.
I also don’t get down on zoo games (who I never heard of until now). Maybe they do publish junk but perhaps this is a first step for them to look for better content.
Yes I know, bc I’m not scathing critical I’m actually a shill (tony) having a dialogue in my head but that’s ok - I’ll just go load up on my psych drugs.
The publishers of a vast catalog of games that ALL have some corporate advert built in at the title level want to SUPPORT indie games? Have they teamed up with a Nigerian Prince with millions of dollars who misplaced his ATM card and desperately needs my help??
If you have the next ‘great game’ then you don’t need to enter ANY contest, build the game, and it will sell itself,. these guys give themselves away, as most people do, with their own words,. from the about page “Maybe you win, maybe not. Maybe you just get new ideas,” ah, “new ideas” for these guys to turn into the next corporate licensed crap for the wii that your kids will beg you for any you will know is utter putrid adware, flogging some licensed cartoon characters and perpetuating the corporate death culture., If they wanted to make games for the sake of games they would, and if they want to build ads loosely clothed as games for the money, then that is what they do. Personably I would not want to be associated at all, let alone published by such corporate noise,.
I think this was blown a bit out of proportion, though I can understand from how passionate we all are.
I had a similar case in terms of service for DevjaVu, and a guy simply pointed out that the terms were not limited enough in usage of uploaded content. And this is a code hosting site! I simply updated the terms. He was not upset, just stated he wouldn’t join with those terms and they look too generic.
That said, intent can go a long way, but it’s definitely smart for everybody to cover their asses. Even if they do have good intent, but they’re terms give them rights they could abuse… if they fall into financial trouble and get desperate, who knows what could happen.
Also, just because they’re corporate sellouts doesn’t mean they are. Errm, I mean to say some have better integrity than others, but it is a pretty difficult world in business. Even Flashbang has an affiliate based casual site and does corporate gigs to pay the bills. Look at all the good they do!
So, yes they need to work on their terms, but help them out, don’t cut them down. Indie love?
If intentions were all you needed, then no one would ever need contracts. Therefore, the contract is there to express the intentions in writing. That’s the point of a contract.
It doesn’t matter to developers what you say your intentions are in some comment or even on your own blog. What really matters is how those intentions are expressed in writing.
Parties who enter into a business relationship simply need to express their intentions in writing, in the contract.
Just as an update, this issue seems to be mostly resolved. The only notable thing you’re handing over is rights for them to distribute the game (and modify it for use on “our websites”) through any platform.
So as long as entrants are ok with this statement: “It is our intention to pay you $10k in exchange for full rights to distribute the game through the internet, on any consoles, and on any handhelds.” then they should enter.
IMO, that’s not a bad deal if you just make a game over the weekend or in your spare time for a week or two. You could get some good exposure for not much investment on your part.
Torncanvas (and other commenters), you’re absolutely correct on the language of the contract being a bit harsh.
We do not want to give 10k and have the full rights to the game on every platform. The quality of the games submitted would probably be lower if we did that.
We are working with the legal guys to fix the wording. Stay tuned for updates soon.
Hey, it’s good to see that you’re actually listening. Maybe I had the wrong idea about you guys. You really pissed me off the first time I read this, at just how underhanded and low the language in the legalese seemed. but I guess you’re not all that bad.
If you can not only “fix the wording” but stick to it and actually follow up on your word and NOT screw people as the former draft of your TOS indicated, then you might actually have my respect now.
But don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to avoid this compo like nobody’s business. Nothing personal or anything.
Maybe next time, try to pay attention to what exactly your lawyers are writing and make a good first impression, rather than rubbing people the wrong way like this and then trying to do damage control after the fact.
Those fuckers.
Even if you consider all the legalese irrelevant, the contest seems to go against the whole spirit of indie. I doubt most indie developers want to get a publishing deal with a big company. It seems to go against the whole idea of being indie: “I can do this by myself, I don’t need funding from a fucking huge soulless company”.
“Making money and/or wanting to do so is against indie rules”
Sorry, won’t be entering then.
Hi Tony, i’ll really appreciate this move, keep us informed!
@the others that were not joking: Valve is a big corporation but it hosts a lot of indie games, if you don’t need to follow their rules to have a deal with them and somewhat modify your concept for the market, then you’ll be indie even dealing with EA
Valve also makes GAMES and not ads pretending to be games,. . indie is short for independent i.e. not backed by large corporate banking interests,. it is much wiser to go by what people actually DO, than to judge them by what they say.
A big problem with legalese in general is how it’s written. It seems designed to confuse the layman as much as possible, with large blocks and walls of text, heavy repetition of words, use of legal terms that were actually INVENTED for legalese, and that aren’t used anywhere else, and often use of latin as their base. And nobody fucking knows latin anymore.
If legalese in general was written with understanding of the average citizen in mind instead of seeming like it’s meant only for lawyers to understand, people wouldn’t be so scared of them.
I think lawyers do it on purpose, in fact. Write legalese in a fashion that makes it seem like encrypted code, and the layman will have no choice but to hire a lawyer himself to make sense of it, leading to them getting work easier.
Then again I might be wrong. Legalese still sucks either way though.
Thanks for the reply Tony. I’m sure you guys weren’t expecting this kind of backlash, and you were likely really busy and might not have had time to really go through the wording with a fine-toothed comb.
I guess this is an unfortunate lesson to all of us regarding the crazy amount of work and care it takes to throw your own contest. :P
With that said, I do think it’s important that those of us who’ve gone through some painful legal negotiation before should try to stick up for the little guy. I’m relieved that you are so receptive to it.
Wanted to update you guys. http://2beegames.com We have worked to cover the major concerns and have even bumped the prize up ;)
Thanks for all of the feedback throughout. It really helps to know what the community thinks about our ideas.
If anyone is going to GDC, feel free to stop by our booth and say hi. We’ll be at the IGS as well. Details to come later. Hope to see your entries soon!
Okay, sorry, I HAVE to do this now..
All you need is love, all you need is love, All you need is love, love, love is all you need. All you need is love (all together now) All you need is love (everybody) All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
My other comment might be lost in the spam filter but check out the site now. Made some major changes thanks to (some) of the valuable insight ;)
Melly, I think the point is to explicitly avoid the ambiguities of common English, and what looks like convolutedness is often just an attempt at precision.
Course, that’s not to say that real bastards never exploit the lack of clarity that necessarily results from this.
I mailed the guys about this issue, and the fact that even if they say “it’s not what we meant” is not enough. They quite politely told me that their lawyers were evaluating a way to make it better.
I wasn’t confortable with the other rules, and I’m not participating because the games can’t make any references to booze, dope, sex, death, etc… Even the latest –Disney’s– Pirates of the caribbean make an innuendo about a 10 year old about to be HANGED TO DEATH.
So that kind of rules just don’t apply to modern times.
Ok, I think I lost it there XD All that was about saying that I’m not tracking the rules to see if they finally changed them or not.
GL -Martín
I’m a little disappointed Derek, I contacted you a while back about possibly signing Aquaria but never received a response
Good thing too. Derek & Alec got to put all their sales money where it belongs: In their pockets and not some scam artists with the greatest intentions not specifically worded.