Activision doesn’t own your indie contest IP

I am slowly getting excited about the Independent Games Competition that Activision is sponsoring this summer. There are about seven weeks left until the deadline for submissions runs out…and there is still some confusion that may be stopping people from wanting to enter at all.

Both programmers and media outlets alike have reported that the intellectual property rights (commonly just called “IP”) of any contest submissions will belong to Activision if you enter. This was based on both the endearingly legaltastic phrasing of the rules and an interview quote by Activision’s Laird Malamed that wasn’t very clear. I yelled and screamed and tried to say that’s not true, and that I had a Laird podcast interview to prove it, but you know…I’ve learned that yelling and screaming only gets a message so far.

But a fresh article on Develop Online that says the same thing, only more politely? That can get the message a little further. Let me quote the main bits:

“It was thought that if you enter the contest you automatically give up your IP rights to Activision. That’s not true at all. What the wording in our rules meant was that if you enter the contest with your own game idea you have to prove that your idea belongs to you. That’s all it meant.”

Activision didn’t completely rule out the possibility of acquiring IP from finalists of the contest – but insisted that such a business move would only be possible after the competition hands out $175,000 to the winner and $75,000 to the runner up.

“If you win the contest, and we want to publisher your game, we then enter into a completely separate discussion about who owns the IP. But by default the game designer keeps it.”

In the game biz, publishers owning IP is still the norm; it’s cool to see the industry evolve to accomodate deals like Respawn/EA and Bungie/Activision, but most publishers, like THQ, still expect to own the IP in any development deal. It’s not good or bad — it’s just one way of doing business, and it’s a way that has worked well for many years. Even as other methods arrive, it will almost certainly still be an option.

But in the case of the Activision Independent Games Competition, the IP belongs to you unless you choose to sell it — and you only get into that discussion if you win. And you cannot win if you do not enter. So…don’t let the fear of losing your IP stop you from entering. That’s all.