Developing games, licensing, paying people - What is there to know about it ?

News & General Discussion
1

Well, yeah lately, I’ve been trying to get into this whole IndieGameDev thing, some projects sounded quite interesting and promising but when it was time to take the next step, I was kinda irritated, because I didn’t know any further considering some legal issues, you can say.

There’s some basic questsions coming up, I’ll try to put them in order. I searched the forums for quite some time now but couldn’t really find more insight answers on this, maybe because I just don’t know the exact professional terms.
I’m from Germany, btw - if there shall be any experts from this country that I could have little conversation with in PM :slight_smile:

1) When I really want to order a license, do I have a company registered or anything like that ?
Or can just any private person order a license and move on ?
What kind of info/detail would I have to offer ?

2) What about taxes or other proof documents ?
Can I develop just as a private person and sell these apps on the store as long as I paid the stuff ?
Do I need to register these actions anywhere ?

3) What if someone decides to “hire me” sign any sort of contract with me ?
Do I need before-mentioned business or company proof ?
Or can this just be simple paypal money moving actions ?
Say person 1 transfers 50 € to my paypal account for a model I made after we both signed a contract. Is that all it
takes ?

4) Same the other way around. Where do I find information of possible contracts I can send/hand out to interested
people ?
Can I do that as a private person ?
Or is this a business of some kind that I need to register ?
Is it not allowed to randomly send people money over the internet without giving business reasons or anything ?

5) Do I have anything to prove or verify within the game development frame ? Only when I make too much money ? :wink:

Yes, these shall be my first round of questions, that I’d like to get answered. I hope this can lead to some nice discussions and information exchange.
Thanks for your time and help in advance, I’m really looking forward to some answers ^^

2

I don’t do this normally, but since nobody has replied so far, I might do a little thread bumping and hope informed people view this thread and reply :slight_smile:

3

Hi, I’m not from germany so I can’t really help you, but most of those sound like questions you should be asking a lawyer or an accountant.

4

Your questions are too much work to answer in a short time and a lot is dependent on your personal circumstances and location. So a lot of research is needed based on your individual needs.

A good general purpose book if your thinking of starting a dev team and working as and with independent contractors to complete a project is:

Distributed Game Development

which covers a lot of ground for anyone working in North America at least.

5

Well it doesn’t need to be german specific info. I just figured, since Unity is used in quite some IPhone games lately, this board would be perfect fit for me :slight_smile:
I thought the questions are not that specific, but ok :slight_smile:
I’ll look around some more, maybe I get to the solution eventually.
Thanks guys :slight_smile:

6

There’s a section on game business in Introduction to Game Development by Steve Rabin. Of course, there’s also a much better alternative: this.

Hope that helps.

7

Thanks a lot, Asvarduil ! That answers some questions considering taxes/company related stuff :slight_smile: