Hey everyone. I was wondering if someone could point me to a sample NDA for hiring a concept artist.
This is just so that I can hand him the complete game idea and get a quote from him for the concept artwork part.
Any help is appreciated. Thanks!
Too bad NDA’s are under NDA .
Although i’d say you need a lawyer to draft up an NDA, if you can’t afford a lawyer to write up an NDA( try legal zoom ) you really wont be able to afford to enforce an NDA( you actually have to sue people and all that if they violate your NDA)
Hey keithsoulasa, thanks for answering. I just want to keep formalities, I know the concept artist very well, and I have worked with him in the past under the same employer. However I’m not alone in this project, someone else is funding it. So it would be stupid for me to hand out the project idea left and right without at least an NDA to cover my bases. So if anyone has an NDA that would work for my situation with a few adjustments, I’d appreciate it.
What I’m saying is you really need to have someone write you a custom NDA , one or two sloppy sentences in an NDA can get it thrown out in court .
No 2 NDA’s are the same and when your dealing with a legal manner you need to be very exact .
OR you can hope on Legal Zoom
NDA 15$
https://www.legalzoom.com/legalforms/Employee-NonDisclosure-Agreement.html
i am not a lawyer , I still advise you to get a lawyer to custom write one, but above is better then nothing
Get a free NDA here, but you ALSO need to enter debit/credit info.*
*You actually don’t. There is a no thanks button somewhere 
Just do a Google search for “sample NDA”, then modify it to suit your needs.
Most every contract is primarily a starting point anyway, and any contract, regardless of how its written, can be disputed in court (whether a lawyer handcrafted it, or you just sent an email asking the artist to not tell anyone about the game). Fortunately, most of this falls under judicial discretion if its ever disputed, so the judge would end up making the final decision based on evidence.
Basically, there’s nothing magical about contracts, and the people who write them are not wizards. You can write one yourself, making it as formal or informal as you’d like.
Not to be rude, but you shouldn’t project your lack of trust for others into this thread .
The OP stated he knows this person in real life, he’s actually worked with him in the past .
IN GENERAL its more risky to work with strangers over the internet . I wrote a thread a while back that warned against working ( sending money to ) people you can’t meet in person . If I meet someone face to face and hand them a check for 2k , I have far more legal options then if I paypal( absolutely horrible in everyway ) someone 2k .
Back to the thread topic , legal zoom will work, as will pivotraze’s link . BUT if your serious about game dev( like the budget is over 100k) you should go though the trouble of finding a lawyer to draft something up and enforce said NDA if worse comes to worse .
Haha.
But in all seriousness you probably won’t get a NDA tailored to your specific needs
Anyone have a good Non-Disclosure Agreement? I’ve tried Google, and gotten results, obviously. But I’m concerned that I don’t really know how well written they are or if their authors are very experienced, or if any of them would legally be effective or… whatever. I have no experience with law at all, so I don’t really know what I’m talking about, except that an NDA is a good way to protect intellectual property.
Anyone have a good Non-Disclosure Agreement template?
For legal advise consult your lawyer. I don’t mean to be condescending, but if you take advice from these forums and everything goes pear shaped you will have little recourse. If it is important enough to warrant an NDA it’s probably important enough to book some time with a lawyer.
Thank you!
Keithsoulasa is 100% right: get a lawyer.
If you can’t afford a lawyer to write you an enforceable NDA, you likely won’t have any power to pursue a violation to said NDA anyways.
Not to mention: nothing says “you are a worthless pencil pusher I can’t trust” like shoving an NDA down an artist’s throat! I know that would be a friendship killer for me!
If you don’t trust the individual, and it’s someone else’s project, then just keep it simple: only tell the artists what he NEEDS to know to get his job done. You don’t have to give him everything. Only thing I would do is just ask him kindly not to post any of the art he creates in any public portfolios until the project is finished and shipped, and clarify that any leak will just force you to drop him and get another artist (IF you have the time and money to hunt for another qualified artist, that is.)
I’d agree with the others that you should get some qualified legal advice, but in some cases any (properly written) contract is better than none. If nothing else it shows you’re at least somewhat serious about protecting your IP and plants the seed that it’s best not tampered with. This is a sample NDA that follows all current best practices for tech companies and is maintained by the Santa Clara School of Law’s High Tech Law Institute. This “template” forms a basis for many NDAs used by big name technology companies. Of course, said companies lawyers tailor it to suit the needs of the specific situation, but at least this gets you off on the right foot if nothing else. Find the sample NDA here.
And as always, the disclaimer in these cases: I am not a lawyer and nothing said above should be construed to constitute legal advice.
Thank you Starsman .
One too many errors in an NDA can render it null and void . Plus its pretty pointless if you lack the money to enforce it anyway .
You folks are just terrified of the law aren’t you? Once again, a lawyer is not required for anything. All a lawyer does is write the documents and contracts that you’re too lazy to do yourself. You are not some mega-corporation. You will also not be sitting in a Law Order style courtroom, in front of a jury debating your contract.
Until you start dealing with millions of dollars, just handle this stuff on your own. And yes, you can easily enforce it, should things go sour (you’re not hiring Johnny Cochran). It would basically involve a small claims case, and a judge looking at the contract and saying, “you broke this contract, pay the man”. That’s it!
No, I am not a lawyer, but I did take some courses in Contract Law in college. ANY contract is debatable in court, and they are primarily used as “encouragement/scare tactics” to make you uphold your end of a deal. But anything can be considered a contract. Again, there is nothing magical about how a lawyer types things up. (In fact, 9 times out of 10, they’re just copying and pasting your name into a template themselves).
Grab a template, modify it as much or as little as you’d like, then have the guy sign it. If he violates it, sue him. Easy.
I would say that it depends on the size of the project and how much you trust your artist and how much your client trusts you.
For smaller amounts of money - (I was once told less than £15,000) no one will sue any anyone else if it goes wrong. So in this case its essential that you trust your contractor and they trust you. The point of a contract in this case is to communicate the agreement in such a way that both sides can understand it. So as khanstruct says, write it yourself and don’t just copy and paste lots of scary stuff, make an effort to make it short and to the point and understandable.
The other situation is where budgets are larger and you maybe don’t trust one or other of the parties. (Although why are you working with people you don’t trust?). In this case you may want a lawyer who will copy and paste and huge wedge of stuff designed to cover you and the lawyer in the event of it ever coming to court.
I am also not a lawyer, but this is based on my experience in the UK. Having contracts written by lawyers normally makes no difference to anything. Only working with people you trusting and carefully explaining before hand the type of agreement you want makes a huge amount of difference.
Here’s my take on it ,
If you don’t need a lawyer you don’t need an NDA .
If you need an NDA you need a lawyer, small claims is something like 5k max even if you can sue . That’s what, a month and a half of a low paid dev’s salary .
I disagree, people here are forgetting the primary purpose of a NDA: It’s a formalised agreement between two parties. Without it, it’s hard to be sure what is or is not acceptable. With it, each party can attempt to stay within the bounds. The lawyering aspect should be secondary.
I agree, an NDA is a very useful tool for protecting your work when dealing with groups of developers. Its also an extremely common practice and, in all of my dealings, I’ve never run into anyone who had a problem signing one (and I’ve signed several myself). An NDA is really the handshake of the development world; there’s nothing taboo or offensive about it.
Just write one up, get everyone to sign a copy, then store it away somewhere. Hopefully, you’ll never even have to look at it again.
Thank you Pivotraze. This did it for me. I had to save as text from one of their read only pdfs, and reformat it, but it worked.