Game Rights

tim-cain game-development intellectual-property legal publishing fallout arcanum

Abstract

Problem: Who actually owns the rights to a game, and what rights do the individual developers retain?

Approach: Tim Cain explains how intellectual property ownership works in the game industry, drawing on his personal experience with Fallout, Arcanum, and Temple of Elemental Evil.

Findings: The entity that pays for a game typically owns the IP. Developers working as employees or under publisher deals usually retain no rights beyond their salary and a shipping bonus. Even founders of studios may not own the IP of games they created.

Key insight: Follow the money — whoever funded the game owns the rights. If you want to own everything, you must pay for everything yourself.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb2y1zGkT6w

Why Tim Made This Video

Tim frequently gets asked to review games, grant permission for fan projects, or gets comments assuming he's rich from Fallout's ongoing success. He made this video as a dedicated reference he can link to, similar to his earlier "Why I Don't Review Games" video, which remains his most-linked response.

Tim Doesn't Own Fallout (Or Arcanum)

Tim was an employee at Interplay when Fallout was made. He received a salary and a shipping bonus — and that was it. No royalties, no ongoing revenue. Interplay owned the Fallout IP and later sold it to Bethesda. When Fallout 3, Fallout 4, New Vegas, and the Fallout TV show came out, Tim received nothing. People left comments like "Dude, you're probably driving a Lamborghini right now" — which he finds deeply incorrect on multiple levels.

The same applies to Arcanum. Despite Tim, Leonard Boyarsky, and Jason Anderson being the three owners of Troika Games, they did not own the Arcanum IP. Sierra owned it, and the rights passed through Havas to Activision and now to Microsoft. When someone recently asked Tim for permission to make a tabletop RPG in the Arcanum setting, he had to explain he simply cannot grant those rights.

What Troika Did Keep: The Code

Troika retained ownership of Arcanum's source code, which Tim recently recompiled as a native Windows 10 application. However, the contract explicitly prevents him from using that code to make an Arcanum sequel or distributing it. What he could do — and did — was use it to build a different game. Temple of Elemental Evil runs on Arcanum's codebase.

The Architecture That Made This Possible

Tim explains the engine architecture philosophy he carried forward from Fallout. At Interplay, they created GNAL and TIG — OS abstraction libraries that decoupled the game from the underlying platform. This was so effective that a programmer named Chris Salvo went home for a weekend and came back with a working Mac version of Fallout, simply by writing a Mac implementation of the abstraction layer.

For Arcanum, Tim applied the same principle but went further: the engine (handling distance, line of sight, item interaction) was kept separate from the game mechanics. When they built Temple of Elemental Evil, they swapped out Arcanum's mechanics for D&D 3.5 rules while keeping the engine, then upgraded to 3D sprites with smooth rotations.

The General Rule: Follow the Money

Whoever pays for the game owns the rights. In the publisher-developer model:

  • Publisher pays everything → Publisher owns everything (IP, art, code, sequel rights)
  • Developer pays some → Developer may retain some rights (code, modified art, sometimes the IP)
  • Developer pays everything → Developer owns everything

What Publishers Typically Want

  • The revenue stream and control over incoming money (developer gets a cut)
  • Sequel rights
  • Sometimes "first right of refusal" — they must be offered the next game before anyone else
  • Sometimes "last right of refusal" — developer can shop around, but must come back to them last

Tim's Advice: Get a Lawyer

Tim emphatically recommends that anyone entering game development get a specialized lawyer. Publishers have done these deals many times and are sophisticated about contract terms. He specifically warns against thinking you're smart enough to handle it yourself or relying on someone unqualified.

On Retirement and Developer Finances

Tim addresses the surprise people expressed when he mentioned retirement. Like most game developers, he never made a large windfall from his games. His retirement was funded by 44 years of working and saving as much of his salary and bonuses as possible. He notes the irony that he made the least money during the three years he ran his own company, Troika — that's the risk of starting a studio.

He closes with a dark joke that, like all Americans, he's saving money hoping it lasts until he dies — "hopefully many decades from now, and hopefully by being crushed by a runaway semi truck driven by the Incredible Hulk."

References