Okay, listen up fuckers because I am tired of repeating myself over and over again.
Here's a short(?) summary of all the drama.
- Sznuk with his irl friend creates Lord of Imagination, I play the first update, find it interesting and tell him I'm interested in writing for the game. The conversation ultimately went nowhere. If you don't like the title of the game, blame them.
- His friend leaves after like 2 updates, he was expecting this to be a massive cash cow, it wasn't. Sznuk takes me up on the offer. We agree on a sixty-forty partnership (pay attention to that word because it will be important later.)
- We work on the game for over a year and a half, all the while we pay for any expenses that come along for the game together, like paying for Rich's work of coding.
-Suddenly Sznuk locks me out of Patreon, dms me on discord that he's quitting, makes an announcement on the LoI discord and Patreon and then deletes the discord, after a while he also deleted the post on Patreon as well.
- I tell him to give me everything I need to continue the game and he refuses because apparently, I don't "legally" own the game. English is not his first language. He meant I don't have any moral rights to the game, not even a portion of it.
-I contest that but I can't really do much.
- Rich had like 3 files from the original game from which I had to reverse engineer Zel's model. I decided to create a spin-off which will be around episode 8-9 of the original game in the corruption path. That way I'll have a way to figure out how to create renders and still have something to show for the lost time.
- That brings us here. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Just once though, for the love of God.
Congratulations for your spin off and I wish you all the best for your success.
I would humbly put my 2 cents over copyright here in hopes that you find them useful.
Sznuk is correct in some instances and has a question mark over his conduct in others.
If he has hired you as a writer and has paid you your fees then he (and any other creator along side him) are the rightful owners of the content since they hired you for writing for them and have compensated you with your fees for the same.
If he has not paid you fees for the work you have done (completed with all due diligence like being on time and up to the satisfaction of the employer/contractor, then you are first liable to your compensation first, if he fails compensating you then you own the copyright over the works that you did, not on anything else.
It will be extremely difficult to prove a contract if there is no written agreement made anywhere. So moving forward I hope that you insist on a written contract that takes care of all instances that may come across as barriers to execute the contract.
Was the partnership offer based on the entirety of the game or from the point of your joining into the leadership, because if it was in entirety of the game then they would be obligated to ask you compensation for earlier costs (joining fees like in a partnership firm) to let you have a stake in the game in its entirety on an agreed sharing ratio.
If it was from the point of your joining then you have limited rights of the game that happened after you progressed into the game, this is especially true for the assets (or anything else for that matter) that were created prior to your joining or has nothing to do with your department.
Again, unless there is a written agreement, it is difficult to prove who owns what or what not.
Personally, what happened was a dick move, but dick moves can be legal too if the law accepts it.
All this is based on the info that you posted here, I can be entirely wrong in my assessment so please take it with a pinch of salt and please do not take this as a legal advise, cause it isn't lol.
