Clients that won't let you show your work after release.
ngon master
I wanted to start a discussion about this since it seems to be a growing trend. What are peoples thoughts on clients refusing to let freelancers out of their NDAs after the game ships? Personally I think this is unreasonable. As a freelancer your time is your income and you can't take large amounts of it to produce personal art. Your portfolio is also how you get new work and you don't have an employer who will keep sending you paychecks even when your website is totally out of date. Also, in every other commercial art industry I know of the artist is allowed to share their work after the project is completed (advertising, commercial photography of all kinds, film making).
Replies
Only being able to show official screenshots or ingame footage: Quite expensive.
Not being able to point out what you worked on exactly: Very expensive.
Not being able to mention you worked on a project at all: Very, very expensive.
I also think that on some level (not legally) when you create something you retain some amount of ownership and that you have an inherent right to display your work so long as it isn't damaging the client.
This practice is generally bad for the industry. If nobody is showing their work clients will have a harder time finding qualified people to hire. Also, I take pride in my work with the knowledge that I will be able to show off accomplishments in the future. It provides good motivation for dealing with difficult tasks or difficult clients.
seems like something we should encourage everyone to do. if anyone is good with technical language and can write this as a stipulation for a contract i would happily use it.
on a general note, about you retaining the rights,,
i've heard it mentioned a few times but this could be totally wrong(didn't research for myself yet). but iv heard you always have authorship credit of the work you did regardless of the copyright. i think it means you can show the work you did and say you did it, but only in official published work. ie, if they release a screenshot, you can use that screenshot and say you did the work in it (hosting a studios screenshot on your site could be an issue though).anyone hear similar?
asking for permission is like asking for big fat fucking no.
legal department of a company have nothing to gain by saying yes to your request but in a worst case scenario dealing with you and the stuff you posted online will generate some extra-work/pain-in-the-ass for them. So of course its a default NO.
But hunting you down is also extra Work and costs them money ... and who has time for that shit ... nothing is going to happen ...
(disclaimer; this is not sound legal advice
But is it even legal to say someone can't use in-game screenshots in their portfolio and say "I did ________, seen here," once the game is released?
Also, are "unexpiring" NDAs even legally binding? I've seen them apply for like, a year after the end of your employment or something, but permanently?
It really sucks, but I have done better work since anyway I guess.
Some of my clients have valid reasons or sometimes they just forget to get back to me
I have a feeling that in some cases they just don't want to give me credit for the work, but that's just my instinct.
If the game is released and the content I created is in the release (not unreleased DLC or expansion content) then I would put everything I did online.
The time, hassle, and legal fees on their end to take you to court to have you remove a few pictures off the internet of released content does not appear favorable for them.
Do they really want to pay ~$20,000 in small claims court fees (depending on the state [and not including monetizing time]) to get you to remove some pictures online?
Probably not.
But ya, If it's released, show at least the in game stuff. If they say up front you cant show anything, definitely charge way more with the message of this job helps me get more work in the future, you`re stopping that, so pay me more.
Really, it's like all those non-compete clauses people have. You can't work in the same industry for a year after you leave us. Uhhh, ok, then you have to pay me for that year that I`m not working, or too bad. Hell, in the game industry, there have been court cases about that, and the employee won. I think it was a Relic guy, if im not mistaken?
1. they don't want people to know that they outsource. 343 studios (for example) pulled this on a bunch of polycounters after the last Halo game... they wanted to be able to say that the game was all made in-house.
2. they want to make sure the quality of artwork is consistent among all examples. if i remember correctly, Trion's legal team asked some polycounters to pull rift artwork after people playing their game remarked that the screenshots looked a lot better than the in-game counterparts.
on a personal note, i remember asking one of my contacts if i could show stuff in my portfolio and his answer was "don't ask me, don't tell me, if i don't know then i can't refuse". and this seems to be a similar vein among employers, they don't want to say no but they have to because "legal said so". and ultimately as a freelancer you will live or die on your ability to show projects you've worked on, or at the least provide a reference from an employer.
overall, the situation is shitty. how can anybody expect you to get work if you can't show you're capable? and it's not as easy as it sounds to work freelance AND keep your portfolio up to date with personal work.
As for why companies would do this, I really don't know. If I spend any amount of time working on a project, I want to be able to show what I did once the project is released. Otherwise, your portfolio will potentially be behind the times, and that could stop you from getting hired somewhere else in a timely manner, unless you're also working on personal stuff all the time.
/IANAL, but I know some great ones
That sounds like a good advice... I'd rather spread my awesome folio work on all social media sites then wait for them to ask me to take it down. Well, guess what, once it's unleashed on the Internet, it's not disappearing now.
But yeah, there really should be some standard laws regarding this stuff, because not being able to show released work is absurd.
Since new year my studio had been working as an out source animator for a game that's just released. I haven't seen the contract, it's taken care by the bosses, but the contractor visit us regularly and I remember him saying the game will give us credit.
This past week we've been trying to look for our studio's name anywhere in game. It doesn't exist. No logo, not a word, nada.
So just don't ask, and if told to take it down then there is nothing you can do, but I usually wait until the game has gone out of fashion and nobody cares anymore then re upload it.
But yeah I have been told everything from "if you show this to anyone you will get sued" to "please be aware that you you are not allowed to tell or write in your CV that you worked on this project" and all this I have been told after work done, I always ignore those emails and pretend I never read them though
higher ups need to rethink why people are working in this industry, nobody would spend as much time as we have done to become good at a job at the "mostly" crappy wage we get. we do this for other reasons, if you take those benefits away we won't find the will to be creative.
In your resume, you might write "Worked with so and so on an undisclosed project." and then password protect screenshots of JUST your work in your portfolio (or carry physical printouts to an interview) to back that up.
I was going to say, "It's not like you're building missiles or anything." but considering the DOD is a huge employer of CG artists here in the US, you just might might be. In which case ignore everything I just said.
^ This.
There was talk about having work saved in presentation state but only emailing it to interested parties. So long as it's not broadcast to the world you shouldn't incur much hassle.
Discretion is the key.
It's interesting that in CG/Film peeps actually have a compensation fee in their contracts if they aren't allowed to show their work after.
I'm tempted to say it's more likely they're trying to avoid criticism rather than protect "trade secrets". Yeah Millennia, I'm looking at you
No, you send them the link & pw in your cover letter, or in email.
Sometimes projects are cancelled, or something in the design changes so your work is tossed out before release. Then there's no public release nor screenshots to fall back on, to know when you can show. For this kind of thing, you can use a private link.
Or just do as Joopson and others suggested, take it down when challenged.
Trade secrets is a thing though. Legal has this idea that releasing technical info like that is only OK if it's common knowledge and everybody else already figured it out ages ago. If somebody even suggests that what has been done on a technical level might be different than what 'the competition' does, they'll just say no.
I mean, ask any artist if any aspect of what they are doing is done in a smart way or might be different or better from what other companies are doing, and you'll probably get a yes from the artist (we're all proud of what we do). That's enough for the legal team to just say no to the whole thing...
That is fine for studio jobs but freelancers don't apply for their work.
That sucks!
A released game discloses the items covered under a Non-disclosure agreement, so it's all fair game?
Avoid trade secrets, but I think the NDA loses it's legal strength after that whole...you know disclosure part.
My cousin is a lawyer that deals with large scale mergers and acquisitions and litigates for this kind of stuff. I'll try to get a bit more concrete details on this from his side.
The only real strength I would think they have is to just not hire you again.
There has been many times where I have felt like... FUCK IT, I'm going to post this stuff anyway. I did that a couple of times, and both times I've been found, tracked down and threatened by the legal team at the company to take it down.
I'm a spammy whore so I tend to post my work all over the goddamned place when I can because its literally my lifeline, but in those cases the spread worked against me, more eyes meant higher % chance that someone that knew someone would be like ....HEY! *shakes finger*
It's a fucking shitty archaic set of law's that should be abolished along with the crusty old fucks that are still clinging to these things. I'll never forget being told 'revealing wireframes on your 3d models is revealing company secrets'. I could side with them if we were in the age of the original doom and quake, when there was a huge engine and pushing poly's race. but man this isnt the early 90's any more.... jesus!
Pretty much this.
some major companies warn you not to do that even in secret on their job application form.
I think as smart thing to do would be to come up with standard and reasonable language so that freelancers could easily respond with a passage that they wanted added.