I'm naturally no lawyer, but the non-competition clause is a pretty generic one and I'd imagine should apply in most countries since it's common sense. A company doesn't hire you to work on a rival product, and in some cases that could even be considered 'insider trading', since you're strongly aware of the position of…
Well, its not just EA, its virtually every game studio out there. Let me know when you find one that DOESN'T have this sort of language in their employment contract. =P
Generally it also varies from company to company. Some places will be happy for you to work on your own small projects in your spare time, whereas many others will take the complete opposite stance.
I was responding to what jipe said: Why wouldn't a good workplace offer you options to improve? options for greater autonomy? and the option to experiment with new techniques? certainly not satisfaction in the broad sense but definitely job satisfaction
Also, no matter who you are and what you work on, there's a massive gulf between working on your own art freely and doing it for the man. In my experience, most artists get into the job because of that amazing, rewarding creative feeling you get working on your own stuff, and a few artists I know who have left the job do…
I'd personally prefer if it was the other way around. I'd like to recieve royalties from everything I make irrespective of whether I am working at the company I made it for. But I can see the financial incentive from the studios point of view. Why aren't you putting that same work into your day job? What if you're losing…
I understand that such terms of a contract would be reasoned under non-compete clauses etc. But does anybody know of any actual breach of these terms or situations where somebody had their own personal idea and the company went: "Hold on, that's a million dollar idea! It just so happens that we own your ass too so thank…
If you're outside the US and find something like this in your contract, check with a lawyer because local law may override such a clause. Seems like there's some sort of "standard-US-games-industry-contract" floating around which just gets copied from company to company, no matter where they're located. Chance is people…
A studio can potentially take your idea but that would be some bad PR, they usually just say they don't care as long as you aren't making a competing project - an casual developer isn't going to care if you're making a hardcore FPS in your spare time. Unless they are greenhorns without a legal department, any idea…
It's pretty clear that things like this can happen more often on smaller studios that targets the mobile market, where you have dozens of ideas and develop a game in 3 months. For example if someone had the idea of Doodle Jump (which is pretty basic) and was rejected by the company (because is too basic:D) and after that…