And the judge will turn around and force you to give them backpay. You are a business entity and the volunteer is performing a service for you that would normally be rendered by a person in a paid position. You are attempting to hold that person to the same standard as you would an employee. This means that person is entitled to the same legal protections as an employee. Therefore you will have dug for yourself a nice deep hole. AOL sued by volunteers From the article:
Working with volunteers is a different subject, but one really doesn't need to study law to understand that you can not hold people accountable for free work. That's really a crazy idea. Don't take this personal but I would even call it immorale. What do you do if they break the contract? You can not force people to deliver you anything for free. Even if you make it an internship or something like that. Let them sign any paper you wish, without payment in some form, anyone is free to leave any time from your project without consequences. Otherwise, that would be indeed slavery. I'm really surprised that this even questionable. You can, however, let them sign a paper that make sure you retain all rights on your work to prevent you from any later claims. This may make sense in some cases.
Interesting. But I'm not entirely convinced. Obviously there are lines seperating what went on there with what goes on in other, perfectly legal situations. I know you can enter into business arrangements with compensation other than money. That is the case here. If it weren't possible for someone to work for something other than money, then many existing business relationships in the world would crumble... And what about unpaid interns? They exist everywhere, especially in legal circles. I find it hard to believe this is an illegally oppresive practice. Can you just call these relationships internships and be done with it? Anyway, very interesting and relevant article. Thoguh it's worth noting that this particular article states that the class action lawsuit was *filed*, not necessarily *won*. I can't find any info on what actually happened with this case. -Hiro_Antagonist
Contract Employee's Handbook I have no idea if it's remotely useful, but I ran across The Contract Employee's Handbook. It's at least worth a look by interested parties. I guess. But I digress... this has nothing to do with the original topic.
An intern actually has to be enrolled in a grad/undergrad program. The work experience (either paid or unpaid) allows the intern to gain relevant experience related to his or her field of study and is performed in return for acedemic credit. So no, you can't just rebadge a volunteer as an intern.
Touche! Very good point, and this does totally make it a clear distinction. =) Kind of ironic, though, how interns are then *paying* (tuition) to work for someone, while after graduation that becomes either illegal or a gray area. -Hiro_Antagonist
ERoberts said: ERoberts is correct. There was a big discussion early this year about people posting stuff that they have EXPERIENCE IN, instead of loud-mouths with X number of posts a day, X posts per thread. That is because Vets will not post when somebody with a broken web site like (somebody) preaches to everybody here. The only vet who posts here now is John Smith. Posts from Retro64, Dan MacDonald, PomPom, Dexterity, just do not happen anymore. These forums used to be tightly moderated, but now are under the assumption that if you hold people from posting for 7 days, there are no more problems. Now, there is no moderation whatsoever. It's not the new posters causing problems!
On Wildlife TYcoon: Venture Africa, my teammates (2d artist, 3d artist, animator, environmental artist, musician, writer, tech artist) are mostly working for royalties. I had contracts drawn up for them by a lawyer friend, and they've all been working out tremendously. I knew 5 of the 7 prior to starting on this project, and we have a ton of mutual trust and respect. Only one has dropped off the project, albiet after doing a bunch of work, and the rest are really committed to getting it done. We're all aware that the game probably won't pay them back in terms of what they could have gotten in contracting fees for the same amount of work, but we all believe in the project wholeheartedly. We believe that it CAN make good money if it is marketed correctly. In the past, I've learned to be very careful about working with friends... you can destroy friendships that way. But everyone has been exceedingly mature and has done great work, so it hasn't been a problem. EDITORIAL: This thread was much more interesting before it turned into bickering.
I agree with ERoberts to some extent. People who dont actually know and are just blowing hot air should just keep quiet (This is what keeps this board different from gamedev.net). Many who have replied in response to this thread havent released jack all yet. I would just like to let the newbies out there know that a few of these 'knowledgable ideas' border on meh to just plain wrong. I honestly dont care to rant about this for days with people who think they have a clue, so im going to leave it here. As for the original poster. Yes, you can live a comfortable life being an indie devver. Its a very hard route, expect to fail and to change course multiple times in order to find what works best (persistance pays off). You need to remember that being an indie devver is like any other self-employed business, you get no magical advantage from being a shareware developer.
Please Clarify In that case, it would probably be not only the original poster, but everyone's best interest to know which of these "knowledgable ideas" are bordering on meh to just plain wrong so we don't take some bad advice.
Soni, I was about to, but then I edited your name out of my above post because I got a nice PM from you a minute ago.
We still moderate and many of the people "gone missing" still do ocassionally post. But one of the things about making games for a living and not running forums for a living is that we don't always have time to get involved in the details of every single thread on the board. I don't think the moderation is much looser than it use to be though. There was never a need for much moderation in the past.