The board of the Game Designers Association (SAZ) has decided to make its new Model License Agreement for games available not only to SAZ members, but to all interested game authors/designers and publishers. This model License Agreement has been completely revised in cooperation with our legal advisor and on the basis of our experience.

In this way, we want to contribute as an interest group to ensuring that fair conditions for game authors are enforced as comprehensively as possible. In this context, we would particularly like to see the game publishers undergo a critical comparison of their own contracts with our Model License Agreement, and we are gladly available for consultative discussions.

An important point for us is, for example, that the game authors have a right of intervention in the case of significant changes to the content of their work, as it has always been absolutely self-evident in the book business. Here, unfortunately, many game publishers negate the intellectual property rights of the game authors and impose the sole decision about content changes on themselves.

Game authors can, of course, try to achieve more far-reaching, specific goals on individual contract points in negotiations. Game publishers are also free to adapt their contract text to their specific business model. It is important to us to make the common thread of a fair contract clear and to communicate it as widely as possible.

The Model License Agreement is available for download on the SAZ website in German and English.