Video Game Publishing Agreement

No, and often you should not. A term sheet puts the deal on one page first: the royalty, the advance, what it recoups against, the rights being granted, the term, and what happens if the game never ships. It is $400 flat. You settle the money and the rights while they are still cheap to change, and whoever drafts the long-form agreement then works from a deal both sides have already agreed to. It is far cheaper to argue over a term sheet than over a signed contract's worth of clauses.

That depends on how it is written, which is exactly why it is worth having a lawyer write it. Most term sheets are deliberately non-binding on the commercial terms, so either side can still walk, while a few clauses (confidentiality, exclusivity during negotiation, who pays what if it falls apart) are binding. A term sheet that is vague about which is which is the one that causes arguments later.

This is drafting: we write the agreement, for your deal, from whichever side you are on. A review is the opposite direction. A publisher sent you their contract and you want it read, red-flagged, and negotiated. Drafting is a flat fee because the scope is known. Review is billed hourly because the contract you were handed sets the workload.

Whoever drafts sets the starting position, and negotiations tend to move in small steps from wherever they begin. If you are the one funding or publishing a game, coming to the table with your own agreement is faster, cheaper, and lands closer to what you actually want than redlining someone else's. Admittedly, this is not common. Usually you’re going with the publisher’s template.

It needs to name what comes off the top and what does not. Platform fees, refunds, chargebacks, and taxes are ordinary deductions. Marketing spend, overhead, and the publisher's own staff costs are where the definition quietly turns a real royalty into a much smaller one. A good clause lists the deductions exhaustively, so anything not on the list cannot be subtracted later.

An advance is usually recoupable, meaning the publisher keeps your royalty share until the advance is paid back. What matters is what else is recoupable and in what order: if marketing, porting, and localization all get recouped ahead of you, your royalty can stay at zero long after the game sells well. The agreement should cap what is recoupable and say plainly what is not.

They should come back. A well-drafted agreement sets a window for release and reverts the publishing rights to the developer if the publisher has not shipped, or shown genuine intent to ship, by then. Without a reversion clause a publisher can hold a finished game indefinitely, and the developer has no route to take it elsewhere.

It covers them if you want it to, and that is a decision worth making deliberately. Publishers often ask for rights to sequels and ports on the same terms as the original. Sometimes that is fair. Sometimes it commits your studio's next three years to a deal you negotiated before you knew how the first game would do. We set out what the deal reaches and what stays yours.