Well, I gotta say I don't envy your situation re: internationalism. I can suggest though that you read everything you can find written by Tom Buscaglia. This should be a good place to start:
http://www.intelaw.com/gamearticle1.htmThat was a really informative read, thanks a bunch
Before I start, I'm refering you to this
thread, if you have missed it. If not, we'll try to figure out what to add to the thread so that it's more useful
Yeah, I've read that thread, but it only covers the founding of a company of one single guy who pretty much REMAINED one single guy.
My own personal situation is infinite times more complicated :D
Now, first thing first, you have to establish where you want to start the company. Depending on the country and state/province/region, there may be some government help to start up a new company. For instance, some programs help new entrepeneur below the age of 25 to start a small employee based company by giving them a couple of grans. Other programs may get you tax refunds if you have less than 3 employees. It's crucial that you get these info before you start one since it may influence on what kind of funding you might get.
Yeah, that's one of the major headaches for me. Preferably, I'd like to start the company in the US (in the most favorable state, naturally). However, can I even do that as a German guy who never set a foot into the US? So far, what seems most "intriguing" to me is a LLC, but I'll look deeper into that.
The international part ain't much of a problem on your side, it's rather tricky for your employees. Since they will be receiving money from outside of their countries, they will need to do 2 tax income: one for their country and another for yours. And maybe more depending on their region/province/state. On your hand, the tricky part is getting the job done, but that's another topic.
What worries me are contracts, as laws likely differ from country to country. I'm currently looking into getting a lawyer for this stuff (my "fathers" happens to know a few), but those are mostly specialized in German law, which isn't so useful when the actual company is based in the US.
Eventually, I may need to get a US lawyer *phew*
It would be quite a good move if you signed these guys under contract, if not already done. Have an lawyer write up a contract that stipulates how much you are giving, on what basis and until what time the contract is in effect. This way you can have something like "you give 50% of the profits once 6 months of sales are over" or "you give them 5% of the profit every time you sale one copy". You could also decide to give them 500$ on the date of release and that's all. The idea here is that you decide terms that will make both parties, you and the contractor comfortable.
Yeah, putting everyone under contract is the first thing I thought about when we decided to sell what we make. From what I got in the articles that Farbs posted, I should also make sure that their IP effectively becomes the one of the company.
Also, make sure that you add a line in the contract stipulating that all legal battles will be held in front of your country state/province/region court. There's also a lot of other things hence whyit's good to pay a bit to be fully protected.
That's a pretty good idea, I didn't think of that. The problem again is, would that mean the court of the company's region or the court of mine?
So in general, read up on company definitions, get yourself a lawyer to write contracts and get as much info about government programs before you start the company. You don't need to have a company to hold someone under contract so, wether you decide or not to start one, you'll both be safe under it.
I've been giving the whole thing a lot of thought, and I think doing the whole thing under banner of a company will be better in the long run. And yes, I know I've still got a lot of reading up to do.
I'll look around if I don't have sample contracts lying around to give you an idea... Although I'm definitvely not the best person to talk about this (I'm pretty sure there are other members who have more experience than me with this) I hope this has helped you a bit.
It actually helped quite a lot, thanks
First my advice to you would be to look up by yourself all you can learn about business. I know it might be tedious and boring and difficult to wrap one's head around, but nobody will be able to teach you how to run your business and if you can't/won't make that work , then you're heading for disaster; because a running a business is a serious businesslot of work and nobody will do it in your place.
There are also web forums specialised in business where they'll probably be able to help you better (although the TIGS people might have a more specialized experience on the videogame business)
Haha, yeah, I didn't expect you guys to do the work for me, sorry if it sounded like that :D
I'm constantly reading up on more stuff. The major problem is that I can barely wrap my head around the my own country's laws, and now I have to wrap it around a few other countries' laws, too
I went with the problem to you guys since, as you already noticed, you guys are more vised with game development stuff, and there are some high-profile developers here on Tigsource that probably have a lot of experience with this already. That and you guys are generally always so helpful xD
I don't know which laws apply to your country(ies), one possibility that comes to my mind would be to consider everybody as shareholders in the company, thus every profit would be divided between everybody. I think that could work..maybe?....
Each participant would bring its work as part of the founding material and thus own a percentage of the company. That implies to wait until there is a suifficient body of work created.
I considered that already, but it sadly isn't as easy in my case, as we're quite a lot of people in quite a bit project :/
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