Hosted Games Contracts

Hosted Games
1

So for both HG and CoG, it is written that “We accept work from authors under the age of 18 for [Hosted Games]. This requires a parent or guardian to be a signatory to your contract.” Which is understandable because part of the agreement between HG and the author is that, although the author retains IP, they give over some rights to electronic publishing. (This is so the author isn’t handing the game out elsewhere which would cause HG to lose money and maybe not even turn a profit [to the best of my knowledge].)

For those who don’t know, anyone under 18 (a minor), in the U.S., Can void any contract they are ‘bound’ by until they are 18 unless an adult(parent) has also signed the contract with them.

Onto my “completely hypothetical” question:
If a (almost) 17 y/o wanted to have their game published by HG but one parent lives 1,396 miles away and the other is the type of person who would divorce such a kind man, then is there any possible way for that 17 y/o to not have to wait a year and/or have a signatory parent?

Bonus Question

Does HG pay all taxes for income on their games, ie both their and the author’s income taxes (SS, state, federal, medicare, etc) or is the author responsible for those? I’m pretty sure I’ve read that employers withhold it from employees paychecks.
(I really suck at filling out 1040s)

2

Someone from CoG will have to answer your main question, but I will say that HG authors have to take care of all their taxes from their HGs.

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3

I’m not sure about the legalities. However, it takes months to write a game, and then once you finish it goes into a queue (as in, CoG processes games sequentially, and from submission to publication you have to wait several months). So, my own advice to this hypothetical person would be to start writing, playtest it, etc, and then officially submit. By the time all this is finished, if the person gets the contract before he/she is 18, he/she can just wait for a few months before signing it. Given the production queue that CoG/HG have, I doubt this will be a major issue to them. One year is really not that much time to write a game (Tokyo Wizard was 8 months from the time I started writing for the CSComp until it was published, though looking at some of my own WIPs and others on this site, normally these things take much longer!!)

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