Idea

I love solo gamedev, but let's be honest—the chances of financial success are tiny.
The market saturation and the quality level of existing games are simply too high.

I would like to go full-time, but I also have responsibilities. All I can give is my time, experience, and passion. However, as a single person with these constraints, you can only achieve "so much."

There are thousands of gamedevs in a similar situation, resulting in countless games that are never played by a proper audience or, let alone, ever earn actual money.

With this rev-share framework, I aim to create an environment where like-minded individuals can join, contribute, and create something bigger together—
all with maximum autonomy, personal responsibility, minimal overhead, and a fair chance of earning money.

Contract

The owner and all contributors track their working hours on each commit they create on GitHub.
Revenue Share Formula:
Your Worked Hours / Total Worked Hours of All Contributors = Your Share of Monthly Net Revenue
Once revenue is generated and upfront costs are covered, distribution occurs monthly.
Tracked hours can never be invalidated—they always ensure the right to revenue share, even if a contributor leaves the project.
Shares below 0.1% are excluded—contributors with total work hours below 1/1000th of the total project will not be considered for revenue sharing.

Process

Task Assignment

Contributors suggest new tasks or take one from the Kanban board.
The owner and contributor agree on workload estimation before starting the task.

Work Completion & Tracking

Once completed, the work is reviewed by the owner.
The actual worked hours get tracked.
If the actual hours exceed 100% of the original estimate, additional approval is required.

Valid vs. Non-Valid Work

Only concrete work that moves the project forward is counted.
The owner has the right to count organisational/management tasks for the project
Thinking about ideas, discussions, research, and gamedev tutorials are not counted.

Ownership & Contributor Rights

The owner retains full intellectual property (IP) rights over the final game and its brand.
Contributors grant the owner a perpetual, royalty-free license to use their contributions in the project.
Contributors retain the right to reuse their own work (code, assets, art, etc.) in other projects, as long as they do not create a direct competitor or near-identical game using those assets.
Contributors do not have the right to redistribute or sell the full game, brand, or any proprietary parts of the final product.
Contributors are not legal employees.

Financial Responsibilities

All initial investments (bought assets, Play Store/App Store fees, Git LFS, server costs, etc.) will be paid upfront by the owner.
These costs will be recovered from the first revenue before any payouts to contributors.
All tracked hours, costs, and revenue streams will be transparently logged in a Google Sheet, accessible to all contributors.
If the project is sold, the same revenue share applies to the sale price.

Dispute Resolution

If any dispute arises between the owner and a contributor, both parties agree to resolve it via arbitration instead of lawsuits.

Arbitration Process:

Both parties choose a neutral third-party mediator.
If no agreement is reached, the matter is settled via binding arbitration under the rules of an arbitration provider or online mediation platform.
Each party covers its own costs unless otherwise decided by the arbitrator.

Contract Signing and Modifications

All contributors and the Owner must sign this Contract.
This contract can only be changed with the agreement of all active and former contributors.

Explanations & Justifications

Why Track Hours?

While tracking hours might be a turnoff and seem unnecessary when things run smoothly and everyone is committed. But they give answers when things go not according to plan. While I also view equal partnerships as the ideal case, things get complicated quickly when members cannot contribute for some time or want to leave the project entirely.

When working with strangers on the internet—without mutual trust, like in personal relationships—hard numbers are needed to guarantee fairness.

Why Not Democracy?

I am a firm believer in democracy, and I originally started writing a ruleset where every contributor is equal.
However, I concluded that it is simply not possible without lawyers and a huge bureaucratic overhead.

While I will always try to involve contributors in important decisions and keep an open ear for suggestions, the final say will always rest on me.