As part of our Wig-Indies initiative, we’ve prepared a short, practical guide for developers on negotiating games publishing deals. You can find more details about Wig-Indies – including our completely free weekly drop-in clinics – here.

A publishing deal is potentially one of the most important contracts a developer will ever enter into regarding their game. A good one can see long-term partnerships thrive and successful games brought to life, whereas a bad one can lead to disputes about royalties, deadlines and even game / IP ownership.

Publishing deals are often fairly complex and unless you’ve been through the process several times before, there’s little substitute for getting a professional advisor involved (e.g. a lawyer, consultant, business advisor, veteran indie dev etc). However, we wanted to put together this guide to help identify some of the things which you might want to think about when negotiating a publishing deal.

Important note: this guide is for informal guidance purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.