A question that many a person has asked is, what’s happening with the American McGee’s Alice franchise? After Madness Returns ended on a suggestive note, but no sequel materialized, McGee has found himself bombarded with inquiries regarding a further outing, much to his chagrin. To that end, he posted a rather snarky blog post a few days ago, and understandably so. It meanders through a few different things, the gist of which being that yes, he wants more Alice. But no, he can’t make it unless EA sign off… because they own the rights.

That’s all rights, up to and including complete control over funding and authorizing future games. To the extent that American McGee has no rights to even try self funding, even then he must take the pitch to EA and getting the go ahead from them first. But more on that in a moment. He also touched on a recent film project that tied in with the series, pointing out that films and other such works are handled differently, which is how the film was allowed to be made. Think of it like how Disney (Marvel) can publish Spider-Man comics, but Sony can make the films.

Now, all that is certainly important to the Alice fandom, but I want to go into a bit more detail about the rights issue because, quite frankly, that shit’s fucked up and seriously needs to change. This is something that affects, nee, something that infests every medium. The very concept that someone can take away your right, as the creator, to work on a property you invented. It just boggles the mind, and its absolutely disgusting. Though it is worth noting, this is something where the fault doesn’t solely lay with publishers and distributors, so just hold your horses a moment before jumping on the “EAz arz EVULZ” bandwagon.

Though there is certainly instances where a publisher has thrown around money to strip a creator of the rights to their creation, more often than not, it’s a decision made by the creator themselves. They sign away control in exchange for a publishing deal, or increased funding or some such. Typically because the company they’re pitching their idea to will offer to splash out more, in exchange for a greater share of the profits, and greater control of the potential franchise. But a great many creators tend to be more passionate about the project than their own paycheque.

So in a sense, it’s kind of your own fault if you agree to a contract like that, so I must confess (oh, how it pains me to do so) that McGee was a bit of a prat for agreeing to in the first place. Though I am not at all devoid of sympathy for the man, no matter what my personal opinion (spoiler: not high) of him may be. Because that whole “we’re not sure about the property, but give us control and we’ll give you more money” line is one that’s employed all too often to prey on the less business savvy, first time creators.

So, I think the key thing to really take away from this, the one thing that can affect all of us that is, if you have faith in your project, don’t be suckered in by it. Learn from McGee’s mistake, as I hope he has, that you should always, always keep control of your creation. Never sign those rights away to anyone, no matter how much they’ll fund it, no matter who they are, not even your own cat. Especially not in this day and age, when projects like Star Citizen have shown that anything can become a black hole of funding.

Also yeah, EA are cunts.