Barriers to Fan Development of MO:RE

[katreeny]

Cyan is a US company, J'Kla, and subject to US law Can you imagine the mess if a company had to obey even just the employment laws of every country where it sold stuff? It's hard enough keeping track of just one country's laws.

Like it or not, the legal side is probably the biggest barrier to fan development efforts. Not just employment law, but tax law and a whole raft of other laws.

Katreeny

[D'Lanor]

I think some of you are missing J'Kla's point. But due to the nature of his point it is probably impossible for any US citizen to "get it".

[Zardoz]

My intent was to raise this issue, not resolve it. None of us, myself foremost, is competent to judge Robert's proposal in terms of a U.S. labor law that requires any U.S. company to meet certain labor standards, which may or may not apply to foreign workers. Raising the issue strengthens the proposal, in my view, because it implies some flexibility on how the relation could be structured to allow Cyan to satisfy that labor law. Perhaps any changes would be trivial, perhaps not. It's Cyan's duty to figure that out, not the proposal's.

[BAD]

I think some of you are missing J'Kla's point. But due to the nature of his point it is probably impossible for any US citizen to "get it".

Yes United States citizens could never understand something like that. We are all politically retarded.

Bitter? Oh you thought I was being sarcastic?

I think the biggest limitation for this idea is that people are forgetting that Cyan will still need full time employees to run the server and monitor the game. We could finish building the game for them, but beyond that the whole idea falters.

[J'Kla]

If Cyan see it as a fiscal problem maybe the answer is relocate to somewhere with a flexible attitude to finance and employment laws.

Hey how about the Sub-continent the worlds biggest democracy?

Yes Bad I am being ironic again and that does not mean I am using a dropped anvil to make a point.

I know Bad understands that the denizens of the original empire (like me) of which America was a colony. Like to rib the member of the said colony to see if they still twitch. It never ceases to surprise how easy it is to make a colonist think they are being criticised. When they are actually being ridiculed in a friendly way by a strong and loyal friend.

[katreeny]

If Cyan see it as a fiscal problem maybe the answer is relocate to somewhere with a flexible attitude to finance and employment laws.

Hey how about the Sub-continent the worlds biggest democracy?

Yes Bad I am being ironic again and that does not mean I am using a dropped anvil to make a point.

I know Bad understands that the denizens of the original empire (like me) of which America was a colony. Like to rib the member of the said colony to see if they still twitch. It never ceases to surprise how easy it is to make a colonist think they are being criticised. When they are actually being ridiculed in a friendly way by a strong and loyal friend.

Why on earth would you make a point with a dropped anvil? Wouldn't something a bit... well, pointier work better?

Katreeny (who is a displaced Aussie and does not do subtle)

p.s. If someone else wants to suggest Cyan relocate to somewhere with different laws, I'll watch the fireworks from a good LONG way off (Yes, yes, I know. You're joking)

[theclam]

Count me in!

(this is where you sign up to be a barrier, right?)

[Robert The Rebuilder]

I agree with Andy and his wife's assessment about volunteers. My previous company "employed" volunteer QA staff; right upfront they were presented with a volunteer contract that declared the "employee" would not receive any of the benefits of a regular employee. If the volunteer signed it, then they agreed to work under those conditions. [At the end of their session, we gave them a stipend - but that's at the discretion of the employer.]

I think the biggest limitation for this idea is that people are forgetting that Cyan will still need full time employees to run the server and monitor the game. We could finish building the game for them, but beyond that the whole idea falters.

We're not forgetting that. The assumption is that the income generated from MO:RE would be enough to pay for Cyan's time to maintain the servers. They would just need this proposed "bootstrapping" process to get started.

And I have a comment regarding Cyan letting coders work for free. Until Uru and D'mala set the precedent for this. The community had produced various fixes for age scripts that were tested on the UU shards and were provided to Cyan to incorporate into D'mala, which Cyan accepted and even acknowledged the various developers on their now-defunct D'ni Guilds forums. All this performed at no charge to Cyan.

[J'Kla]

In some way's it is sad that we all helped Cyan team up with Turner and that if that had not happened we could well still have UU and be working on a new beginning down that route.

Of course it is no use debating what might have been we are where we are and you can't change the past.

The worlds of Myst have staggered through multiple beginnings let's just hope the next phase is not too long in coming around.

[Chacal]

Cyan will still need full time employees to run the server and monitor the game.

I don't see why. I've ran servers and admined on-line games for companies on a volunteer basis for years. I'm supposed to be still doing it, in fact.