Amazon horrible policy with employees working on personal games

[Legend]

Not being able to use company resources for personal projects is super standard. There can be issues but it's what people expect.

These rules however are crazy.

• Must sell the game on Amazon stores.
• Must make the game using Amazon services, but pay for them yourself.
• Personal games are for artistic expression only. They can not be financially successful, compete with Amazon games, or involve outside dev help.
• Amazon owns all games you make, but you own them too.

Back in 2018, I got offered a software development engineer job at Amazon. I was ready to accept the offer too, paid pretty well.

Had to turn it down due to absolutely draconian rules regarding hobbyist game dev.

All this because Amazon Game Studios is grossly incompetent. pic.twitter.com/lzs4LintkX

— James Liu (@james7132) July 6, 2021

[Legend]

AFAICT, this applies globally to all 500,000+ Amazon employees. If you or someone else you know is actively applying for a job at Amazon or is currently employed by Amazon, and working on a game project, please share this with them.

— James Liu (@james7132) July 6, 2021

[the-pi-guy]

This is worse than I was expecting, wow.  

"I own my game, however Amazon owns all the rights to it". Absolutely wonderful.  

Love how they are framing it as some kind of duty:
"To help Amazon, I will use their services and sell my games on their market wherever possible".


Suddenly I feel like I dodged a bullet not working there.  

[the-pi-guy]

Amazon said Thursday it was immediately eliminating the rules. "These policies were originally put in place over a decade ago when we had a lot less information and experience than we do today, and as a result, the policies were written quite broadly," Mike Frazzini, the Amazon Game Studios boss, wrote in the email to staff.

Amazon Game Studios told staff today it is dropping its controversial policies for personal games, Bloomberg has learned. Previously, moonlighting staff would have to use Amazon software/stores and grant the company license to use any IP they created https://t.co/g1qCZ3HFPH

— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) August 12, 2021