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Comment by bakenator | Hacker News Reader

I'm just curious, what was your experience trying to develop games in your spare time? Were you told to stop?

There's an explicit company policy about game development that is separate from their open source policy. It, among other things, prevents you from working on a game project with anyone else.

Why games though? I don’t see any obvious reasons why they would care.

I always thought that they were doing it because they had a really low opinion of their own game studio. Maybe they were trying to kill as much future competition as they were able to (legally).

I’d say that opinion is fair considering I had no idea they even had their own game studio.

Their first (and only) title they seem to be pushing hard to the public (in my opinion, at least. The Grand Tour Game wasn't really marketed): https://www.newworld.com/en-us

I see some. Top of my head :

Games development are limitless in scope and technical complexity and very passion driven. So, a developer could spend countless hours each night improving his game.

Next day, all the team has is a tired developer, drinking coffee and unable to code straight or analyse issues without missing subtleties.

Opening a wordpress for your mom and her gardening hobby is a significantly less time consuming task.

If they're trying to avoid people coming to work tired, presumably they also have a no-children policy for their staff?

I'm sure they would if it wasn't against the law.

That generally wouldn't be legal.

In the early days of Amazon, Bezos rejected bus passes for employees stating bus passes encourage people to leave work to a a timetable and he would prefer them to be at office and leave only when they can.

Wow. They say that policies are organizational scar tissue. I'd love to see the blow that inflicted this particular wound.

This why I won't leave California. Employers can't tell me what i do in my spare time and can't sue me over a "non compete" if I leave.

People sometimes do, they just don't publicize it. It's specifically noted in the intellectual property agreement, though nobody seems to be sure why.

Search inside for the 'Game Development Policy', it's separate from the intellectual property commitment. Reasoning is likely from Amazon Games Studios? I think there may be a concern that someone at Amazon might make the next flappy bird or Minecraft and Amazon couldn't capitalize on it.

The one time I met an Amazon games studio employee my response was, “Amazon has a games studio?”

He said it was a common response.

Heh. I worked in Amazon Games for a bit. It was a very common question. Along with, "What games have they made?" (Breakaway a 'sports brawler', The Grand Tour game a tie in for the show, New World an mmo about being a colonizer, Crucible a third person shooter.)

Woah, totally surprised by the New World mmo.

That looks like a PR landmine.

This is the only rationale I can come up with for the game development policy: AGS hasn't produced anything in 8 years and what they have in the pipeline looks disappointing so...cross your fingers and hope one of your employees makes the next Minecraft.

If it's in your own free time on your own hardware why would Amazon be able to capitalize on it? Employees are not slaves.

Salaried employees don't have free time.

I'm going to assume this is sarcasm.

Noncompete agreements are legal in many places outside California

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