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Comment by Pfhreak | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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

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