About being an anonymous developer
I can think of one very good reason to want to remain anonymous, is fear that somebody will simply try to stop you doing business. It feels as if the entire legal system right now is stacked heavily against you if you are a nobody wanting to start your own business. It may be that you lack the resources to register an LLC, but don't want your life effectively ended by some massive corporation (this is where paranoia kicks in) you can disappear. In that critical time between announcing a product and having the funds to employ defensive legal tactics, you want to be able to up ship and disappear as soon as any kind of predatory lawyer threatens you with anything.
The idea being that, if you get sued for using a common sense approach to do a common task in your game or software, and your company is in danger of collapse, you simply disappear. If you get sued because you used a noun or verb but was already in the dictionary before the copyright was filed, you disappear. Banksy is a pretty good example of this kind of mentality. His (we assume he is a bloke because of the occasional CCTV footage) artwork usually provokes a reaction from society, either because people view it as vandalism or because it poses an awkward question; the only way for this artist to protect himself from being sued into oblivion is to be anonymous.
The idea being that, if you get sued for using a common sense approach to do a common task in your game or software, and your company is in danger of collapse, you simply disappear. If you get sued because you used a noun or verb but was already in the dictionary before the copyright was filed, you disappear. Banksy is a pretty good example of this kind of mentality. His (we assume he is a bloke because of the occasional CCTV footage) artwork usually provokes a reaction from society, either because people view it as vandalism or because it poses an awkward question; the only way for this artist to protect himself from being sued into oblivion is to be anonymous.
The idea being that, if you get sued for using a common sense approach to do a common task in your game or software, and your company is in danger of collapse, you simply disappear. If you get sued because you used a noun or verb but was already in the dictionary before the copyright was filed, you disappear. Banksy is a pretty good example of this kind of mentality. His (we assume he is a bloke because of the occasional CCTV footage) artwork usually provokes a reaction from society, either because people view it as vandalism or because it poses an awkward question; the only way for this artist to protect himself from being sued into oblivion is to be anonymous.
"people view it as vandalism"? The definition of vandalism is both simple and clear. Even though many of his works are very creative and talented pieces of art, under the law almost all were done without consent and clearly qualify as vandalism.
Even high quality and beautiful vandalism is still vandalism.
Even if the person wants to keep it around, if it was done without permission it still fits the legal definition of vandalism in both the US and UK where he has done it.
As for his identity, it IS known. He has quite a few people who know him and help him out. It is just that they can be trusted to keep the identity secret from those outside their trusted group.
So too with people who want to do business anonymously.
The person must establish very clear legal trail, mostly for money laundering and tax concerns, but also in this industry for IP rights and other various legal issues. Once those are taken care of --- generally through a business lawyer who is known to be the intermediary and also has the protection of law to not reveal the identity --- it is simply a matter of keeping your mouth shut. Better to trust no-one, but if you must, only involve certain trustworthy people.
You don't realize it, but there are already several such people who participate in game development communities anonymously. They give a pseudonym, and everyone thinks they are dealing with so-and-so, never realizing that it isn't their real given name. Even me, "Frob", I don't directly give out my name on the forums but I also don't protect it, you can find it with about three button clicks.
It is not my real name. Most names on public forums are fictitious. Yet you don't think twice about posting to this forum full of pseudonyms.
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