3 hours ago, Corbbin Goldsmith said:

I'm building out a game idea, with nearly every interaction laid out and planned, I will be building it soon, but I need to know what generally tends to happen when you release it too soon. Has anyone ever had their game idea completely stolen? If so, what was your experience?

There is nothing you can do regarding ideas because regardless many people have similar ideas anyway. A lot of my "dream" games are pulled from other people's ideas, and my own mixed in. Don't we all get inspiration from things already done? Trying to "prevent" idea theft is a waste of time and energy. Protecting IP theft is another story.

If by chance someone is making the same game as you and not copying IP, then it's your job to create more value than the other party. It's common to see game developers that are making titles in direct competition with another title.

At the end of the day, an idea that isn't put forth and implemented is worthless. It can cost a lot of money and time to design and create a game with any given concept.

Don't focus on protecting your idea, focus on making a quality product. If someone copies your game, it will force you to adapt to stay in the game or fail. In business there is always competition, and someone else is already working that much harder to make their game the best it can be.

There is also great value in developing openly because you can create a following and interest early on, plus get valuable feedback. Developing in the dark has its cons, such as thinking you have an amazing game but the general player base you're targeting doesn't feel that way, and you won't know until it's too late to make changes.

I've lost count.

4 hours ago, Corbbin Goldsmith said:

I'm building out a game idea, with nearly every interaction laid out and planned, I will be building it soon, but I need to know what generally tends to happen when you release it too soon. Has anyone ever had their game idea completely stolen? If so, what was your experience?

@Scouting Ninja and @Rutin consider this scenario (applies not only with game ideas/designs but across the board) - you are a lonewolf developer or at most a small team of 3 developers. You've spent countless hours researching, burning your brain cells to innovate and come up with original exciting ideas. Cash-strap, you guys are mentally exhausted and just want develop an initial lite, low cost version of your idea and make some initial money to fund your optimised sequels (irrespective of money raised from crowd funding, you guys are still cash-strapped and seriously depleted). Your aim is to become mega big by your 3rd or 4th shipping, at least thats the plan

Then there is this massive and very rich team with >50 developers. Fresh, but devoid of innovative ideas

You chums being so naive remain open with your design and ideas, even your step by step plan of shipping

Anyways this mega team wisely nicks your ideas, up to your future release plans, add some of their cosmetics stuff - with >50 developers and no problems with funds, they have no problems at all making your full optimised ideas in no time. 

You guys did all the ground work, they take all the glory as innovators

They render your lite version... even your futuristic shipping obsolete 

It was your brilliance that gave birth to the ideas, they reap all the rewards

You guys burnt the mid-night oil, are exhausted and penniless, whille they remain fresh, rich and still counting

Don't say this can never happen, (not just game ideas/designs) if it ideas is really top class innovative, and original, it will worth it for some hawks to nick it. If it doesn't happen to you then they think its not good enough to worth stealing

Moral of the story:: be moderately cautious with your design/ideas. Not saying you should be completely closed. But try to be wise, not stupid. Smart and not naive 

3 minutes ago, grumpyOldDude said:

@Scouting Ninja and @Rutin consider this scenario (applies not only with game ideas/designs but across the board) - you are a lonewolf developer or at most a small team of 3 developers. You've spent countless hours researching, burning your brain cells to innovate and come up with original exciting ideas. Cash-strap, you guys are mentally exhausted and just want develop an initial lite, low cost version of your idea and make some initial money to fund your optimised sequels (irrespective of money raised from crowd funding, you guys are still cash-strapped and seriously depleted). Your aim is to become mega big by your 3rd or 4th shipping, at least thats the plan

Then there is this massive and very rich team with >50 developers. Fresh, but devoid of innovative ideas

You chums being so naive remain open with your design and ideas, even your step by step plan of shipping

Anyways this mega team wisely nicks your ideas, up to your future release plans, add some of their cosmetics stuff - with >50 developers and no problems with funds, they have no problems at all making your full optimised ideas in no time. 

You guys did all the ground work, they take all the glory as innovators

They render your lite version... even your futuristic shipping obsolete 

It was your brilliance that gave birth to the ideas, they reap all the rewards

You guys burnt the mid-night oil, are exhausted and penniless, whille they remain fresh, rich and still counting

Don't say this can never happen, (not just game ideas/designs) if it ideas is really top class innovative, and original, it will worth it for some hawks to nick it. If it doesn't happen to you then they think its not good enough to worth stealing

Moral of the story:: be moderately cautious with your design/ideas. Not saying you should be completely closed. But try to be wise, not stupid. Smart and not naive 

  

I don't believe I made any claim that it couldn't happen, but the opposite... It's impossible to prevent anyone from coming around the bend and picking up your idea. Even if you hide development until the final stage which doesn't make sense from a marketing standpoint, someone can still hire a team and remake your game even better than you did. This is straight business, and the nature of the competitive nature we live in. If someone sees a golden nugget and they're able to take advantage of the situation, they will, wouldn't you if you had money to throw away with a chance to generate a great return? There is a big difference in the mind set of game developers doing this because we love to create games with a hope people will buy it, and big companies ran by shareholders hiring development teams to generate profit. Outside of the game industry this happens regularly in manufacturing, but it doesn't mean everyone should just shut down.

With your logic why should anyone who isn't a 50 man team even bother making games? Someone can just hire a team and out do you, right? Living in a fear based condition looking over your shoulder about what "might" happen is counter productive and not healthy. In any business the small guy can be eaten up because the larger business has more capital to work with, but that doesn't mean it will happen in every case. Some people don't even like dealing with big game publishers because of the lack of community support, pricing policies, pay to win practices, ect...

I own a few business, and one outside of Game Development that is in direct competition with many larger firms that could put me out tomorrow due to capital advantage, but it doesn't happen because my clients prefer the more personalized service. Do you think I wake up each day thinking "Oh my, I better not release my new product or service because that bigger company can just rip it off and out do me." That's called being cooked in the squat.

Time and energy is better spent on making the best product you can, not worrying about the millions of potential negative situations. It has nothing to do with being naive. Your ideas and design will come out one way or another because it's not practical to market your game without showing something.

As I understand it, game ideas are rarely stolen. Can it happen? Absolutely. Has it happened? Again absolutely (or at least, I'm highly certain it has happened at least once). But it doesn't happen often enough to really be concerned by it. Think of it this way: how many unique ideas are generated and shipped/built out by the fairly large amount of game devs/designers in today's Internet connected world? I'd be willing to bet you that 99% of them aren't stolen. As @Scouting Ninja pointed out, it's much easier to simply work on your own idea rather than waste time searching through tons of ideas out there, understand it, then expand it and develop it.

Don't be naive, as in, don't simply give away your IP rights to someone (i.e. sign a contract that literally states that you have no rights to your IP). But at the same time, realize that game design theft is at best a rare occurrence. 

Has anyone here ever heard of this happening? I've never heard nor seen it happen. Though my own experience is limited to be fair, since I'm not a proper game dev, so maybe I'm mistaken.

10 hours ago, Anthony Serrano said:

Here's the fundamental flaw in your scenario: you're assuming that the "big, rich developer" actually highly values innovation. In reality, they are going to be conservative and risk-averse, because the simple fact of the matter is that you cannot predict the public's taste, and the market does not reward innovation in general - especially not the market space that large developers operate in. That developer is not going to risk a sizeable sum of money on an unproven idea, and if they want to look for ideas to copy, their going to be looking at their direct competitors, not some ragtag gang of indie devs. If your idea is even of value to them, they'll let your own game function as proof of concept rather than risk their own money.

Your idea is far, far more likely to be "stolen" after you ship and attain some modicum of success, not before.

 

I have to admit that you are correct .... well with a but......

...there is another way of looking at it. Big companies can take the risk of untested ideas because they can absorb the loses if it fails

There are many examples of this having happened, but just to mention one....

Remember Google Glasses? That was untested, Google took the risk, and it failed spectacularly even before it took off. I don't know how many millions Google spent on R&D for this project, but the fact that they had to bin it did not dent Google's profit a bit. It would have crippled a smaller company. In fact a much smaller company with very limited funds would be stupid to take such a risk, which if it fails, will kill them. Companies that can absorb losses from their other profitable projects are better off taking such risks

16 hours ago, Rutin said:

With your logic why should anyone who isn't a 50 man team even bother making games? Someone can just hire a team and out do you, right? Living in a fear based condition looking over your shoulder about what "might" happen is counter productive and not healthy.

Edit:   Mis-read your post earlier today (that always happens when i read from mobile) reading again from my Laptop, i realised I misunderstood you.  Yeah i get your point now