Amazon Games loosens rules on personal projects

Amazon Games has loosened its rules on personal game projects, a few weeks after the overly restrictive rules were roundly mocked on Twitter.

Bloomberg games reporter Jason Schreier learned about the change from Amazon employees. The change apparently came down via a memo sent by Amazon Games boss Mike Frazzini.

“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,” Frazzini wrote.

The rules in question required Amazon employees to use Amazon’s tools, list their projects in Amazon’s game store, and surrender IP rights to Amazon. Employees were also required to only have other Amazon employees as their collaborators on their personal projects.

Many game companies have a range of restrictions on what employees can do with personal projects, Amazon’s policy was the only one we’ve heard of that mandated employees use the tools that Amazon sells to other game developers, or restricted who they could work with.

Amazon’s policy change might help lure more developers to the company, now that they know they can work on personal projects without violating the terms of their employment.