R&D Terms and Conditions

When commissioning environment art with ShyStudios if your project is accepted you will be charged an upfront fee for research and design-development. This fee is dependent on your project's requirements and is non-refundable. By paying this fee you agree to all terms imposed. We also offer this research and design-development as a standalone service separate from a full environment art commission. This page represents the typical process and terms of our R&D agreements.

Research and design-development is a process that will allow us to provide you with a crystallized concept as to what you would get in a final complete product and allows us to more accurately give you a price and time estimate for your project. The time span of the R&D phase and its associated fees are dependent on your project needs. During this phase ShyStudios will take into account your project needs and work with you to come up with a design for an environment that is agreeable to both parties. The R&D phase does NOT provide you a finished working environment, game level, product, etc this phase only provides the base design documentation of an environment, game level, map, or any other term to describe the nature of the work.

We work with you closely to design your project, your input is extremely important for this phase, you will likely be required to review and approve various design revisions. We may require you to provide us with special access to your services for research purposes. For example, if you are commissioning us for a map on your gmod rp server, we may require you to provide us with special abilities or “rolls” on the server, usually things such as invisibility and noclip so we can more effectively analyze and understand the gameplay of your server. This design phase will help stop feature creep and change orders when we work on actually creating your environment or game level.

You are under no obligation to continue working with ShyStudios after the R&D phase is complete. ShyStudios is under no obligation to continue working with you after the R&D phase is complete.

Once the R&D phase is complete, if you do not wish to continue working with ShyStudios to completely develop your project we will deliver to you at your request all of our research and documentation for your project’s design. You are free to use this design as you see fit as long as it follows these license terms and conditions. You are free to, modify, or iterate upon the design as long as you or any parties involved credit ShyStudios for the design in the work or any derivative works. For example; you have chosen not to continue working with ShyStudios but you have taken our design to another artist to have it developed further and eventually this finished environment is used in a standalone game, completely different from the original game the design was intended for. You will still be required to credit ShyStudios in that game and pay a design royalty fee based on that game’s sales. ShyStudios retains all rights to the design of the work in perpetuity. Our designs are licensed to you under this agreement. Any transfer or change in ownership or permissive use of the design license is also bound to the license agreement and all parties must accept the terms of the license. It is your responsibility to inform any other parties about their obligation to the license in the case of ownership change or transfer of the design license.

If you choose to continue working with ShyStudios to develop your licensed design into a finished product, you must have a valid design license. When continuing with us ShyStudios revokes your design license and creates a new license agreement with you which covers the finished product, this may or may not include your rights to use the design in the future for non ShyStudios created works similar to how this license grants you those rights. These final work licenses are tailored to your project and your needs and are in no way represented by this R&D license.

When selling or transferring ownership of a design license ShyStudios is entitled to a royalty fee of 10% of the transaction total amount, or a static rate to be determined by ShyStudios. In the event of an ownership transfer without money directly involved in the transfer of the design license itself, for example if one company buys another company which owns a license to a ShyStudios design a sale/ transfer royalty fee will still need to be paid to ShyStudios.

If any licensed ShyStudios designs are used in any part of a commercial or private product or business operation, including but not limited to any company or individual earning money from any work or derivative work made using one of our designs, which makes over 6600 USD or equivalent value in gross revenue per financial year that individual, company, business, etc selling or operating any service or product using a ShyStudios design in any way shape or form will be required to pay ShyStudios an annual 6.6% of the gross revenue as a design royalty fee each year the gross revenue exceeds 6.6KUSD or equivalent revenue. This fee is compounding per design used and is also compounding with The ShyStudios Public Use License royalty fee, unless a separate licensing deal is made with ShyStudios. This fee applies ONLY to the design made by ShyStudios, other fees, royalties, or licensing agreements for the actual level, environment, map, bsp, models, textures, etc are covered in other licensing agreements and contracts. ShyStudios reserves the right to revoke a design license from any party at any time for any reason. ShyStudios reserves the right to modify the design license agreement at any time. When publicly distributing a free-of-charge work derived from a ShyStudios licensed design, the distributed copies of that public work are covered under the ShyStudios Public Use License.

Any entity who owns a valid ShyStudios design license is permitted to discard their license at their will by informing ShyStudios of the action and removing all information, documentation, finished products, derived works, etc from their ownership, sale, distribution, etc entirely including but not limited to maps, levels, games, videos, etc. ShyStudios reserves the right to invalidate any ownership of an abandoned design license, for example a company who owns a license to a ShyStudios design shows no intention of using the design, or if a company goes out of business suddenly. ShyStudios always maintains ownership over our designs, remember you are just licensing the use of our design from us.

IN SIMPLE TERMS:

R&D lets us create an agreeable design for your project before any work on the project begins.

At the end of the R&D phase ShyStudios provides you with a license to use a design as well as any documentation or reference materials created or gathered during this R&D phase if you request them, you need a valid design license for us to actually make you a finished product.

You agree to these license terms when you pay the R&D fee, in the case of design license ownership transfer or change the other parties are required to accept this license agreement as well.

ShyStudios always retains the rights to do what we want with our designs or any works derived from our designs.

If you have questions about this process please email Shy.