Carmageddon dev prioritises IP retention

Stainless Games CEO Patrick Buckland says independent developers should try to hold on to original intellectual property rather than sign it away to publishers.

"It should be avoided if you can, but good luck with trying," the studio leader told GamesIndustry of signing away rights to IP.

Stainless recently regained the IP rights to Carmageddon, but Buckland related an anecdote from the time SCi owned the franchise.

"After we finished Carmageddon 2, SCi said to us – literally the day after – 'right, off we go then, Carmageddon 3' and we went 'woah, hang on a minute, we’ve been doing nothing but Carma for three years, give us a break a minute and a chance to work on something else,'" he said.

"So they went off and brought someone else in. Obviously if we’d known that they were going to get someone else, then we’d have done it."

According to Buckland, Stainless is in talks with possible publishers for Carmageddon, some of whom have indicated they won't demand the rights to the series - but negotiations are proving tricky.

"They're putting a lot of money into this, they’re going to market it – what they're doing is building up somebody else's brand," Buckland offered.

"So I think the only way you can get a deal like that at the moment is by offering a lot of sequels and derivative rights and whatever, because otherwise why should they do it?"

Stainless is currently developing Carmageddon: Reincarnation.