Publishing contracts are written for unreleased games. Here is what to change.

Standard publishing contracts are written for a game that hasn’t launched. We read the two that indie publishers post for anyone to download, Raw Fury’s and Whitethorn Games’. In both, deadlines and exit terms are measured from a release. Neither mentions money the game earned before you signed. Both repay the publisher from all of the game’s revenue before you see a share.

If your game is already out and an offer is coming, this is for you. Neither contract is unfair for the case it was written for, and both publishers deserve credit for posting them. But a template built for a first launch leaves a released game’s most valuable facts undefined.

We make games too. The first time you hold a contract like this, the clauses that matter in year three look like boilerplate. These are the ones we would read twice.

The deadlines in both contracts run from a launch you already had

Raw Fury’s agreement, the English version of June 27, 2022, uses the word “release” 13 times and names a Final Delivery Date 14 times. That is the date you hand over a Gold Master, the finished, locked build, and the publisher aims to release within three months.

Your duty to fix bugs runs for three months after “the initial release”. The ban on making a similar game lasts one year from “the date of release”. The publisher’s rights to future consoles cover ten years “following the release date”.

Whitethorn’s template, from the second quarter of 2025, works the same way. It defines a Launch Date as “the official public release of the initial version” and lets the publisher set it. Miss the Gold Master date or the Launch Date and the publisher can end the deal at once, or charge a penalty.

Unless both sides agree, you can leave only once 60 months have passed since the Launch Date, or once the publisher has been paid twice its funding, whichever is later.

For a game already on Steam, every one of those dates is ambiguous. Is “release” the day you launched two years ago, or the day the publisher relaunches it? Read one way, the non-compete has run out and the 60-month clock is partly spent. Read the other way, both start over. And what you are really delivering is a 1.0, a port, an update or a translation, not a Gold Master.

What to change: replace launch dates with the work being paid for. Name the deliverable, what counts as done, and its date. Then define every remaining reference to “release” or “Launch Date” as either the original launch or the first publisher-funded update, in writing.

Neither contract mentions the money your game already makes

Raw Fury defines revenue as everything the publisher receives from the game. It recovers its advance, a 15% markup on that advance, its service costs and its marketing commitment from that revenue first. Its words: “no revenue is shared with Developer” until all of it is repaid. After that, revenue splits 50/50.

Whitethorn takes 100% of net revenue until its advance and its share of porting and localization costs are recouped; its royalty rates are blank.

Both assume the publisher started the revenue. Yours has sales already, and under either contract they would start repaying the publisher the day you sign.

Here is what that does, with round numbers. Say your game pays you $3,000 a month after Steam’s cut and taxes. A publisher offers $60,000 to fund a 1.0, plus $10,000 of services, on Raw Fury’s structure. With the markup, that is $79,000 to recoup. Say the 1.0 lifts revenue by half, to $4,500 a month.

• While it recoups: $79,000 at $4,500 a month takes about 18 months. You receive no sales income in that time, including the $3,000 a month you were earning before.
• After it recoups: half of $4,500 is $2,250 a month. That is $750 less than you made alone.
• Break-even: at a 50% share, the game has to double before your monthly income matches what you had.

The advance is real money for real work, and it may be the only way the 1.0 gets made. The question is whether the sales you already had should repay it. At the 32.1% average publishers take in no-advance deals, a publisher has to grow your revenue 47% just to break even. With an advance recouped from everything, the bar is higher.

What to change: ask for a baseline. Agree on what the game earns now, say its average over the last six months. That amount stays yours, outside the recoup and the split, or the publisher’s share applies only to revenue above it.

Expect a baseline to cost you something elsewhere, such as a longer recoup or a larger share of the uplift. Name that trade before you sign, not after.

The rights you grant reach past what you are funding

Raw Fury’s contract is exclusive and worldwide. You deliver the Windows version, and the publisher holds the rights to mobile, Mac and Linux, Xbox, Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, and successors released within ten years. It gets a right of first offer on sequels and DLC. You can swap that right for a perpetual 5% of gross revenue from them.

Whitethorn’s grant covers “all languages and formats”. It bars sequels, prequels and DLC made elsewhere for as long as the agreement lasts, which has no fixed end. It also bars you from using any outside publishing, marketing or distribution service during that time without its permission.

Before launch, usually nobody else holds any of those rights. After launch, someone might. You may have self-published a Switch port, signed a console deal with a porting house, or listed the game on GOG. You may have a sequel half designed. Both contracts also ask you to promise that nothing you have signed conflicts with them.

Other companies often hold those rights already. In our match of Steam’s indie catalogue against Nintendo’s store, half of the late Switch ports came through a company not credited on Steam.

What to change: list what you already have, platform by platform and deal by deal, and carve it out. Limit the grant to the platforms the publisher will actually fund. Give the sequel clause an end date, or a right to negotiate rather than a right to publish.

Whitethorn’s template also lets the publisher add a splash screen with its logo and hand out keys for deals such as Game Pass without asking you. That is ordinary publishing work, but in a game people already bought from you, they notice. Agree in writing what may change in the shipping build.

How you get the game back depends on terms you have to add

Raw Fury’s agreement runs “in perpetuity”. The ways out are a breach by either side, or the publisher stopping its monthly advances.

If you breach and don’t fix it in 30 days, the publisher can demand its money back, or take all rights to the game “free of charge”. Once it has recouped, it keeps exclusive distribution for 12 months after any ending other than its own breach. Its contract also says it is “not obligated to make or continue to make the Game commercially available.”

Whitethorn’s runs “indefinitely”. The publisher can leave on 30 days’ notice at any time. You can leave on the terms above. One clause works in your favour. If Whitethorn decides to stop marketing or distributing the game, it releases its rights so you can find another publisher.

An unreleased game that doesn’t work out has little left to lose. A released game has its store page, its reviews and its players. On Steam, those stay with the app if it moves to a publisher’s account, and payments follow it from the effective date (how Steam app transfers work). Whoever controls the app controls your income.

What to change: add a way back that doesn’t need a breach. Rights could revert if revenue stays under an agreed floor for six months, if the publisher stops selling the game, or once a set period after recoup passes. Decide in writing whose Steamworks account the app sits on and, if it moves, how it moves back. Strike any clause that hands the game to the publisher on a breach you could fix with money.

When signing one of these is the wrong move

When the game earns enough that the baseline does the repaying. If the publisher can’t show where the extra revenue comes from, you are funding its advance with sales you already had.

When the work being paid for is small. A translation doesn’t need perpetual, worldwide rights on every console. A service contract or a work-for-hire porting deal may cost less in the long run.

When the offer is the template, unchanged. Treat both as starting points. Raw Fury’s page invites questions about its agreement, and Whitethorn calls its document a template. A publisher that won’t discuss the release-specific terms is telling you how the next five years will go.

None of this is legal advice. Both contracts choose their own law: Swedish law with arbitration in Stockholm for Raw Fury, Pennsylvania courts for Whitethorn. Have a games lawyer read the version you are offered before you sign it.

What to settle before you sign

1. The baseline. What the game earns now, and whether that money repays anything.
2. The deliverable. The update, 1.0, port or translation being funded, what done means, and when.
3. What “release” means. The original launch or the publisher’s first funded update, for every clause that counts from it.
4. What you already have. Existing platforms, stores, ports and deals, carved out by name.
5. Follow-ups. Sequels and DLC: a right to negotiate, with an end date.
6. The Steam app. Whose account it sits on, and what happens to it at the end.
7. The way back. A reversion trigger that doesn’t depend on anyone breaching.
8. The build. What may change in the game your players already own.

If you are earlier than this, still finding someone to talk to, most publishers fund launches, and that changes who to approach. Money that doesn’t come with a publishing deal at all is the subject of which indie game funds pay for a released game. Strike Two pays for what comes next on games that are already built, so weigh this post with that in mind. What we have committed to publicly is in our FAQ.

How we read them

On October 20, 2026, we downloaded Raw Fury’s publishing agreement from the folder linked on its Developer Resources page. We used the English version dated June 27, 2022, the newest in the folder; Raw Fury says the English version is the one it uses in business. We read Whitethorn Games’ “Publishing Agreement Template”, a 21-page file titled Q2 2025, from its transparency page. Counts and quotes come from the extracted text. Our notes, with the clause behind each claim, are kept with our research.

These are two templates, not a survey of signed deals. Negotiated contracts differ, and either publisher may have changed its terms since. For averages across more than 130 agreements, Voyer Law’s 2026 report is the widest public benchmark, and we broke down its numbers here. The worked example is our arithmetic on Raw Fury’s structure with invented round numbers. It leaves out taxes, refunds and timing.