GeneralJist said:

I have a feeling that most of this is a theory, and not from experience.

I've had very nigh caliber people apply to my projects ,some of them with stable day jobs in the industry and surrounding fields.

This is from my admittedly limited experience on various forums. But perhaps I'm wrong. So, what successful rev-share projects have you completed? And by successful, I mean projects where people received compensatory payment for their work at the end. I mean you said you had good people, right? If you are still running rev-share projects that tends to mean your past projects weren't exactly world beaters.

I provide all business functions, from management,, to PR, to HR.

Right…….

GeneralJist said:

Also, yall may want to have a look at:

https://www.moddb.com/​

no one makes money on mods, yet wonderful content and long lasting teams work together, documented here.

No one is asking mod contributors to relinquish their copyright. No one is asking mod contributors to sign one-sided “employment”-style contracts. No one is treating mod contributors like unpaid employees. Mod contributors are de-facto partners by default, even if no contract is signed.

There is a world of difference between contributing for free to a free hobby project and contributing for free to a project that's there to make money for someone else.

GeneralJist said:
I feel judged…. Go to my website and see what I've and we've done.

I did exactly that, which is why I said that it looks very much like a hobbyist endeavour. Much of it does not come across as professional, such as the biography that goes into great detail about departed members.

What it sounds like is that someone approached you expecting to essentially become a technical co-founder, and you don't want that sort of arrangement. That's up to you, but it wasn't an unreasonable or even unusual request.

If I had one piece of advice to give you, I'd say you need to decide firmly which side of the fence you're on, hobby or business, and then commit to it.

GeneralJist said:

I feel judged….

Go to my website and see what I've and we've done.

Are we talking about Honor games? I see a mod. In any case, my point is when you say rev-share, that means people might be expecting to be paid at some point and want the game to be successful so they can recoup something for their time. Anything that is truly hobby is a different story. But someone serious may want some assurances that there is a payout at the end and therefore they feel they should be involved in the management.

I'm not really judging, but I just find questions about “hiring” practices in projects where there is no real guaranteed pay a bit odd. Make a deal or not. It's your decision. If the guy is so good maybe he's worth it. None of us here can know the extent of his skill.

My overall feeling about this kind of thing, still stands. If you are paying someone for work, then obviously partnership requests, refusal to sign contracts, etc. might be out of line. But for people contributing their time for no guaranteed pay, then you will likely have to make a lot of concessions.

I personally paid out everyone's hours.

I guess my question would be are we talking about something close to industry wages or is this just dividing up some small profits. Has anything actually made real money? Note I'm not claiming to be any more successful at game creation than you. My project is at this point a pipe dream, although I do work on it every day. I'm OK with that. It's just that I see a lot of people calling themselves a studio or game company, doing websites, and most of the time it seems a bit on the bogus side.

GeneralJist said:

So I'm in a bit of a situation.

We are looking for leads for art and code, and this very talented guy applies for lead coder.

All goes as expected, until he drops a bombshell, asking to become a partner in the business. He tells us this in our 1st interview, and reiterates it in his 2nd interview, which took place last night.

Normally I'd be willing to hear him out, as due to a variety of situations, I am the sole owner, where there used to be a few of us.

I explain to him that the last partners were people I've known and worked with since 2014, 2015, and 2011.

I barely know this person, yet he is asking for a stake of the business.

The success of our current project may hinge on this, if we are to make our self imposed deadline.

Maybe you should simplify things. . .

You mention your “current project." Given the context, specifically that you are posting here on gamedev, I'm assuming that project is probably a game, or something game-like.

Is this project supposed to generate revenue? If so, rather than talking about “stake in the business,” maybe the focus should be on the revenue for that specific project. Figure out what it takes to complete that project. Break things down into specific parts (programming, art, writing, etc). Give a percentage to each part of the project. Put these percentages in writing, before things get completed. Then, when things get finished, give everybody (including yourself) shares of any profits based on what they actually accomplished for that specific project.

If you do that, you remove the issues such as how well you know somebody, or how long you've worked with them. At the end of the day, it is all about what they specifically accomplished to make the project a reality. And I'd think that (if this is something like a game), the lead coder would be due a pretty large share of any profits.