Copyright + Royalties For Video Game Music

Yes I said it... the word copyright, I know everyone just loves this topic xD

I know how basic copyright and royalites work with say, 'pop' songs, but i'm just curious to know if videogame music works any different.

Say, if I write a song for free for someone's videogame eg. main title theme, and then that videogame actually becomes commercially available or the game developer makes money out of it, do I get royalties from that?? Do I have to register every single song I write for a video game with a collection agency? (eg. APRA, AMCOS) I'm guessing I do.

if anyone could give me a brief rundown about how royalties work with video game music, that'd be much appreciated :)

Thanks, Jake.

As far as I know there's no royalties in Video Games. It's all "total buyout". Now huggling into your contract a %, or some kind of bonus scheme would be considered extremely generous from your clients, but you never know. And, since it's a "total buyout" forget about copyrights either. The industry simply does not work this way, it never was established and now it's too late.

At least to what I know, right? :)

As far as I know there's no royalties in Video Games. It's all "total buyout". Now huggling into your contract a %, or some kind of bonus scheme would be considered extremely generous from your clients, but you never know. And, since it's a "total buyout" forget about copyrights either. The industry simply does not work this way, it never was established and now it's too late.

At least to what I know, right? :)

Ah I see... that makse sense I guess. I guess you'd just get paid a wage, or a contracted amount for the work you do for the developer or company.

It just seems kinda sad that the people who have written all those famous video game tunes won't ever get royalties from them. I wonder if the developer/company would make money from royalties?

And then again it would be different if I had written a song, and then a developer wanted to use it in a game?

:s

Thanks for the info anyways :)

Dont really know much about this, but just as a point of reference, Nobuo Uematsu does not own rights to any of the music he wrote for Final Fantasy. It's all property of Squaresoft (SE)