Less than half of developers say their studio has a credits policy, new survey finds

Less than half of developers questioned in a new survey say their company has an in-game credits policy.

The annual Developer Satisfaction Survey, held by the International Game Developers Association (IDGA), asked 777 respondents about a variety of aspects of their job (though all were asked different questions depending on their job).

Of those respondents asked about in-game crediting, only 48% said their studio or company had a game credits policy. 24% said there was no policy at all at their workplace, and 29% said they didn’t know.

13% of developers said they didn’t receive credit for their contribution to their last project. Over their careers, 55% said they always received credit for the games they worked on, 16% said they only sometimes did, 10% said they rarely did and 7% said they’ve never been credited.

Respondents were also asked if, given all the above, they were confident that they would be credited in the game they were currently working on.

71% said they were “very confident”, 12% said “somewhat confident”, 8% said “not too confident” and 9% said “not confident at all”.

When asked how this would change if they left the studio before it was released, however, far fewer were confident they would be listed in the credits.

In that situation, only 41% of respondents said they would be “very confident” they would be credited, with nearly a fifth (19%) saying they weren’t confident at all.

Of the freelance workers asked this question, 13% said they do not receive in-game credit for their contributions.

The issue of properly crediting developers in video games is long-standing, with numerous companies having been criticised for not giving proper credits to creators.

With no real regulation beyond IDGA guidelines – which aren’t enforceable – game developers are effectively at the mercy of their employers as to how, where or if they’re credited.

IGDA guidelines advise that anybody who has worked on a game’s development for 30 days (or 5%) must be credited.

A recent high-profile example of a failure to credit was Baldur’s Gate 3, after localisation company Altagram apologised and committed to change after it left a significant portion of the game’s  translation team out of the game’s credits.