FAQ

The League of Game Developers is a trade association — a permanent, member-funded, member-governed professional organization built for the people who make games. It is structured as a 501(c)(6) under U.S. federal tax law, which is the classification that exists specifically for organizations formed to advance shared professional interests. Chambers of commerce are 501(c)(6) organizations. So are bar associations, medical societies, and the trade groups that represent virtually every other professional industry.

A 501(c)(6) can collect dues, provide member services, publish research and standards, host events and training, advocate for the profession, and lobby legislators. It is not a charity. It exists to strengthen a profession. That is what The League does.

A 501(c)(3) is a charity — organized around a public-benefit mission, funded in part by tax-deductible donations. A 501(c)(6) is a professional association — organized around the interests of its members, funded by dues.

The practical difference: charitable donations may be tax-deductible as charitable contributions. Dues to a 501(c)(6) are generally deductible as a professional or business expense, depending on your circumstances and jurisdiction. Consult a tax professional for specifics.

If you want philanthropy, this is not that. If you want professional infrastructure for the people who make games, this is exactly that.

No. A union collectively bargains with employers on behalf of its members. The League is a trade association — it provides professional infrastructure, advocates for the profession, and lobbies for legislative change.

But here is what matters more than the label: nothing about League membership prevents you from joining a union, forming a union, or organizing collectively at your workplace. The League's Charter (Article 5) explicitly commits the organization to supporting the conditions under which members can organize, should they choose to. The legal referral network, the Know Your Rights resource, the salary transparency database — all of these make organizing more possible, not less.

The League is not a union because its legal structure doesn't permit collective bargaining. That is a structural constraint, not a philosophical position. If you want to organize, The League is designed to be the institution that makes that easier.

Every professional creative industry has faced this exact structural crisis, and every one of them organized their way through it.

In 1919, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith founded United Artists because the studio system would not let artists control their own work. In 1933, actors formed the Screen Actors Guild because the studios that profited from their talent would not protect their working conditions. In 1948, the Supreme Court's Paramount Decree broke the vertical integration that had let studios control production, distribution, and exhibition simultaneously — the same consolidation now replicated by platforms that make the hardware, run the storefront, publish the games, and set the terms.

The pattern is the same every time. A creative industry generates enormous value. Capital consolidates around that value. The people who create it are reduced to interchangeable inputs. And eventually, the practitioners build the institutional infrastructure to protect themselves.

The game industry generates more revenue than film and recorded music combined. Its workforce has fewer structural protections than either. The infrastructure is not just overdue. It is decades overdue.

Anyone who works in or has worked in game development, in any discipline, at any level of experience, in any country.

Engineers. Designers. Artists. Technical artists. Producers. Audio professionals. QA practitioners. Writers. Narrative designers. Level designers. Systems designers. Community managers. Localization specialists. UX researchers. And everyone else who contributes to the making of games.

No credential is required. No shipped title is required. No current employment is required. If you have dedicated professional effort to this craft, you belong here. The Charter (Article 2) makes this explicit.

No.

There are no corporate memberships. No studio, publisher, platform holder, investor, or other corporate entity may hold membership, purchase governance influence, or fund League activities in exchange for preferential access.

This is deliberate. It addresses the most common failure mode in professional organizations: capture. When corporations can buy seats, they buy outcomes. When institutional donors set conditions, they set priorities. The League's Charter (Article 3) includes anti-capture provisions designed to prevent this through structure that cannot be changed without member ratification.

The interests this organization represents are the interests of practitioners. That alignment is enforced by design, not by goodwill.

Not through The League.

The League will not accept corporate-sponsored memberships, bulk corporate dues programs, or any arrangement in which an employer purchases memberships on behalf of employees. If your employer reimburses professional development expenses under its own internal policy, that is between you and your employer — but the transaction with The League is between The League and you as an individual.

The reason is the same reason there are no corporate memberships: money is influence, and influence must flow from members.

Right now, the founding pledge is a signal. It answers a question: is there enough demand for this to justify building it?

The money funds formation work — legal filings, operational setup, initial infrastructure — and it funds the first member services described on the Member Services page. But the $10 is less important as revenue than it is as signal. If the number of people who say "yes, this should exist" reaches the threshold that makes The League viable, we build it. If it doesn't, we go back and figure out what we got wrong.

This is how institutions should form. Not on a founder's conviction that they know what the industry needs. On demonstrated demand from the people the organization is supposed to serve.

No. The $10 founding pledge is a validation step, not a permanent dues model.

A sustainable model will likely include sliding-scale tiers — reduced or waived dues for members who are unemployed, between jobs, or in financial hardship; standard professional tiers; and optional supporter tiers for members who want to contribute more. The Charter (Article 2) guarantees that no financial hardship will prevent a qualified individual from membership. That guarantee is structural, not discretionary.

Permanent dues will be set based on actual membership numbers, operational costs, and demonstrated service value — and they will be set by members, not by leadership.

Global.

The 501(c)(6) is a U.S. legal classification, which means The League is incorporated in the United States. But membership is open to game developers in any country, and the organization is designed from the ground up to serve a global profession.

The Charter's rights declarations explicitly address multiple legal jurisdictions. The Know Your Rights resource covers the US, EU, UK, Canada, and Australia at launch, with expansion into additional jurisdictions as resources grow. The legislative advocacy program targets Washington and Brussels first — because that is where the most consequential regulatory decisions affecting the global game industry are currently being made — and expands from there.

Regional chapters or sister entities in other jurisdictions are a future possibility, shaped by where members are and what they need. The legal structure is American. The profession is not.

The League is governed by its members.

The board is elected by members, accountable to members, and removable by members. Terms are finite. No individual may hold board authority in perpetuity. No founder, donor, or institutional partner holds permanent authority over the organization's direction.

All board members and officers must disclose financial interests in related entities, recuse from decisions where conflicts exist, and avoid self-dealing arrangements. Related-party contracts must be transparent, documented, market-reasonable, and approved without conflicted votes. The Charter (Article 3) lays out the governance structure in detail, including the anti-capture provisions and amendment process.

The short version: the people this organization serves are the people who decide what it does.

By building infrastructure, not a platform.

The League is a professional commons, not a social network. There are no follower counts. No algorithmic feeds. No engagement metrics that reward volume over substance. The member directory is a professional registry — searchable by discipline, skills, experience, and region — not a profile page optimized for attention.

Mentorship is matched by discipline and need, not by visibility. Peer review is structured around craft, not clout. Contribution to the knowledge base, to mentorship, to the professional community — these are the things that matter inside this organization. If you want to be internet-famous, there are other platforms for that. This one is for work.

Not directly. Funding games is a commercial activity, and it does not belong inside a not-for-profit trade association.

However: the Member Services page describes, under "The Longer Horizon," the possibility of a separate publishing cooperative — a distinct legal entity, structurally independent from The League, designed around revenue share rather than IP capture. If members vote to build it, it would operate under creator-friendly terms: no default IP capture, transparent revenue-share structures, and plain-language contracts.

That is a future possibility, not a current commitment. The League's focus is on people, rights, and professional infrastructure. If a publishing entity comes later, it will be because members decided it should, and it will be built with the same structural safeguards that govern everything else.

The League does not take IP. Full stop.

If a publishing cooperative is established in the future, its intended structure is: no default IP capture, clear revenue-share terms against sales, plain-language contracts, and creator-retained ownership. The League's Charter (Article 11) enshrines the right to plain terms in all agreements, and that principle applies to the organization's own dealings as much as it applies to the industry practices it challenges.

Skepticism is warranted. The answer is enforceable structure.

Dues fund services, not profits. The Charter (Article 4) prohibits private inurement — no officer, founder, director, or employee may personally profit from League revenues beyond reasonable compensation for services rendered, disclosed to and approved by the membership.

Corporate membership is prohibited. Governance is member-controlled. Publishing, if any, is structurally separate. Financial operations are transparent to members. The anti-capture provisions in Article 3 are designed to be unamendable without member ratification, and they specifically prevent outside funding from directing organizational priorities.

And the simplest guardrail of all: if The League does not deliver tangible value to its members, it does not deserve to exist, and Article 4 includes dissolution provisions that ensure it closes cleanly rather than persisting as a zombie institution extracting dues for nothing.

The test is simple: if the services are not real, the organization is failing.

Membership carries baseline expectations. The Charter (Article 2) spells them out: respectful conduct, good-faith participation, confidentiality where required, and the avoidance of harassment, discrimination, and abusive behavior.

The League is a professional commons. Members do not use League infrastructure as a recruiting pipeline, a sales funnel, or a venue for self-promotion at the expense of collective purpose. Some programs — mentorship, peer review, structured workshops — may carry additional participation expectations specific to that program.

You are not required to volunteer. This is not unpaid labor in exchange for access. Participation in mentorship, knowledge base contributions, peer review, and other community activities is voluntary. The people who contribute to the commons do so because the commons is worth contributing to, not because they owe it.

Two.

Capture — the risk that founders, cliques, outside money, or institutional inertia redirect the organization away from its members' interests. This is the most common failure mode of professional organizations, and it is the reason the Charter's governance and anti-capture provisions exist. Documenting the failure mode is the first step to preventing it. Structural safeguards are the second.

Execution — the risk that the mission is sound but the operations fail. That the services don't materialize, that the advocacy doesn't scale, that the organization promises more than it delivers. This risk is managed by transparency — publishing what's working and what isn't — and by the principle that member dues fund member services, which means members see where their money goes and decide whether the return justifies the investment.

If this model cannot survive scrutiny, it should not exist. That is not a disclaimer. It is a design principle.

Sign the founding pledge. Your name and your signal are what makes this real.

As services launch, members will shape what gets built first and what comes next. The credits registry, member directory, Know Your Rights resource, and contract review toolkit are available or in progress. Mentorship matching, the salary transparency database, legal referrals, and legislative advocacy are next — funded by dues and prioritized by members.

The order is straightforward: prove demand, build infrastructure, and deliver services.

Bring your hardest questions. Bring your edge cases and your adversarial scenarios. Bring the thing you think will break the model.

If The League cannot answer those questions, it needs to hear them. If the structure has a weakness, it is better to find it now than to discover it after ten thousand people are depending on it.

That is how this gets stronger and earns trust. Trust built on structure, not rhetoric, is the only kind that lasts.