Last week we at 76design received a notice inviting us to develop and submit a flash game to www.addictinggames.com as part of a contest with $20,000 in prizes. As we had just left a meeting in which our design team had decided we should do more ‘fun’ projects for our own amusement, this seemed like a timely opportunity. After checking out the very fine print, however, I discovered that by submitting a game to the contest you give up ALL rights of ownership to the game to www.addicitinggames.com, regardless of whether or not your game wins a prize.

In other words, under the guise of a contest, and for the modest investment of 20k, the folks at www.addictinggames.com are planning to harvest perhaps hundreds of new games, the best of which would surely show up on the popular site shortly thereafter, and likely without attribution.

What a scam! I was surprised to learn that www.addictinggames.com is owned by Atom Entertainment, whose Board of Directors includes Rob Burgess, Chairman of Macromedia (now owned by Adobe) and former Warner CEO Bob Daly. I wonder if such predatory and deceptive content development stategies are OK with them.

Yesterday I received an alert from the New Media Business Alliance warning its members about the contest. I’m posting this now to remind others to ‘read the fine print’ and (in a small way) to challenge Atom Entertainment to stop trying to sucker people into handing over their best content for free.