Most companies will sign an NDA, most especially if it is THEIR NDA, and not yours. Nintendo won't sign them as a company policy - but they are an exception generally.

An NDA merely protects you from another party disclosing confidential information to a third party. Most NDAs allow both parties to freely disclose the confidential material internally.

Signing an NDA doesn't really protect you from unscrutable companies - and they do exist - from simply taking your idea and running with it. But, a signed NDA that calls out exactly what you are discussing - such as a project (by name or otherwise unique identifier), leaves a paper trail behind.

Any successful lawsuit would have to be supported by evidence, and a signed NDA that said "we're talking about Project X - the space adventure game", would be one piece of that evidence.

That said - this kind of thing is incredibly hard to prove, and your lawyers had better be great, and you'd better have some deep pockets - these lawsuits are really expensive.

Hopefully you'd have incontrovertible evidence that they stole your idea - such as an email or internal memo. Other than that, the best thing to do is walk away, and never do business with that person/company ever again.

Bringing a game that is fairly far along actually protects you - since it may be seen as an opportunity by a publisher to get a game on the shelf quickly, which can sometimes be a great thing if another product has slipped.

My understanding (and I'm not a lawyer by any means) is that anyone with the desire can change just enough about your game to make it so you couldn't sue. You can't copyright ideas or concepts, only concrete work (hense why we don't have to pay every time we use the observer pattern). Since they'd be reproducing the game, there really isn't too much you can do to protect yourself.

There are two things you should probably consider. First, will it cost them more to steal your game than it will to produce it for you? If they'll make more money producing it, they have no motivation. Second, what's their track record like? You said that they're producing games for another company, so this is a very good sign. They could have stolen their games too, but chose not to.

Hope that helps.

-Rez

You know, game ideas are infite... everyone has tons. Any company that sees you having a working product isn't go back to square one and try to copy you. The fact that your idea is developed and polished and nearly done is the real selling point, not the actual concept.

Seriously, though, document everything, and record every phone call (and meeting, if you can). The fact is that you really only have the threat of a lawsuit on your side if things go badly, because suing somebody sucks. Hardcore. If you end up THREATENING to sue, with a bucketload of evidence (paper trail), then they'll more than likely back down. If not, it'd be cheaper to just make a new game.

Of course, the REAL trick is to sit quietly until the game is a hit, THEN sue them and get all the profits. It's a little riskier, but requires a lot less effort than making the game yourself!

Just make sure that if you sue somebody, you are honestly trying to set right where you've been wronged.

Suing a publisher is not something a growing developer wants on their resume.

While I can't say I've actually had ideas stolen - there have been some interesting coincidences released into the market 2-3 years after I pitched some ideas to publishers. To be honest, my only problem with this is that many of these ideas were executed horribly.

It's one thing to see your idea done by someone else, but something else entirely to see it done badly!

BTW - don't even ask what the ideas were or who the publisher was - as far as I'm concerned I still want to do business with these organizations so I'm happy to leave the past in the past, if you know what I mean.