When is someone considered a creator?

[Crimsonshadow97]

My friend and his friend made a homebrew around three years ago. It had a total of 7 google docs. A year later I joined the group and have been working on it for the last 2 years. the game now consists of over 100 docs with only 13 being those of the original 2 and over 80 being made and maintained by me with significant edits on the original docs as well. Despite this they still consider the game 'theirs' and I've only contributed to it. Is this right or should I be at least considered a creator at this point?

[2D8HP]

Arneson vs. Gygax!

[Crimsonshadow97]

Arneson vs. Gygax!

I looked it up that thats really similar to the situation, if a bit larger scale.

[Douglas]

If you're asking about whether you have a case for being considered an author of this work in a court of law, I'm sorry but you'll have to ask elsewhere. Legal advice is an official Inappropriate Topic on these forums.

If you're asking for personal opinions and potential arguments to use to persuade these two friends to accept your claim, carry on.

[Frozen_Feet]

Consider a house. There a people who own the house, who live in the house, arrange the furniture etc. And then there is the guy who built it, and the guy who renovated all the plumbing, and the guy who built a new house for the roof etc..

When these people are different, it's clear the owners of the house are not the sole creators of the house, they might not even be the most influential creators of the house. The house still is theirs, and not the creators'.

This is something that often gets muddled in case of "intellectual property" and other immaterial things, but the principle still holds: creatorship does not entail ownership. On an objective, factual level, you clearly are co-creator of the game, based on just the amount of work you've put into it, and anyone claiming otherwise is a moron. But that's not the deciding factor on whether the game is theirs or yours.

[Jay R]

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman.

The dozens of other writers and artists who have written and drawn Superman stories over the last eight decades have not helped create Superman.

They have, however, created Superman stories.

Similarly, Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks created Mickey Mouse. Thousands of people have created Mickey Mouse cartoons, movies, comic books, and TV shows.