[simplecomplex]

> Got an official opinion from legal that employer programs, working on a videogame mod is programming

Don’t trust anything the company lawyer says. They work for the company, not you. They will lie to you to protect the company.

“Everything you do is property of company” has never held up in court and is just legal bullying. If you’re not actually stealing company IP and using it at a competitor it’s all BS.

video game mods? Unless the company is a video game studio that’s a croc of shit.

[pkteison]

This actually isn't the "all your base are belong to us" situation. This is "we will stop employing you if you do [x]", not "we will own [x]". That's a much, much, much lower bar. They are legally not required to have cause to fire me, so being right doesn't help.

So, sure, I would own the videogame mod if I did it on my own time with my own resources. But I could also be out of a job. Being right but unemployed doesn't sound comforting - I like the job, and they've been up front about the terms, and I'd rather quit if I find them sufficiently unacceptable than risk being fired.

Edit: It actually looks like moonlighting is officially protected here, but conflicts are still disallowed, so I guess it's possible it could end up in court debating whether programming is a conflict. I already have the opinion of one side in writing (yes, it is a conflict, they claim), but at least it might be debatable.

Still, not particularly anxious to end up in court arguing that somebody should be forced to continue employing me after I did something they told me not to do on the grounds that they shouldn't have told me not to do it... complicated mess.