Personally I've always found the copyrights in these situations pretty ridiculous. Developers should have some kind of joint ownership. It's a little muddled here since it started in house at Square. But it reminds me of things EA and Activision have done over the years. If a publisher isn't interested in further helping on a game they published they should lose those rights if the developer can successfully shop itaaround elsewhere. Why should the fans and creator be held back by bullheaded execs who want to sideline and sit on great ideas for no justifiable reason. And joint ownership would have been fantastic in cases like Interplay and THQ where large publishing houses died or almost died with great IPs in hand x.x I've always thought this stuff dumb. Like the radio industry owning all the hard work song artists do. Or book publishers owning all the thought and creativity an author poured into their novels. I get it if something was commissioned and expressly asked for and created. But outside of that copyright and publishing just don't mix well in my opinion
