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Comment by VLM | Hacker News Reader

Can anyone find the unique amazon specific definition of "Personal Game" complete with peculiar capitalization?

My guess is we're seeing the stick with all mention of any carrot very carefully edited out. I would further guess Amazon is providing some kind of interesting carrot, perhaps a great big pile of free AWS time or free marketing.

I mean, fine, if push comes to shove, I wrote something I choose to define as a realistic fluid dynamics simulator based helicopter flight simulator, not define as per the unknown Amazon definition of a "Personal Game".

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It specifically says you are responsible for all fees associated with using AWS.

Good point, although Amazon is a huge company with their finger in every pie. Given those fingers in every pie, they have some kind of carrot to go with this carefully edited stick?

I recall the horrific fad maybe ten years ago of forcing "employees" to come in and work on their free time for hackathon and maker type events to generate corporate PR. Perhaps, this "Personal Game" policy is a legacy from some awful corporate hackathon event from back in 2012 that nobody even remembers anymore, but the legal paperwork remains in the air like a bad smell.

I suppose until the censorship is removed and we find out the precise legal definition of "Personal Game" we can only wonder and do the usual "big company always bad" thing.

I wouldn't call this censorship. There is likely a paragraph right above "To develop or release a Personal Game..." that carefully defines it - but it wouldn't really add anything to the article to include that when it can be summarised as covering the output of an "indie game developer". Contract terms like that are often defined then given Initial Capitals.

We should assume good faith on the part of James Liu and Robert Adams unless you have evidence to the contrary.

To your point about carrot and stick - yes, the carrot here is likely excellent financial compensation for doing the main job, and the experience on the resume, same as all your colleagues. Amazon aren't going to pay you extra because your hobbies are impacted by their policy - at junior to mid levels it's take it or leave it.

> My guess is we're seeing the stick with all mention of any carrot very carefully edited out. I would further guess Amazon is providing some kind of interesting carrot, perhaps a great big pile of free AWS time or free marketing.

Amazon doesn't give free AWS time or free marketing (or really any marketing) to employees. It's not frugal.

Some additional context: this is the newer, better version of the policy where you can work on games. Previously, employees could not work on games at all.

Amazon doesn't really care about people doing stuff on the side, they want your extra hours to go into amazon.

> not define as per the unknown Amazon definition of a "Personal Game".

Amazon has a bunch of lawyers who will take whatever you make if you achieve any kind of succcess.

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