Official Creation Program [Dev Request]

[Iscah]

I was on the (now-closed) Insomniac Games official forums for a while, where some of the game devs were quite active - and they basically said they can't accept fan submissions outside of official, targeted competitions ("design a costume", "design a weapon") because it can be a legal issue - I think to do with credit or compensation or something like that.

It would also be difficult for their own original work. Imagine if a fan submits something coincidentally close to what the game team were planning to implement, but haven't publicly shown off yet. The fan might then accuse them of plagiarism or taking their idea and not crediting them for it.

[EaMett]

I was on the (now-closed) Insomniac Games official forums for a while, where some of the game devs were quite active - and they basically said they can't accept fan submissions outside of official, targeted competitions ("design a costume", "design a weapon") because it can be a legal issue - I think to do with credit or compensation or something like that.

It would also be difficult for their own original work. Imagine if a fan submits something coincidentally close to what the game team were planning to implement, but haven't publicly shown off yet. The fan might then accuse them of plagiarism or taking their idea and not crediting them for it.

This is the correct answer. Depending on the country of the person providing said assets laws would differ and sometimes be completely incompatible. If you work for a company (say SE) the IP of everything you make belongs to the company. On the other hand if you don't work with the company your IP is yours and in some countries it is ILLEGAL to forfeit your IP to another entity. The workaround is to "lease" it for a set amount of time but ultimately SE would lose that IP over time. It's a real headache.
The only way it would work is if you were hired contractors for the company and at that point they may as well just hire more devs.