I work in intellectual property, though I am not a lawyer. If this person were my client I’d diplomatically tell them that they’re clean out of luck on this one. All the documents that come as a shock to the author are boiler plate NDA and work for hire arrangements, and outside of being a famous author who’s “brand” would bring something of marketing value to the table, at no point really would anyone be able to negotiate anything other than a work for hire arrangement.
This person seems to think that because they wrote some albeit meaningful copy for a game, that the team owed them involvement in strategic high level multi-million dollar conversations. That’s not how this works.
There’s what I call a diva effect happening and it’s what happens with artists when they see their work absorbed by popular culture (ie tattoos) in relation to another work (ie game, movie, tv show, etc.) it’s an illusion.
The poem is good but people love it because it comes at the end of an emotional journey created by the product itself. Had this person simply posted it on a website, it’s demonstrably true very few would’ve noticed.
There are not 1,700 Microsoft lawyers reading his post. There’s maybe one marketing intern rolling their eyes and logging in a spreadsheet of mentions and moving on.
This person probably put themselves in more legal hot water, if at all, by giving away something they don’t really own (sorry!).
The fact that he admits that he sat on this for eight years (regardless of reason) means he was not actively defending his intellectual property.
To make matters worse, this would be a matter of international copyright law, which is a mess.
If you’re reading this Julian, you gotta move on bud. Maybe writing this was an important step. Great. You did it. Now you’re better off deleting the post because it’s going to cause anyone who makes any deals in writing walk the opposite direction.