Home Based Business
Insurance for Gaming
When we think about home based business, we generally have an idea of something akin to a hair stylist or direct salesperson. This could be someone who may or may not have an office or official workspace. However, some who also has clients or materials at their house to perform their services or sell their wares.
The world is changing! Now making money from home is much easier. It can be achieved with nothing more than a computer, a game platform, and an internet connection.
Competitive gaming has become a multi-billion dollar industry over the past couple of years. So I want to explore what point does gaming change from a hobby to a home based business? A business where you may need to obtain cyber liability or lost profits?
When Does Your Hobby Become Your Job?
The short answer is once there is money being made. In many cases there are exclusions for personal property used in whole or in part for business use. Therefore, while you may consider it a hobby, if there is money being made at it there may be risk. In many cases it is as simple as declaring office use on your policy. For example, if you extend coverage for a home based business on a home insurance policy, this typically doesn’t cover cyber liability. However, it will allow you to operate out of the house up to a set max gross income. Though this depends on on your insurance provider!
The line can be blurred further. This is particularly true when you begin to ask yourself some questions. Such as, do you need to have commercial insurance as a self employed business person:
- where you may need cyber liability and lost profits,
- extended coverage for computers pertaining to the business,
- employee dishonesty coverage if someone helps you out for pay, benefits extensions for employees, etc.
Will My Home Insurance In Regina Cover Me?
As your home business grows, you might reach a point where your earnings surpass your home insurance coverage in Regina. At the same time, as your website or platform gains popularity, more people start watching you or your team. This marks a subjective phase where things are picking up!
Many of the more popular Youtube channels have online stores, creating merchandise for their fans to wear. Once this is a viable option, now you have stock to be concerned about. What happens if you have a fire and these go up in flames? Without a policy in place, that would be lost money.
What if you have an injury and are unable to play games for a while? You would be in a situation of lost profits due to your injury. You may have professional liability to consider or cases of defamation at the high end.
The short news on this is it is no longer a fringe activity. In fact, many schools around the world are now offering scholarships to people who compete in e-sports with the same “full rides” through school as a traditional sport scholarship might. They are hedging their bets that gaming and e-sports will continue to grow and be a profitable form of business for those students as they continue in their lives.
If, however, you are like me and just game for the hobby of it without monetizing content through a third party site like youtube or twitch, or making brand deals, there is no issue for insurance purposes.
Thank you for reading. If this was enjoyable, make sure to like our facebook page to keep updated on our future blog posts. If you are a client of ours, please leave a review on facebook or google.
Cheers,
Blaine Petrie