Back in the early 1990s after I graduated from trade school I interviewed with a computer game company. They asked for me to demonstrate my computer graphics skills by creating an image for their game; it took about an hour. They were pleased with my work and offered me the job, and gave me their terms.

It paid 0.5% of royalties for the game, up to a maximum of $5000 total. They wanted me to work 40 hour weeks until the game was complete. Nothing per hour, no guarantee the game would sell at all (I have no doubt that it didn't do well, as I never saw anything more about them). They essentially wanted me to do all the work, take all the risk, and no cap on how much work I would need to do but they did put a cap on my potential earnings. I actually got pissed off; what a colossal waste of my time. Sadly I came to learn that this was pretty common back then.