koobas.hobune.stream
should i worry about having copyrights to my own game?
my game is 99% done and im wanting to start sending out a bunch of copies for testing. Is there somehow to document that I am the creator and that it is my game without government copyrights?
i have read that people posting video on places like youtube is legal proof for Video creators. Obviosly rights for videos go to the first one who posted the video.
would there be a similar place or way of documentation for a game developer?
I am not looking to sell it at this point.
In most countries, certainly in North America and most of Europe, you own the copyright as soon as you created it. You do not need to take any further action.
If you're not comfortable with that, just put a copy of the source code on a flash disk and register mail it to yourself. This will give you a legal document you can show in court that you had possession of the source and assets on a given day.
If you feel you need to take extreme measures, there are governement offices (in Canada it's the Canadian Intellectual Property office, but most countries have something similar) where you can send in a form and have the ownership officially registered. You don't send in a copy of the work, just an application that describes it.
But as I said at the top, in most countries, you don't need to take any steps. You have the copyright on any work as soon as you created it. Doing something to prove when you created it is always helpful, but often that isn't even required.
As an aside, mailing stuff to yourself is a common myth, as there's nothing preventing someone swapping out the contents of the package at a later date. That aside, it's good answer I$$anonymous$$O, most "western" countries (at least) provide some kind of registration service as far as I know. This U$$anonymous$$-specific page provides a good overview.
The $$anonymous$$ailing Stuff to yourself 'myth' is only a 'myth' in certain countries.
It's know as "Poor $$anonymous$$an's Copyright" and is a myth in the U$$anonymous$$ (see above), Canada and the USA at least.
$$anonymous$$y concern is that my game has never really left my PC in my room at home. besides word of mouth, there is no public documentation anywhere that i have been working on it for the last year. Im just one person.
So in theory, If someone extracted the source code. I wouldn't have anything more in a court than they have.
I think it's pretty unlikely that some will extract the source code from your computer. Are you worried that someone will find the game when you send it out for testing and pass it off as their own? If it ever came to that, you'd have documented times when the game was being sent out (presumably via email or mail).
Furthermore, if you have any type of source control, then that will also have what amounts timetables of your work on the game. If you don't, this might be one good reason to do so.
Allrighty, So an emails or uploads to something like drop box would show proper timestamps ?
@Riderfan is correct that copyright exists in all creative literary and artistic works as soon as the product is created - there is generally no process by which you can "register" copyright.
However, it's also worth noticing that, while your graphical assets, music, design etc. can be copyrighted, whether your software code can be protected by copyright at all is a contended issue. See particularly, the case of Sega v Accolade (1992) - which is summarised by Stefik and Silverman as "the functional principles of computer software cannot be protected by copyright law. Rather, the only legal protection to such principles can be through holding a patent or by trade secret."
It depends on the country.
Software code is considered a writen work in Canada and gets the same protection as if the OP had written a novel.
What he can't copyright is any libraries or the like that he's used. He can't copyright the C# libraries used to allow him to write the code, but he can copyright the algorithm he's written with those library.
Even so, copyright protects the expression of the idea, not the idea itself. Once your C#/Unityscript have been compiled into CIL, if I disassemble it with reflector, say, it's a different expression.
