How do I protect my game?

[Stifu]

Hello,

My friend and myself are working on a game. We don't know yet whether it'll be free or not, but it's on a public github repo for now. (I guess it'll be free. We want to reach as many people as possible, and are not in it for the money.)

I'd like to know how we can protect our game from a legal point of view. How do we prove ownership of all of the game content, what we can do against people trying to steal or sell our stuff (just like it happened to the creator of Paint.NET, with guys selling his program on ebay even though it's free).

Like, do you guys put your game under a certain license? Which one?

I reckon it's impossible to guarantee anything, and that no matter what you do, anything can still happen, but I'd like to reach for low-hanging fruits here. If there are easy steps to protect our work, I'm all ears. I don't want to regret not doing something now, later on.

Thanks.

[MadByte]

Short anwser: Add a license to your project.
Common ones are:
MIT License
Creative Commons
Also, here is a list of some more popular licenses.
Make sure to read what's protected with each license.

[ivan]

From a legal point of view it probably depends what country you are based in.
People pirate the games that we've made all the time.
If I started running after pirates I won't have enough time to work on new stuff.
In reality, people who pirate software don't buy games anyways so it's not worth the effort.
What I'm saying is, there are more important things you want to focus on,
like making a cool game that people want to play.

[Stifu]

Short anwser: Add a license to your project.

Thanks, I'll check this out. License was my first thought, but just in case, I thought I'd ask.

In reality, people who pirate software don't buy games anyways so it's not worth the effort.

Money isn't the point, really. But I wouldn't want to be the one being sued by someone claiming to be the actual author of my own stuff, and be unable to prove that I am.

What I'm saying is, there are more important things you want to focus on,
like making a cool game that people want to play.

Sure. It's just like that South Park episode where the kids form their own band. I just thought I'd pick a fitting license (and/or whatever other options are available) then forget about it and move on.

[zorg]

In reality, people who pirate software don't buy games anyways so it's not worth the effort.

I'd really want to disagree on this, since it's a vast generalization, and i know one counterexample first-hand.

Money isn't the point, really. But I wouldn't want to be the one being sued by someone claiming to be the actual author of my own stuff, and be unable to prove that I am.

That's a reasonable concern actually, and a license that protects your code, and by proxy, you from liabilities as such is a good defense.

[D0NM]

Well, there are some love2d games on STEAM.

How to protect .LUA files from plain reading / changing?

[T-Bone]

How to protect .LUA files from plain reading / changing?

You can't, really. Not in a meaningful way. You can make the code harder to understand (by obfuscation or by byte-code compiling) but that doesn't really protect it in any meaningful way.

[Stifu]

How to protect .LUA files from plain reading / changing?

You can't, really. Not in a meaningful way. You can make the code harder to understand (by obfuscation or by byte-code compiling) but that doesn't really protect it in any meaningful way.

Thanks for your answer. I discussed this with D0NM (the friend I'm working with), and I think we're going to keep an open mind about all of this, and just let people mess with the sources if they want to. No big deal. We release a game in a certain state, and people can do whatever they want with it. If people are interested in it, it's a good sign and means the game is popular. People modding the game could possibly make the game more popular, too, so let's see this in a good light. We won't waste time trying to obfuscate the sources.

[D0NM]

Well. I'm going to release games with the byte-code compiled files.

And like they say:
"Might makes right "

[josefnpat]

https://love2d.org/wiki/Source_Obfuscation