Your game was copied in another country. What protects you there, and what to do.

The copy is on a store you have never used, in a language you do not read, sold by someone in a country you have never been to. The first question most people ask is whether any of their rights even exist there.

They almost certainly do. A game we shipped was extracted, rebuilt and resold, so we know how far away the person doing it can feel, and how quickly "they are in another country" turns into "there is nothing I can do." That is usually wrong. This page explains where your copyright already reaches without filing anything, whose law decides a dispute, why the store matters more than the seller's address, what the European Union now requires of platforms that receive your notice, what the UK and China look like, and what changes if you live outside the United States and sell on American stores. It is not legal advice, and the places where a lawyer is worth paying are marked.

1. You are already protected in most of the world

There is no single worldwide copyright. The U.S. Copyright Office puts it bluntly: there is no such thing as an "international copyright" that protects a work everywhere. Protection in each country comes from that country's law. What makes this workable is a set of treaties that oblige each member to protect authors from the others.

• The Berne Convention. WIPO lists 182 members, including the United States, China, the UK and every EU state. Under Article 5, authors get in other member countries the rights which their respective laws do now or may hereafter grant to their nationals. In plain terms, a member country must treat your game the way it treats a game made by its own citizens.
• No paperwork. The same article says the enjoyment and exercise of those rights shall not be subject to any formality. A country cannot require you to register there, or put a © notice on the game, before it protects you.
• Code is covered. The WTO's TRIPS agreement, which binds WTO members, says computer programs whether in source or object code, shall be protected as literary works. The shipped build counts, not only your source files.
• Art and sound are covered too. The EU's highest court said in 2014 that video games are complex matter comprising not only a computer program but also graphic and sound elements, and that those elements are protected as part of the work. Your sprites, models and music are not left out because they ship inside a program.

The UK government's guidance says the same thing from the other side: for most countries, protection of your copyright work abroad will be automatic, in the same way it is at home.

The exceptions

Treaties do not reach every country. The Copyright Office keeps a list of U.S. copyright relations, current as of October 2026. It lists no known copyright relations with Eritrea and Iran, and an unclear status for Palau, Somalia and South Sudan. The Office also warns that some countries offer little or no copyright protection to foreign works in practice. A treaty obligation and a working court are not the same thing. Still, for the stores where indie games are actually bought, the treaties apply.

2. Whose law decides

This is the part that surprises people. Berne says that the extent of protection and the means of redress shall be governed exclusively by the laws of the country where protection is claimed. If you act in Germany, German law decides. If you act in the United States, U.S. law decides. Your own country's law matters for the parts of the dispute that happen there.

Three practical consequences, in our reading:

• The basics travel. The details do not. Every member must protect expression and, under TRIPS, not ideas, procedures, methods of operation or mathematical concepts as such. A game that copies your mechanics but not your art or code is a clone, not a copy, in most places. The page on clones covers that line. What differs is everything after it: exceptions such as fair use, how damages are counted, and how a court works.
• Pick the country by where the copy is offered. A copy listed on a store that sells in the UK is being offered in the UK, whoever uploaded it and wherever they live.
• Do not quote your own law at a foreign seller. A notice that cites a statute the recipient is not bound by reads as a bluff. Describe the copying plainly and let the platform apply its own rules.

3. Act where it is sold, not where the seller lives

A seller in another country is hard to reach. The store selling the copy is not. Steam, the App Store, Google Play and itch.io each take copyright notices through their own channels, and the first page in this series lists where. A store has rules it has to follow when a notice arrives. A seller abroad has nothing making them answer you. For a free copy on a download site, the file host, the hosting company and the search engines are the places that can act, and the page on pirate sites goes through each.

The notice itself barely changes across borders. It still needs to identify your game, identify the copy by its exact address, show that you are the owner, and state that you believe the use is unauthorized. The U.S. notice adds a signed statement under penalty of perjury. The EU version is in section 4.

A few things do change. This is our advice, not a rule.

• Use the platform's own form. A regional store or a site that serves one country often has a complaint page in its own language. Look at the foot of the site for terms, legal, intellectual property or copyright.
• Write in short, plain sentences. Your notice may be read through a translation tool. Add a translation into the platform's language if you can get a careful one. Keep your original alongside it.
• Show your release date. When the copier has also claimed ownership, the dates decide it. Link your store page and its release date, and attach the dated evidence described in section 7.
• Be ready to prove who you are. A platform that does not know you may ask for proof of identity or of your company's ownership. Decide in advance what you are willing to send.

4. In the European Union

The Digital Services Act has applied from 17 February 2024 to services offered in the EU. For a developer whose game is copied, it does something U.S. law does not: it requires the platform to tell you what it decided, and gives you a way to challenge a refusal. The quotes below are from the regulation's text.

What a notice must contain

Article 16 requires hosting services to let any individual or entity report illegal content electronically, and to make it easy to include four things:

1. an explanation of why you believe the content is illegal (for you: it is a copy of your copyrighted game, and you did not authorize it);
2. the exact address of the content, such as the exact URL or URLs;
3. your name and email address;
4. a statement confirming your bona fide belief that the information in the notice is accurate and complete.

Unlike the U.S. notice, there is no signature under penalty of perjury. The good-faith statement still matters, for the reason in the last part of this section.

What the platform owes you

• A receipt. If your notice has contact details, the platform must send a confirmation of receipt without undue delay.
• A decision. It must also tell you its decision, providing information on the possibilities for redress. Decisions must be made in a timely, diligent, non-arbitrary and objective manner, and the platform must say if it used automated means.
• Reasons to the uploader. Under Article 17, the person whose listing is removed gets a statement of reasons. Expect them to learn that a notice was filed, and possibly to answer it.

If the platform refuses

Article 20 is the part most developers do not know about. It applies to online platforms, such as stores and marketplaces, except those that are micro or small enterprises and not very large platforms. Those platforms must give users, including individuals or entities that have submitted a notice, access for at least six months to a complaint system that lets them complain electronically and free of charge against the decision on that notice. If the complaint fails, Article 21 lets you take the dispute to a certified out-of-court dispute settlement body.

So a refusal from a store of any size operating in the EU is not the end of the line, and you do not need a lawyer to take the next step. Whether a developer outside the EU can use every part of this is a question the text does not settle in so many words. Articles 16 and 20 speak of any individual or entity and of anyone who submitted a notice, so our reading is that you can. Try it before assuming otherwise.

Do not overuse it

Article 23 requires platforms to suspend, after a warning, the processing of notices from people who frequently submit notices or complaints that are manifestly unfounded. Send notices for copies of your game. Do not send them for clones of your mechanics, reviews or videos about your game. That keeps your notices credible for the one that matters.

5. In the United Kingdom

UK copyright is automatic. The government's page says you do not have to apply or pay a fee, and there is not a register of copyright works in the UK. There is nothing to file before you act.

If a store notice fails and the copy is earning money in the UK, the UK has an unusually accessible court for small cases. The Intellectual Property Enterprise Court's small claims track handles claims where the amount in dispute is £10,000 or less. Its guide says such claims can be decided without the need for parties to be legally represented, and without the formalities of a traditional trial. The usual rule that the loser pays the winner's legal costs does not apply on this track. The winner usually recovers only limited sums, such as court fees, fixed issuing costs and some travel and lost-earnings expenses. The guide also warns that intellectual property claims must be started in the specialist courts, and that claims started in the ordinary courts may be struck out or transferred. Read the guide before you file anything.

6. In China

China has been a Berne member since 1992, so your game is protected there without registering. The practical picture is different from the West, though, and this is the country where a local lawyer matters most.

A New Zealand government guide to the Chinese games market explains that an official release generally requires a game publishing approval that a foreign gaming company cannot apply for. The foreign company partners with a Chinese operator, which also applies for a Software Copyright Certificate, and for imported games that certificate must be registered with the National Copyright Administration. The guide notes that the foreign company must give the operator a portion of its source code for this, with the choice of which part left to the developer.

Two things follow, in our reading. If you plan to release in China, the registration is part of the route, and you should know who holds the certificate and in whose name before you sign. And if a copy of your game appears on a Chinese store, expect the listing to be backed by paperwork in someone else's name. Your Berne rights do not depend on that paperwork, but disproving it is local work. We did not find an official English-language description of how Chinese stores handle a complaint from a foreign rights holder, so we do not describe one here.

7. If you live outside the United States

Many indie developers outside the U.S. sell mostly on American stores. Two sections of the U.S. Copyright Act matter to you.

You can usually sue without registering

The rule that you must register before suing applies to any United States work. The Act defines that term narrowly. A published work is a United States work if it is first published in the U.S., or simultaneously in the United States and another treaty party with an equal or longer copyright term, among other cases. An unpublished work is one if all its authors are U.S. nationals, domiciliaries or habitual residents. A game by a developer in Canada, first released in Canada, is not a United States work, and its owner does not need a registration to file suit in a U.S. court. The Act protects such works through section 104, which covers works whose authors are nationals or domiciliaries of a treaty party.

One open question for games: most indie games launch worldwide on the same day through an online store. The statute does not say how a same-day worldwide online release fits the words "first published simultaneously in the United States." If you plan to rely on not registering, ask a U.S. lawyer first. The cautious path is to register anyway.

Damages still depend on registering on time

The second rule applies to every work, foreign or not. Section 412 says no statutory damages or attorney's fees are awarded for an infringement of a published work that began before the effective date of its registration, unless the registration is made within three months of first publication. Statutory damages are what make small U.S. cases affordable: they let a court award an amount within a range set by the statute, without you proving exactly how many sales you lost.

So the practical advice is the same for a developer in Lisbon as in Ohio. If a meaningful share of your sales happen on U.S. stores, register with the U.S. Copyright Office within three months of release. The registration guide walks through it, and foreign authors can file the same applications.

8. Evidence that works in any country

A court or a platform in another country will not know you. Your evidence has to speak for you. The Copyright Office notes that protection abroad may depend on the facts existing at the time of first publication, so record those facts on the day.

• Where and when it was first released. The store, the date, the countries it went on sale in. Screenshots of the store page with the date visible.
• Who made it. Names, nationalities or places of residence of the authors, and the company that owns the rights. Written agreements with contractors that assign their work to you.
• Dated originals. Source control history, original art and audio files, build archives. A copy can be rebuilt from your shipped game. Your working files cannot be.
• A registration where one exists. A U.S. certificate, or a registration in a country with a voluntary register, is a dated public record that any platform can check. Not having one does not remove your rights.
• The copy, preserved. Its address, seller name, price, release date, and screenshots placed side by side with yours. Save it before you send a notice, because the listing may change when the seller is told.

9. When a court abroad is worth it

This section is our analysis. A lawsuit in another country means a local lawyer, translated evidence, and a procedure you do not know. The U.S. Copyright Office notes that it is not permitted to recommend attorneys, so finding one is your job. A local games or technology law association is a reasonable place to start.

It tends to be worth considering when all of these are true:

• the copy is earning real money, in a market you sell in or plan to;
• store and platform routes have failed, including the EU complaint route if it applies;
• the seller is a company or person who can actually be identified and found in that country;
• the country has a procedure scaled to your claim, like the UK small claims track.

If those are not true, the time is usually better spent closing the routes the copy reaches buyers through, and on the launch or update that makes the original the obvious thing to buy. That is not giving up. It is putting your effort where it moves something.

If the copy also uses your game's name, trademark rules are territorial in a way copyright is not, and many countries give a name to whoever files first. The trademark page covers filing outside the United States.

Common questions

Do I need to register my game's copyright in every country?

No. The Berne Convention's 182 members must protect your game without any formality. A few countries offer voluntary registration, which can help as evidence, but your rights do not depend on it.

Does U.S. copyright protect my game in other countries?

Not directly. Each country protects your game under its own law, because it has agreed by treaty to treat foreign authors like its own. The effect for most countries is that you are protected, but under their rules.

Which country's law applies when someone abroad copies my game?

The law of the country where you claim protection. If you act against a copy sold in France, French law decides what counts as infringement and what you can recover.

Can I send a DMCA notice to a store outside the United States?

You can send one, but a store outside the U.S. is not bound by the DMCA. Use the platform's own form, describe the copying plainly, and include the same core facts: your work, the exact address of the copy, your contact details and a good-faith statement.

What can I do if an EU platform ignores my notice?

Under the Digital Services Act, any host must confirm receipt and tell you its decision. Platforms that are not micro or small businesses must also give you a free internal complaint route for at least six months, and if that fails, you can take the dispute to a certified out-of-court dispute settlement body.

I am not American. Do I need a U.S. registration to sue over a copy on Steam?

Usually not, if your game is not a "United States work." But without a registration made in time, you generally cannot get statutory damages or attorney's fees in the U.S. A same-day worldwide release may also complicate the first point. Ask a U.S. lawyer.

Is my game protected in China?

Yes, in law. China is a Berne member. An official release there runs through a Chinese operator and a registered software copyright certificate, and enforcing against a copy there is work for a local lawyer.

Is my game protected in every country?

Nearly. The U.S. Copyright Office lists no copyright relations with Eritrea and Iran and an unclear status for a few other countries. Treaty membership also does not guarantee that enforcement works in practice.

Is it worth suing someone in another country?

Rarely as a first step. It can be when the copy earns real money in a market you care about, the platforms have refused, the seller can be found, and the country has a procedure sized for small claims.

This page describes the Berne Convention as published by WIPO, WIPO's list of Berne members, Articles 9 and 10 of the TRIPS Agreement, the U.S. Copyright Office's Circular 38A (relations as of October 2026), sections 101, 104, 411 and 412 of title 17 of the U.S. Code, Articles 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 23 and 93 of the EU Digital Services Act, paragraph 23 of the Court of Justice's judgment in Nintendo v PC Box (C-355/12), the UK government's copyright pages and its guide to the IPEC small claims track, and the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade's guide to China's games market, as read on 14 October 2026. Our reading of whether developers outside the EU can use the Digital Services Act complaint route, the advice in sections 3 and 9, and the inferences about China are our own analysis and are marked as such. It is general information, not legal advice about your situation.