How to copyright a video game: a registration guide for small studios

Your game is already copyrighted. That happened when you made it. What most small studios have not done is register it, and registration is the part with a deadline.

A game we shipped was extracted, rebuilt and resold. One of the first things anyone asks you afterwards is whether the game is registered, and when. This page is the answer to the question behind that one: how a small team registers a game with the U.S. Copyright Office, what the Office wants to receive, and what the certificate changes. It describes the process as the Office and the statute set it out. It is not legal advice, and the places where a lawyer is worth the fee are marked.

1. What registration changes

The Copyright Office calls registration voluntary. That is accurate and a little misleading. You own the copyright either way. What you can do about a copy depends heavily on the certificate.

The row about damages is the one that decides most cases before they start. Without statutory damages you have to prove what the copy cost you or what the seller earned, against someone who may be hard to find. With them, a court can award between $750 and $30,000 per work, and up to $150,000 where the copying was willful, without that proof. The possibility of recovering fees is often what makes a small studio's case affordable to bring.

A takedown notice needs none of this. If a copy of your game is on sale right now, start with the takedown steps and come back to registration afterwards.

2. The three-month clock

The statute gives you a grace period. If you register within three months after first publication, the full remedies cover infringement that started at any point, including before you filed. Miss the window and registration only improves your position against copying that begins after it.

Three facts make the window easier to hit than it sounds.

The date that counts is the filing date. The Office says the effective date of registration is the day it receives an acceptable application, an acceptable deposit and the fee. It does not depend on how long the examination takes. A game released on 1 July and filed properly in September is inside the window, even if the certificate is issued the following January.

You can file before release. The Office strongly encourages applying before you publish. An unpublished game can be registered. Filing the release build a week or two before launch removes the deadline entirely.

Release has a legal definition. The law calls it publication: distributing copies to the public by sale, rental, lease or lending. Selling the game on a store is publication. Showing a trailer is not, because a public display on its own does not count. A paid early access release puts copies in the public's hands, so the careful reading is that the clock starts there and not at 1.0. Free demos, closed betas and key giveaways are less clear. If your three months might already be running from one of those, that is a short question for a copyright lawyer and worth asking early.

There is one catch at the other end. For a U.S. work, the Supreme Court held in Fourth Estate v. Wall-Street.com that you can sue only after the Office has registered the work or refused it. Having applied is not enough. The Office's published processing times for cases closed between April and September 2026 average 3.4 months for an online application with an uploaded deposit and no questions, and 5.3 months when the examiner has to write to you. If you need a certificate quickly because of litigation, special handling costs $800 on top of the filing fee, and the Office tries to process those claims within five working days without guaranteeing it. Filing early means you never pay that.

3. Before you file, check who owns the game

The application asks who the author is and who the claimant is. For a solo developer who made everything, both answers are you. For everyone else it is worth an hour with your paperwork before you open the form.

• Employees. Work an employee makes as part of the job is a work made for hire, and the employer is the author.
• Contractors and friends. A freelance artist, composer or programmer owns what they made unless a written agreement says otherwise. A transfer of copyright is not valid unless it is in writing and signed by the person giving it up. An invoice marked paid is not a transfer.
• Your own company. If you made the game and your company sells it, something in writing should say how the company got the rights.
• Licensed material. Engine code, plugins, asset packs, fonts and licensed music belong to their owners. You have permission to use them. You do not register them.

Sorting this out matters beyond the form. The Office's guidance says that when the code and the audiovisual material are owned by different parties, separate applications will be required. And a registration that names the wrong owner is the first thing the other side's lawyer will look for. If a contributor never signed anything, get the signature now, while everyone is on good terms.

4. Pick the application

Registration happens in the Office's online registration portal. There are two applications a game developer will meet.

The Single Application is narrower than its price suggests. The same circular says it cannot be used if the work contains material co-created or co-owned by two or more people, and that if you need to exclude another person's work from the claim you likely need the Standard Application. A solo developer who used a purchased asset pack or a licensed soundtrack is in that position. The difference is twenty dollars. When in doubt, use the Standard form.

The form then asks for the type of work. The Office's rule is to choose the type that matches the predominant form of authorship, and it gives the example directly: a videogame that is primarily audiovisual is registered as a "Motion Picture / AV Work". A game where the code is the heart of the claim can be filed as a literary work, which is where computer programs sit.

Whichever type you choose, say what you are claiming. The Office asks that an application for a videogame clearly state whether the claim extends to the computer program, the audiovisual material, or both. Writing only "videogame" invites a letter from the examiner. Plain wording works: computer program and audiovisual material.

5. Prepare the deposit

The deposit is the copy of the work the Office examines. For a game sold as a download, you do not upload the build. You upload material that identifies it.

For the code

Circular 61 sets out the options. If the source code holds no trade secrets:

• Submit the first 25 and last 25 pages of the source code for the version you are registering, preferably as a PDF.
• If the code has no clear beginning or end, which is true of most game projects spread over hundreds of files, submit 50 pages that reasonably represent the first and last portions.
• If the whole program is 50 pages or fewer, submit all of it and say so.
• Put the title and version number on the first page, and include the page with your copyright notice if there is one.

Scripts count as source code. Choose pages you wrote. Fifty pages of an engine's or a plugin's code would show the examiner someone else's work.

If the code does contain trade secrets, tell the Office in writing and use one of its redaction options. The common ones are the first and last 10 pages with nothing blocked out, or the first and last 25 pages with the secret portions blocked out, as long as less than half of the deposit is hidden. The Office says it applies these rules strictly and will refuse a deposit that does not follow them.

You may deposit compiled object code instead, but the Office strongly prefers source code. An object code deposit is registered under what the Office calls its Rule of Doubt, meaning it has not been able to confirm the code contains copyrightable authorship. That is a weaker certificate to carry into a dispute.

For the audiovisual material

For a game not distributed on disc, the Office asks for identifying material:

• A video or a series of images showing representative portions of the game. Capture the things that are yours: characters, environments, interface, cutscenes, key art in motion.
• A separate written synopsis of the game.
• The title on the material, and the copyright notice if the game has been published with one.

Check the Office's list of accepted file types before you export anything.

One detail in the Office's guidance is easy to miss. If the deposit does not include source code, the claim will extend only to the audiovisual material. To register the code and the audiovisual work together, upload both parts.

6. Exclude what is not yours

The application has a section called Limitation of Claim. It is where you tell the Office what the registration does not cover. A registration does not cover previously published code, previously registered code, public domain code, or code owned by someone else, and the same logic applies to art and audio.

For most games the list to exclude is short and familiar: the engine and its libraries, third-party plugins, purchased or licensed assets, licensed music, and anything from an earlier game of yours that was already published. Describe it in ordinary words. Then describe what you are claiming.

Be accurate rather than generous to yourself. The statute protects applicants who make honest mistakes, but a certificate can fail if inaccurate information was included with knowledge that it was inaccurate and the Office would have refused registration had it known. Claiming a marketplace asset pack as your own authorship is the kind of error that hands the other side an argument.

7. Remember that the record is public

The Office is direct about this: all information you provide on your copyright registration will be available to the public, and most of it will be online. That includes the claimant's name and address.

If you work from home, the Office itself suggests giving a non-personal address: a PO box, a business address, or an agent's details, and a business email. Decide this before you file. Information can be removed from the online catalog later only in limited circumstances, and it stays in the Office's offline records regardless.

8. After you file

You receive a confirmation and a case number. Then you wait. Two things are worth doing in the meantime.

• Watch the email address you filed with. If the examiner writes with a question, the Office asks for a full reply within 45 days. Unanswered questions are the usual reason a claim takes twice as long.
• Keep the exact files you uploaded, with the confirmation, in the same place you keep your builds and repository history. If the registration is ever used, you will want to show precisely what was deposited.

When the certificate arrives it carries the effective date from the day your complete application reached the Office. You can look your record up afterwards in the public records system.

9. Updates, DLC, ports and sequels

A registration covers the version you deposited. The Office treats each version of a computer program containing new, copyrightable authorship as a separate work, and a registration for a later version covers the new material in it, not what was published before.

Nobody registers every patch. A reasonable reading of the rules is to register the release build, and to register again when an update adds a body of original work you would be upset to see copied. Each later filing has its own three-month window, counted from when that material was first published.

What registration does not do

• It does not protect the idea. Copyright covers expression. The Office states that it does not protect a program's algorithms, formatting, functions, logic, or system design. Your mechanics and your genre stay open to anyone who builds their own version from scratch.
• It does not protect the name. The Office does not register names, titles or short phrases. A game's name and logo are a trademark matter, handled by a different office under different rules.
• It does not stop anyone copying the files. A certificate is a legal position. It makes the response faster and stronger. It does not make the copy harder to produce.
• It does not watch the stores for you. Finding a copy is still your job. The habits in our takedown guide cover that side.

Common questions

How much does it cost to copyright a game?

$45 for the Single Application or $65 for the Standard Application, filed online, per the Office's fee schedule as of October 2026. There is no annual fee and no renewal for a new work.

Do I need a lawyer to register?

No. The application is written for authors to complete themselves, and the Office's public information staff answer procedural questions. A lawyer is worth paying where ownership is tangled: contributors who never signed anything, a co-founder who left, a publisher agreement, or a game built on someone else's property.

My game came out more than three months ago. Is it too late?

It is too late for the grace period and still worth doing. Registration remains the requirement for a suit over a U.S. work, it restores statutory damages and fees for any infringement that begins after you register, and a certificate made within five years of release still carries its weight as evidence. A copy that comes down can come back under another name.

Someone already copied my game. Can I register now?

Yes, and you will need to before a suit or a Copyright Claims Board claim. For that particular copying, if you are outside the three-month window, statutory damages and attorney's fees are off the table. Actual damages and the infringer's profits are still available in principle. A takedown notice does not wait on any of it.

Should I preregister an unreleased game?

Probably not. Preregistration is a separate $200 service for works with a history of being leaked before release, and it still requires a full registration afterwards. The Office's own page says that for the vast majority of works, preregistration is not useful. You can register an unpublished build directly instead.

I am not in the United States. Does this apply to me?

Partly. Works from countries that share copyright treaties with the United States are protected there and can be registered with the Office. The rule that you must register before suing is written for United States works. The rule limiting statutory damages and fees has no such exception. So a developer in Poland or Brazil whose game is copied and sold to American players gains the same remedies from a timely U.S. registration. Your own country's system is a separate question, and many countries have no registration at all.

Does mailing a copy to myself do the same thing?

No. The Office says there is no provision in the copyright law for that kind of protection, and it is not a substitute for registration.

Does a free game or a jam game need registering?

The law does not distinguish by price. The practical question is whether you would act if someone sold it. Free games are copied and resold too.

This page describes United States registration practice and the Copyright Office's published guidance as of 7 October 2026. Fees, forms and processing times change; the linked pages are the authority. It is general information, not legal advice about your situation.