User:Ipclasslopel/Intellectual property protection of video games

Assets will often have to be recreated in order to create a new game (or sequel by another company or creator), which is a common complaint of game developers, as it usually costs large amounts of money to create commercially viable assets and makes it difficult for smaller developers to produce games.

This reasoning would also apply to games made with the same engine which share source code—this would not constitute copying because the games' similarity is inherent to the tools. Large video game houses/publishers can sidestep this limitation by developing in-house engines.

See U.S court case CCNV v. Reid, on the principle work for hire.

User input is an essential component of video games, which are interactive media. Though this may not change the intellectual property rights in the base code of the game, some developers/publishers may restrict the rights of players to broadcast their playthrough of the game. The arguments from the other side are that the output of a game is coming in a particular way due to user input and this can reasonably give a player some restricted rights in his/her play through, also known as a Let's Play.