I know that copyright makes it so game ideas cannot be copyrighted, but copyright protects expressions of ideas. So how much of your game is protected by copyright- can another person make a complete copy of your game, including all the game mechanics and get away with it because they didn’t use your assets? I think that the way you make the idea is part of your expression of it, so my question is that if someone makes a clone of your game can you get it taken down for infringing your copyright? Basically, what are the protections that developers have against people taking all their ideas and making an exact copy for themselves legally? Thanks.
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The copyright protects the expression of an idea, as you mentioned. This means that you can have a game with the same overall thought (such as getting chased by ghosts), but you cannot copy a game’s way of expressing that idea. You could make a game about being chased/chasing ghosts, but you cannot use the same method of expression as PAC-Man. Does that help?
Source: Video Games and the law: Copyright, Trademark and Intellectual Property | New Media Rights
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Yes, that helps quite a bit. Thanks for your answer. So if a future game copies down to a tee the exact expressions of the mechanics and the overall game, just with different assets that are still similar, that is still infringing on the expression of your work because its a direct copy of the expression. Am I correct? So in this way, you can’t make your game too similar to the original game.
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Yes that is correct. Character limit go brrrrrr
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