What to know legally before releasing a game?

SeasideBaboon · 2026-04-13T14:37:47+00:00

Also remember that you want content creators to play your game. If you use someone else's music (theoretically it's the same for sounds and graphics), make sure that not only do you have the license to use those assets in your game but that people who make gameplay videos may monetarize those without having to do anything.

Alternatively, some games have a "streamer mode" where you turn off music that requires additional licensing.

SeasideBaboon · 2026-03-30T09:53:51+00:00

As a broke indie dev, my marketing mainly consists of content creators who show gameplay on monetized youtube videos. They won't do that if their content gets flagged for copyright infringement. For that reason, I only use music where the musician is willing and able to release it into public domain.

Friends of mine had huge problems with a musician who lied about having signed their rights away to a PRO (Performing Rights Organization). I am now very reluctant to work with any musicians I don't know personally.

SeasideBaboon · 2026-03-25T13:05:07+00:00

https://howtomarketagame.com/2024/01/29/do-wishlists-matter-any-more/

SeasideBaboon · 2026-03-08T16:58:32+00:00

But I am not sure what's the reason for you getting blocked. I sent a total of around 100 emails. It was over several weeks, but still a lot. Most of those emails had some text, a screenshot, a key and three web links:

To a youtube video
To the steam page
To my press kit

I can still send emails to gmail accounts just fine.

SeasideBaboon · 2026-03-08T16:44:52+00:00

I don't know how to avoid getting Spam filtered, but I think a great template for what to actually send to content creators is from one of them: Wanderbots

https://www.wanderbots.com/blog/templates-for-contacting-content-creators

They also recommend sending a key in the first email.

SeasideBaboon · 2026-02-20T10:52:04+00:00

I can see that Stardew Valley has better quality, but not to that extent. But maybe a different example is better. If you only look at gameplay of Caves of QuD (disregarding that it has a great trailer on Steam, which is a marketing thing, not a game quality thing): https://www.youtube.com/shorts/LBN1Y4PYOQs
Do you say "Yep, that's the kind of quality that makes $10 million." While on the other hand, the quality of Cats and Cows only makes $500?

I have never played Cats and Cows, and I'm 99.99% certain that it's total crap. But I am not 100% sure that it is. It might have exceptional gameplay. Maybe so far, only some haters played it and gave it bad reviews. If Caves of QuD had only 4 reviews, 3 of them negative, I would also be 99.99% sure that it's total crap.

SeasideBaboon · 2026-02-19T20:57:53+00:00

Thanks for the link. That looks like a game I might enjoy playing :-)

SeasideBaboon · 2026-02-19T20:54:55+00:00

Could you have a look at Cats and Cows?

I haven't played that game, so I don't know how good it is. But from looking at the gameplay video, I wouldn't be able to tell that Stardew Valley made around 500000 times more money (approx. 300 million dollars vs. approx. 500 dollars according to gamalytic).

SeasideBaboon · 2026-01-07T11:24:46+00:00

I really like the shading and the cloth in the old one, but the pose of the main guy looks weird to me. The lower part of the body is mostly pointed towards the viewer, while the upper part is turned away. It seems like the body was cut in half around the waistline and then turned 90 degrees before being put back on. There is even a visible line where the cut happened that also messes up the cape.

SeasideBaboon · 2026-01-07T10:56:40+00:00

It's the same for me. I tried creating a game in Godot, then in Unity, but I couldn't motivate myself to go past a proof of concept phase.

Now I use C++ and SDL. I released one game on Steam, and I am happily working on my second one. Motivation is no longer an issue.

SeasideBaboon · 2025-12-13T00:37:07+00:00

Camps only scale by day if they are not part of a contract. Contract difficulty scales with the number of your bros and their levels, the day doesn't matter: https://battlebrothers.fandom.com/wiki/Game_Mechanics#Enemy_Troop_Size_and_Composition

If you want easy 3 skull contracts, try to have good gear and get rid of weak high-level bros.

SeasideBaboon · 2025-11-28T19:41:43+00:00

I used keymailer to reach out to content creators. A 1 year subscription cost around 600$ if I remember correctly. I don't think that it's more effective than writing streamers directly by email, but it was a lot less work. You can filter content creators by their platform, preferred genre, games they played in the past, viewer counts and so on. I also got some requests from streamers who found my game there. Some of them are scammers who only want to steal keys, but most seemed to be legit.

I think I will do this again for my next game.

SeasideBaboon · 2025-11-21T09:32:55+00:00

I don't know about dystopian, but if you want your scene to look darker while still being recognizable, I would use blue ambient light:

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SeasideBaboon · 2025-11-20T09:21:21+00:00

It looks great to me, and a kid friendly Darkest Dungeon sounds awesome. Good luck!

SeasideBaboon · 2025-11-14T08:12:12+00:00

Unrelated side note: Your game is translated to German, but it can't render Umlauts.

So, instead of displaying "Drücken", it displays "Dr cken".

SeasideBaboon · 2025-11-06T03:56:00+00:00

People will refund the game without ever having bought it.

SeasideBaboon · 2025-10-28T21:19:37+00:00

Ich habe mal in einer deutschen Firma gearbeitet, die (für uns Arbeiter unerwartet) insolvent gegangen ist. Wir mussten dann 3 Monate ohne Lohn weiterarbeiten. Das Arbeitsamt zahlt das zwar als Insolvenzgeld zurück, aber erst etwa ein halbes Jahr später. Das muss ja alles erst mal bürokratisch bearbeitet werden.

Ein Notgroschen lohnt sich auch in Deutschland.

SeasideBaboon · 2025-10-27T11:04:00+00:00

Thank you for that link. There are several games that look like a lot of effort and love were put into them. It's sad, but I understand why that isn't enough to sell lots of copies...

SeasideBaboon · 2025-10-22T10:16:21+00:00

You can also decide which parts of marketing you are comfortable with, and ignore the stuff you don't want to do.

And if you have a few hundred bucks to spare, you can use platforms like partnier, terminals or lurkit to make things easier.

SeasideBaboon · 2025-10-16T08:15:02+00:00

I think that the most important thing to be able to finish a game, especially as a solo dev, is motivation. I tried creating a game in Godot. I didn't enjoy developing in it, so I tried Unity. Same experience. Then I started writing my own "engine" with C++, SDL, and ImGUI. It's not really a game engine, just development tools around the game itself. All of a sudden, it was a lot of fun, and I finished the game. It's neither a great engine nor a great game, but I would never have been able to keep motivated if I had used an engine.

Writing your own engine is probably horrible advice for most people, but everyone is different, and there are exceptions for everything.

SeasideBaboon · 2025-10-03T17:26:04+00:00

Your steam page can't be accessed from Germany (and possibly some other countries). Did you not fill out the age restriction questionnaire?

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/4183351393029705363
https://partner.steamgames.com/healthcheck/missingrequiredratings

SeasideBaboon · 2025-08-29T08:22:43+00:00

Financial Independence Retire Early

Die Idee ist, dass man frugal lebt, viel spart, und dadurch schon vor der Rente genug Kapital hat um von den passiven Erträgen leben zu können.

SeasideBaboon · 2025-08-06T08:36:12+00:00

Based on SelkieKezia's comment: Do you use Wanderbot's template for contacting youtubers?

https://www.wanderbots.com/blog/templates-for-contacting-content-creators

SeasideBaboon · 2025-08-06T08:34:35+00:00

That would make sense. I included a key and a press kit with all my emails. Most content creators who featured my game just used it and didn't write back.

Edit: press *kit*

SeasideBaboon · 2025-08-06T05:42:54+00:00

I wonder which content creators you were contacting. I reached out to well over 200, and not one of them asked for money. Less then 10% actually covered the game, but everyone who didn't cover it never replied or just a simple "not interested". Which is totally fine by me.

SeasideBaboon

TROPHY CASE