Hey guys, so I’m 16, and I’ve been making a pretty good mobile game for almost a year now, and everything is my original work, including Models, Music, Textures, even code (it’s the first game where I decided to stop watching tutorials), I’ve put literally days of my life into this and I’m almost ready to upload it to the Play Store.
My question is, Should I license and Copyright my music? And should I make a Gaming Studio Company or something (this means I would have to license and copyright my logo, make a website and etc.)? Do remember I’m 16 so it might be an inconvenience.
Also, a Google Play Store Developer license is sold at a one time fee of $25 and a Microsoft Windows Developer license is sold at a one time fee of $19 for individual devs and $99 for companies.
So if I make a company it could cost me more to distribute, so there’s that.
Short answer - yes. IP is not something you should consider for protection, but a must (open source aside). You can always assign any IP under your self instead of commercial entity then license to your business unit (aka entrustment, makes no difference in general).
Re commercial entity, yes license sometimes can vary, but do remember if you operate as an indie studio, you may eligible for any potential tax reclaim (check with your local solicitor) on both revenue and procurement. With all these benefits added on, the difference in license fee can be seen penny talks.
You already own copyright over things you create, but if you have a name for something (like your company or your game title) then it’s useful to trademark that. Most likely though it’s something you wouldn’t have to concern yourself with, especially since you don’t really have the money to do much of that legal stuff anyway.