If you’re an independent creative worker, are you making sure your digital assets and output indicate that you’re the original author?

Every time I submitted a build to a first party publisher, the submission form asks for things like the name of the developer, submission version, and date. This information is most likely part of the publisher’s metadata requirements for their system to easily reference the correct product for display on the marketplace. For human users who might want to find products from a specific developer, having that in metadata provides the interface to filter (search and retrieve) and access those products all at once.

The minutae of metadata can turn off anyone making digital output, but it is an important step in stamping ownership and authenticity of a digital artifact. What if it ends up traveling further than you imagined?

The internet is connecting the world faster than ever, and it’s possible you may be working with businesses in countries that potentially have copyright laws to protect creative works, such as the United States. Those handling a finished game product in their libraries will hopefully demonstrate their integrity and credit the original developers. But it’s not unimaginable that there may not be enough resources to administer that information, so it is important for game makers to ensure to encapsulate rights management metadata on their product.

And with AI on the rise, it’s more important than ever for creatives to have their work credited to differentiate itself from AI-generated work, and even before it gets used to train them.