How to Take Down Game Clones on Steam and YouTube

A clone, an unofficial mod or a site selling items from your game can almost always be removed without going to court. The rights holder writes to the platform, not to the infringer, and the platform takes down the page, the video or the app. Steam and YouTube have separate complaint forms for this. One protects the copyright in the game itself (code, art, trailer, music). The other protects the trademark: the name and logo players recognize the product by.

In practice the two forms move at very different speeds. Below we look at how they differ, why a registered mark makes takedowns so much easier, and what a studio can still do while it has no mark.

Two complaints, two different checks

A platform is not a court, and it has no wish to rule on the merits of a dispute. What it needs is to see clearly from the complaint itself that the sender really owns the rights.

On Steam you can see this in the forms themselves. The trademark complaint form asks for your trademark numbers and the countries they are filed in, plus a short explanation of why the content infringes. The copyright notice works differently: you describe the work, link to the infringing page and confirm you are acting in good faith, and Valve separately warns that a knowingly false claim can create liability under §512(f) of the DMCA. We covered the DMCA procedure and counter-notices in detail in DMCA in Action.

Why a trademark makes takedowns easier

On Steam, a trademark complaint rests on the mark number and the country where it is filed, which the platform can check against a public register. At this stage the platform doesn't check who used the name first, which has a flip side we cover below.

Copyright is heavier going. In the Steam form you describe the work yourself and say where and when it appeared, and the infringer can file a counter-notice. Under DMCA §512(g), the platform then restores the content within 10 to 14 business days unless the rights holder notifies it within that time that it has filed a lawsuit. So it pays to prepare evidence in advance that your work existed before the copy.

We love it when a game has a registered trademark. Clones, cheats and mods can be taken down without one, and we do that regularly, but with a mark the work is noticeably easier, and without one it's noticeably harder. That's why a studio needs its mark for both defence and attack: it pays off every time you have to write to a platform.
— Futura Digital's assessment

The flip side: platforms act on anyone's mark

The simplicity of a trademark complaint cuts both ways. The platform checks formal criteria, so a takedown can come from someone whose mark is younger than the game itself.

The best-known example is Clicker Heroes. In May 2019 Apple pulled Playsaurus's game from the App Store worldwide after a complaint from Shenzhen Lingyou Technology, a Chinese company that had registered the name in China. Playsaurus held marks in Western markets, but none in China. After a public outcry, Apple began reinstating the game everywhere except China, where the Chinese mark was in force. The takeaway: you need a mark in the markets where the game has players, and for countries that don't use the Latin alphabet it's worth thinking separately about transliterating or translating the name. We covered when and where to file in Trademark Registration for a Game: When to File.

A recent Steam example involves hidden-cat games. Brazilian studio Nukearts obtained a US registration for HIDDEN CATS, after which, as Automaton reports, Valve, acting on Nukearts's complaint, told Travellin Cats to rename its Cats Hidden in series or face removal from the store, and in the same days another studio's HIDDEN CAT series relaunched under a new name. How to push back against a mark like that, and why an overly descriptive name is vulnerable, is a topic for our separate piece on naming a game so it can be registered. The Edge saga follows the same logic: in 2009 Mobigame's game was removed from the App Store after a complaint from Tim Langdell, owner of the EDGE mark, and was then pulled and relisted several times before returning under its original name in January 2010. The mechanism is easy to abuse, so your own mark also protects you against other people's complaints. And if your game features real-world brands, keep in mind that someone else's mark can just as easily become grounds for a complaint.

YouTube and the App Store: each platform has its own logic

Steam is the most straightforward platform for a trademark owner: the form is short, and in our experience the platform blocks the disputed page first and, if the game's owner objects, tells the parties to settle it between themselves or in court. Other platforms work differently.

• YouTube. Its trademark policy says YouTube forwards every complaint to the uploader before taking any action, removes content only in clear cases of infringement, and does not mediate disputes. For re-uploads of trailers and gameplay, the main route is a copyright removal request: it results in a copyright strike on the channel, and you can schedule the request for 7 days to give the uploader a chance to remove the video themselves.
• App Store. In its content dispute form, Apple says that in most cases it forwards the claim to the developer of the disputed app and asks the parties to resolve it directly. A separate form covers app name disputes, when another app is blocking a name you hold a mark for.
• Steam. Separate forms for trademark and copyright. If you have a mark, start with the trademark complaint.

What to do if you don't have a mark yet

Having no mark doesn't mean the copy stays up. You'll just have to prove your rights in other ways, and the earlier you prepare, the smoother each subsequent complaint goes.

_{STEP 1 — Send the infringer a demand letter}

You can start with a direct letter demanding the infringement stop. The platforms themselves recommend this step: YouTube's trademark policy encourages rights holders to contact the creator first, and Valve's copyright notice form suggests trying to resolve the issue with the person who posted the content before filing. If your letter concerns a common word in a title, mind the risks we covered in the Figma Dev Mode case.

_{STEP 2 — File a copyright complaint backed by proof of priority}

If the infringer doesn't respond, the complaint goes to the platform under copyright. Gather in advance everything that shows when your work was created: the published trailer, the date your Steam page went live, builds, source art files with metadata, social media posts. The dispute between Nintendo and Garry's Mod shows how the DMCA plays out with user-generated content and mods.

_{STEP 3 — Register your copyright in the US}

The U.S. Copyright Office sits within the Library of Congress, which is why people often call this "registering with the Library of Congress". For a rights holder it brings four things:

• A precondition to suing. Under 17 U.S.C. §411(a), no infringement action over a "United States work" can be filed until the copyright is registered or preregistered. Foreign works are exempt from this precondition, but without timely registration there are no statutory damages or attorney's fees (see §412 below).
• Statutory damages without proving loss. Under §504(c), a court can award _{$750 to $30,000} per work, and up to $150,000 for willful infringement.
• Attorney's fees. Under §412, statutory damages and attorney's fees are, as a general rule, available only if the work was registered before the infringement began or, for a published work, within three months of first publication, in which case they also cover infringement that began between publication and registration.
• A presumption. Under §410(c), a certificate obtained before or within five years of publication is prima facie evidence that the copyright is valid.

You can register art, character images, the trailer and the game's code. The filing fee for electronic submission is currently $65 for a Standard Application and $45 when a single author files one work that is not made for hire. The Office has proposed raising these to $85 and $55 from fall 2026, so check the fee table before you file. For a game released online in many countries at once, courts are split on whether it counts as a "United States work", so it's safer to meet the filing precondition ahead of time.

_{STEP 4 — Protect images as EU designs}

A registered EU design protects a product's appearance, and since the design reform took effect on 1 May 2025 it expressly covers non-physical products too: graphical user interfaces, animations, objects in video games. Key points:

• Many designs in one application. A single application can hold up to 50 designs, and since 2025 they no longer need to belong to the same Locarno class.
• Fees. According to the EUIPO fee table, it's €350 for the first design and €125 for each additional one.
• Term. Up to 25 years, renewed every five years.
• Novelty. A design must be new and have individual character, but the designer gets a 12-month grace period: your own trailer or announcement doesn't stop you from filing within 12 months of disclosure.

Unless publication is deferred, a registered design goes into the public EUIPO register, and you can cite that entry in a complaint to a platform or in a letter to the infringer.

_{STEP 5 — File a trademark application now}

Even a pending application already works for you: priority dates from the filing date, so an application filed before the announcement already protects the name, even though registration itself takes time.

When the infringer won't remove the copy and the platform asks for proof

A common scenario: the infringer ignores your letter, and the platform or hosting provider asks you to confirm your copyright. At that point what counts is what you already have in hand:

1. A registration certificate from the U.S. Copyright Office or an equivalent office elsewhere.
2. A deposit certificate from a private depository, which fixes a date by which the work already existed.
3. A publication timeline: trailer, store page, posts, builds.

Deposits help most in pre-litigation work and in court, when you need to show quickly that the rights were yours. You can choose a suitable format through our IP deposit and escrow service.

In our practice, registration and deposit certificates have settled pre-litigation disputes more than once: simply having them changed the negotiating position. We've also seen the reverse. An opponent deposited a client's works in its own name in bad faith and showed up with certificates, while the client had none. After that the client started depositing everything. A simple strike often needs no extra evidence, but it's better to prepare for a dispute before it starts.
— Futura Digital's assessment

Turning takedowns into a process

A one-off complaint deals with one copy. When dozens of clones, mods, cheats and sites selling unofficial currency or merch spring up around a game, you need a process. At Futura we run Futura Pulse for this: our lawyers prepare and file complaints with platforms by hand, while the technical side monitors platforms and trademark registers for the names and countries you set and collects the signals in a client dashboard. It also flags similar third-party applications in time to file an opposition. You can read more about the approach on the system-wide protection of games from clones, cheats and fakes page and in our brand protection and monitoring service. To get started, we offer a demo and a free audit of your game.

We're preparing separate pieces on related questions: how US trademark registration differs from the EU, how to name a game so the mark gets registered, and what rights a studio has without registration, including disputes with former partners.

What to do about it

In short: register your mark in key markets and file as early as you can, because a trademark complaint is the fastest route on platforms. Until you have a mark, keep your proof of priority at hand, register your art with the U.S. Copyright Office, and consider protecting the look of in-game objects as EU designs. Start with a letter to the infringer: the platforms themselves recommend it.

If you'd like us to look at your situation within our IP & Content practice, get in touch and we'll suggest which tool to start with.