Rights, not files
A licence to sell a game on a store is not automatically a licence to run it in a browser. Web rights, territory, term and derivative builds are separate questions.
Licensed titles
Bringing a licensed game to the browser is a separate job.
A store build and a browser build are not the same product. This is what has to be settled before a licensed title can be published on the web, and what changes when it is.
The build changes
Store services, sign-in and platform achievements have no equivalent in a browser build, so the game has to be adapted rather than merely wrapped.
Asset reuse
Artwork and audio that already exist can usually be reused, provided the licence covers third-party distribution of the resulting files.
The checklist
What a licence has to cover before we can publish.
None of this is unusual, and it is better raised before a build exists than after. The list below is the one we work through with a rights holder.
- The right to distribute the game over the open web, not only through an application store.
- The territories and the term, stated explicitly rather than implied by the platform.
- Whether a modified build is permitted, and who owns the changes.
- Whether the existing artwork and audio may be redistributed, and in what form.
- What happens when the term ends — how the game is withdrawn and who holds the build.
What actually changes in a browser build
The game itself usually survives the move intact. What does not survive is everything around it. A store build can lean on platform services — sign-in, cloud saves, achievements, in-app purchase — and a browser build has none of them. Each one has to be replaced with something the game can do on its own, or removed.
Save data is the clearest example. In a store build it lives in a platform service; here it lives in the player's own browser, which means it is genuinely local, survives a refresh, and is lost if the player clears their storage. That is a real difference in behaviour, not an implementation detail, and it belongs in the licence conversation.
Why browser versions are worth doing at all
Because the player arrives with nothing to install. A licensed title that already has an audience can be opened by someone who would never have downloaded it, and the same artwork that was paid for once can work a second time without a store listing, a review queue or a storefront cut.
In the catalogue
Licensed titles we already carry.
These sit alongside the twenty games we build ourselves, with the publisher credited on every card.
Hold the rights to a game that belongs in a browser?
Tell us which title and which territories. We will tell you what a browser build would need and what it would take.