Steam Blocks Indie Game Demo Over IP Violation Claim, But the Developer Owns the IP
- Sagar Mankar
- 7 hours ago
- 2 min read
A Japanese indie developer is having trouble releasing a Steam demo for their upcoming game because Valve flagged it for third-party intellectual property infringement. The catch? The flagged intellectual property belongs to the developer themselves.
Daikichi, the solo developer behind the upcoming vertical action game Wired Tokyo 2007, recently shared their frustrating situation on X. They had been preparing a free demo for the game, which is currently listed as "Coming soon" on Steam. However, Valve blocked the release, citing potential violations of third-party intellectual property.
According to the developer's post on X, the issue stems from a board game called Dinostone, a dinosaur-themed trading card game that Daikichi created and released in 2023. The game appears inside Wired Tokyo 2007 as a nod to their earlier work. Valve specifically flagged "dinosaur themed card games shown in the environment within your app in gameplay" as the infringing content.
"It's not a third party. It's just me wanting to use my own intellectual property rights myself." Daikichi added, "I have no idea what the meaning of this is at all."
The response from Steam made the situation even more difficult. Valve asked Daikichi to provide "reasonable assurances" that no infringement was taking place, stating it "could take the form of license agreements, or a legal opinion from your attorney analysing the intellectual property issues and explaining why you don't need licenses." They also warned that "without such assurances, we don't plan to ship your app."
For a large studio, this might be a manageable hurdle. For a solo indie developer, it is a different story entirely. As reported by Game Spark (via VGC), Daikichi pointed out that Dinostone was published online under their developer pseudonym rather than their real name, which makes proving ownership tricky.
"Where on earth does a public document exist that legally proves I own the rights to my board game works that I released online under anything other than my real name?" they asked.
"So basically, I just need to hire a lawyer and get an opinion letter? Where's that kind of budget supposed to come from for an indie game?"
Wired Tokyo 2007 is a vertical 3D action game where players climb upward through the skies above Tokyo, with new abilities unlocked by deliberately falling back down. The developer describes it as "a climbing game where falling has meaning." The planned demo was reportedly set to include a full third of the game's content.
