How do I start a game company legally?

Think of a name, register the URL/website if you want and in this day and age also get the name as a Facebook page.

The rest is just tax/business requirements which will depend where you are in the world.

As museumsteve said, it depends where you are located in the world. If you want specific advice, you should probably mention what country and (if applicable) what stat/providence you are in.

At a minimum you need to apply for some form of DBA (doing business as, aka sole proprietorship) to establish your trade name, unless you want to just use your legal name for the company. That doesn't give your company any real legal presence though, its more like a personal alias for the sake of accounting. Depending on what you want to do, you may need more.

Ok, thanks for the answers. I already have a website for my light control project lightput at http://lightput.com and for my game at http://lightput.com/being_a_bird.html. You think It would probaby be cool to just make a new http://lightput.com/game_company_name.html or do you think I need to register a new URL? That and a DBA registering the name, that's all
I should really need then? Sounds about right. Thanks

"PathogenDavid" wrote:
As museumsteve said, it depends where you are located in the world. If you want specific advice, you should probably mention what country and (if applicable) what stat/providence you are in.

I live in Pennsylvania in the US

(Obligatory, I am not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice.)

Personally I'd go with an LLC over a sole proprietorship. It offers you more rights, in particular to how the debts of the business affect you as a person. Here's PA's page on filing to establish a corporation, and here's the specific page on LLCs. Unfortunately it looks like PA is one of the states that charges an annual fee.

There are companies that can help you establish an LLC in another state if you find your state's rules to be unreasonable, but I can't comment on them beyond that they exist since I've never known anyone to use one.

If you (or someone else reading this thread) is a university student, you might check and see if your university has free legal services (it probably does), they can might be able to help you get this sort of thing going.

I'm in the UK so can only speak from my experience. Being an LLC I assume is like our LImited companies here so the person is not liable for company debts should anything go wrong. The only problem with that is that you may struggle to find any that will give you any kind of credit as they know there's no guarantees if the business struggles. This also applies to things like commercial leases on shops or offices, so whilst being an LLC may offer personal protection it may hinder certain aspects of the business.

I assume the above is right as this is how it is here in the UK.


Also, make sure you grab the Facebook page name if you can..invaluable these days :)

Also, make sure you grab the Facebook page name if you can..invaluable these days

This, even if you think you are small any tiny and unknown because you have no product yet, trolls will find you and sit on your name so they can try and get you to pay them later. (Source: This has happened to me in the past.)

Thanks for the advice, I officially started my game company, Trash Dragon Games. I got the DNS and the Facebook. I'm probably forgetting something but that's good enough I hope. I used Legalzoom for the DBA thing.

http://trashdragongames.com

Hehe. That trash dragon looks like something out of Burning Man.

One man's trash is another man's dragon.

I like the sound of "Trash Dragon" actually! Good luck :)