Most publishers commissioning a slot game believe they are buying the game. In copyright terms they are usually buying permission to use it. The UK Intellectual Property Office states the default plainly: when you commission another person or organisation to create a copyright work, “the first legal owner of copyright is the person or organisation that created the work and not you the commissioner, unless you otherwise agree it in writing.” Where the contract says nothing, a court may find only an implied licence — and the guidance warns that this “does not necessarily result in a transfer of ownership,” so the buyer “may only get a limited non-exclusive licence.”
That sentence is the whole procurement problem in miniature. A game is not one copyright work but a stack of them: the delivered build, the art, the math model, the audio, the studio’s reusable framework beneath all of it, and the third-party components inside that framework. Each layer can sit with a different owner. A publisher who signs a scope document and a payment schedule without a component schedule has bought a product they may not be able to move, reskin, patch or hand to a second studio.
The buyer’s decision is not “do we want to own the IP.” It is narrower and more useful: for each layer of the build, do we need ownership, a perpetual licence, or nothing at all — and what artefact proves we got it? That question belongs in the brief, alongside the studio commissioning checks that cover delivery, QA and acceptance.
The default is not the deal you think you made
Two misconceptions recur in publisher briefs, and both are expensive.
The first is “work for hire.” That phrase comes from United States copyright practice. UK law has no equivalent doctrine for commissioned works; it has assignment, and the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 requires an assignment of copyright to be in writing and signed by or on behalf of the assignor. An imported template that says the studio “acknowledges all work is work made for hire” may read as decisive and do nothing in a UK-governed contract. What actually transfers ownership is a written assignment, and it needs to name the works.
The second misconception is that paying for the work transfers the rights. It does not. Payment buys the deliverable and whatever licence the contract grants. The Intellectual Property Office guidance notes the pre-1989 exception for certain commissioned photographs and engravings only, which is a useful reminder of how specific these rules are: outside that narrow historical case, the commissioner owns nothing by default.
There is a second default worth knowing. Where a work is made by an employee in the course of employment, the employer is the first owner, subject to any agreement to the contrary. A studio’s staff therefore produce work the studio owns. A studio’s freelancers usually do not — the guidance says a person working under a contract for services “will usually retain copyright in any works he produces, unless there is a contractual agreement to the contrary.” So the buyer’s ownership depends on whether the studio’s own contractor paperwork assigned those contributions onward. That is a chain-of-title question, and it is answerable before signature.
Split the build into layers before arguing about the word “ownership”
A single sentence — “the publisher owns all IP” — hides five different things that behave differently in practice. Ask the studio to break the build into these layers and mark each one.
The delivered title. The specific game as shipped: its rules implementation, its screen flow, its certified build. This is the layer a publisher almost always wants assigned outright, because it is the thing the licence, the certification and the operator relationship attach to.
The studio’s reusable framework. Most studios build on their own component library — a spin controller, a feature-state machine, a math harness, a localisation layer. This is not the game; it is the machinery the studio amortises across clients. Studios routinely refuse to assign it, and that refusal is reasonable. What matters is that the publisher gets a licence broad enough to run, maintain and modify the delivered title without the studio’s ongoing permission.
Third-party components. A build contains runtimes, fonts, audio libraries and SDKs owned by neither party. The publisher does not need to own these; it needs to know what they are, what their licences permit, and whether the licence survives the studio relationship ending. An inventory is the minimum.
Brand and character IP. A commissioned game usually carries original characters, symbols and world-building. Those are separate works with their own chain from concept art to final asset, and a publisher planning sequels or merchandise needs the concept-stage material too, not just the shipped sprites.
The publisher’s own contributions. Brand marks, the market list, the math specification and any operator-supplied assets stay with the publisher. The brief should say so explicitly, because a studio’s standard template will often claim an assignment of everything it touched.
This layer map is also the honest answer to a question buyers ask too late: what happens if we fall out? An assignment on the title plus a perpetual licence on the framework is a workable split. An assignment of everything is rarely granted. A licence on everything is the outcome that leaves the publisher stuck.
Assignment, licence and escrow are three different instruments
Assignment transfers ownership. It should identify the works, the rights (reproduction, adaptation, distribution, communication to the public), the territory and the term. It should be executed on delivery or on final payment, not promised in a proposal. Moral rights — the right to be identified and the right to object to derogatory treatment — sit with the creator unless waived; UK law permits a waiver, and a publisher planning to alter a title should ask for one in writing.
Licence grants permission while ownership stays with the studio. A framework licence is the normal commercial answer, but the terms decide whether it is useful. A licence that terminates when the development agreement ends turns the delivered game into something the publisher cannot patch. Ask for perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, sublicensable and transferable terms, with the right to modify, and confirm it survives the studio’s insolvency or acquisition. A licence that cannot be transferred to a successor operator is not a licence a publisher can build a product on.
Escrow is continuity, not ownership. Source code held by an independent agent, released on defined triggers — insolvency, abandonment, a sustained failure to fix a severity-one defect — gives the publisher a fallback without forcing the studio to give away its framework. The agreement needs to specify what is deposited (the full buildable source, the framework components at the delivered revision, the toolchain and build instructions), how often, and how release is triggered. An escrow that deposits an unbuildable snapshot satisfies the clause and not the need.
The three instruments answer three different fears. Assignment answers “who owns this.” Licence answers “can we keep running it.” Escrow answers “what if the studio disappears.” A brief that picks one has left two fears unmanaged.
Chain of title is a deliverable, not a promise
The most common failure in commissioned-game IP is not a hostile studio. It is an honest studio that used three freelancers for character art and one for the audio bed, and never obtained written assignments from them. The studio believes it owns the art because it paid for it. Under the default rule, it may not — and it cannot assign to the publisher what it does not own.
So the delivery pack needs a chain-of-title file rather than an assurance. At minimum: a contributor schedule naming every individual and company that created any part of the delivered works; the assignment or licence instrument for each; a written confirmation from the studio that its contractor agreements assign contributions to the studio; and the moral-rights waiver for named contributors. If a contributor cannot be identified or traced, that is a defect in the deliverable, not a footnote.
The same discipline applies to the third-party inventory. A software bill of materials listing each component, version and licence — plus the licence text or a link to it — turns “we used some open-source bits” into an auditable schedule. Two questions matter more than the list itself: does any licence require the publisher to disclose or license its own source, and does any component’s licence lapse when the studio stops paying for a commercial seat? A per-seat runtime licence that the studio held for its own team does not automatically cover the publisher’s future maintainer.
None of this requires a lawyer in the room at the first briefing. It requires the buyer to ask for the artefacts early, when the studio can still change its template without renegotiating a signed contract. The cost of a component schedule at kickoff is a meeting; the cost of discovering the gap during a migration is the product.
The practical test: could a second studio take it over?
There is one acceptance question that cuts through the wording of any IP clause. If the publisher handed the delivered build, the documentation and the escrow release to a different studio, could that studio rebuild, patch and resubmit the game without asking the original studio for permission?
If the answer is yes, the publisher has what it needs: an assignment or a sufficiently broad licence on the title, a transferable framework licence, a complete third-party inventory and a buildable source deposit. If the answer is no — because the framework licence is non-transferable, because a freelancer’s art was never assigned, or because the build instructions live only in the original team’s heads — then the publisher bought a dependency with a game attached.
That test is also the fair way to negotiate. It lets a studio keep its reusable framework while giving the publisher a credible exit, and it makes the ownership conversation about evidence rather than trust. For an Engine build, the same test runs over the platform layer too: the engine itself belongs to the platform, the studio’s framework sits above it, and the title layer is what the commission should settle. The Engine project brief is the route to request a project quote with the ownership split, licence terms and delivery artefacts agreed before production starts.
Where a publisher is commissioning a sequence of titles rather than one, the layer map becomes a portfolio asset: a framework licence negotiated once can cover several games, provided the agreement is written to allow it. That is a cheaper conversation than repeating the same IP negotiation for every title — and a clearer one than assuming each commission starts from the same default.
Frequently asked questions
Who owns the copyright in a commissioned slot game?
By default, the person or organisation that created the work owns it, not the commissioner. UK Intellectual Property Office guidance states that when you commission a copyright work, the first legal owner is the creator unless ownership is agreed in writing. A publisher that wants to own the delivered game needs a written assignment; otherwise it may hold only an implied, limited and non-exclusive licence.
Is “work for hire” enough to transfer ownership in the UK?
No. “Work made for hire” is a United States doctrine and has no direct UK equivalent for commissioned works. Under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, an assignment of copyright must be in writing and signed by or on behalf of the assignor. A brief that uses the phrase without a written assignment naming the works may transfer nothing at all.
Does the studio own work created by its freelancers?
Usually the freelancer does, unless there is a written agreement to the contrary. The employer exception applies to employees: where a work is made by an employee in the course of employment, the employer is the first owner. A person working under a contract for services normally retains copyright in what they produce. That is why a chain-of-title schedule and the studio’s contractor assignments belong in the delivery pack.
Should a publisher demand assignment of the studio’s framework?
Rarely, and usually not successfully. A studio’s reusable framework is the machinery it amortises across clients, and most will license rather than assign it. The useful demand is a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, transferable and sublicensable licence to use, modify and maintain the delivered title, backed by source escrow with defined release triggers.
What should the delivery pack contain for IP purposes?
A component schedule mapping each layer of the build to its owner; the executed assignment for the title; the framework licence terms; a third-party inventory or software bill of materials with licences; a contributor schedule with assignments or waivers for each named creator; and the escrow agreement describing what is deposited and when it is released. Each item is checkable before final payment, unlike an assurance in a proposal.
