While finding out that a rival company has plagiarised your hard work may sting, there is little legal recourse for developers who believe their game idea has been appropriated. The issue is that video games are creative in both visual and aural terms, but also in purely functional terms, and the laws that govern these elements are fundamentally different. Alex Chapman, a lawyer at Sheridan’s specialising in games, says: “Generally speaking there is no copyright in a game mechanic or the functionality of a game (or indeed any other type of software). Copyright will protect the visual appearance of the game to the extent that it is original – such as by protecting the graphics, screen layouts and art assets. It will also protect the underlying software code. However, it will not protect the functionality. "Most games are derivative of something else. Think of the first game of its type and you could say that all games that followed it are clones. This is why the functionality is not protected by copyright. A great deal of skill will generally go into making a lawful game with a similar mechanic to another. The unlawful ones tend to be highly derivative of the original and in those cases there is often something that can be done.