Licensing third-party content

If your game uses art, audio, fonts, or code you didn't make yourself, Minit Games needs two things: a license declaration in your bundle, and (for most licenses) a notice file crediting where the material came from.

Declaring a license in meta.json#

Three fields at the root of your bundle's meta.json: license (an SPDX identifier like "MIT", or "proprietary"), credits (a freeform credit line shown to players), and sourceUrl (an optional link to the source). Field details: Config Values.

license describes your whole game, not any single embedded asset. Even if the only third-party thing in your bundle is a font under the SIL Open Font License, don't set license to "OFL" — that per-asset detail belongs in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt (see below), not in this field.

You can also edit all three fields manually after upload. Open your project in Studio, select the Credits tab, make your changes, and choose Save Credits. Studio saves the changes through POST /projects/{projectId}/update. Credits can be up to 2500 characters on this path, and Source URL must be a real http:// or https:// URL. Leave Source URL empty to clear it.

The two credits paths deliberately have different limits:

• meta.json: the credits field is uncapped.
• Studio Credits editor: credits are capped at 2500 characters; a longer value is rejected.
• See Limits & Constraints FAQ for the complete limit table and failure modes.

An upload that creates a new revision (your first upload, or an upload after your latest revision is locked or has non-draft Posts, such as a scheduled or published Post) overwrites manual License, Credits, and Source URL changes with each value its meta.json declares; a field it leaves out keeps its current value. An upload that replaces your current draft never changes them. Licensing warnings belong to the bundle: changing License manually doesn't clear or recalculate an existing warning. The warning stays until an upload that creates a new revision declares a license and resolves it.

What counts as proprietary#

• On your Game's first upload, leaving license out and setting license to "proprietary" mean the same thing: this is your own content, no warning, no gate. Most creators who build everything themselves can leave it out. A later upload that leaves license out keeps the stored license.
• Why: Minit Games' Terms of Service already grant Minit Games a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to host whatever you upload, so an absent license on the first upload resolves to the exact same "your own content" outcome as declaring proprietary explicitly.

Which licenses we can host#

• CC0-1.0, Unlicense: hosted, fully moddable, no notice file.
• MIT, BSD-2-Clause, BSD-3-Clause, Zlib, ISC: hosted, fully moddable, notice file required (see below).
• Apache-2.0: hosted, fully moddable, notice file required. Reproduce the source's own NOTICE file if it had one, and note which files you modified.
• CC-BY-4.0: hosted, fully moddable, notice file required; indicate any changes you made.
• CC-BY-SA-4.0: hosted; modding allowed but flagged for review (mods inherit the ShareAlike terms). Notice file required.
• CC-BY-ND-4.0: hosted, modding turned off entirely (No Derivatives). Notice file required.
• Any Non-Commercial license (CC-BY-NC, CC-BY-NC-SA, CC-BY-NC-ND): not hostable. Minit Games runs ads and a creator fund, which counts as commercial use.
• GPL-2.0, GPL-3.0 (incl. -only/-or-later): not currently hostable, pending legal review.
• AGPL-3.0 (incl. -only/-or-later): not hostable.
• proprietary, or nothing declared on your Game's first upload: hosted, fully moddable, no gate, no warning — both mean the same thing: this is your own work. A later upload that declares nothing keeps the stored license.

Writing your THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt#

Licenses marked "notice file required" need a THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt at the root of your bundle, alongside meta.json, with one entry per third-party asset or library:

THIRD-PARTY NOTICES
This bundle includes third-party material listed below. Each item is
governed by its own license, reproduced or referenced here as required.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Component:  <asset or library name>
Source:     <origin URL>
Author:     <author / studio name>
License:    <SPDX identifier>

<full license text, or a pointer to where it is reproduced>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pair the notice entry with a credits line players actually see (e.g. "Audio & sprites: PixelOrb by Orb Interactive Ltd."). The notice file satisfies the license's paperwork, the credit line is what players see, and neither substitutes for the other.

Don't forget the engine's own notices#

The engine or runtime your game runs on may ship its own third-party notices. Those are the platform's responsibility, not yours. Your THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt only covers material you added.

A repo LICENSE file doesn't cover everything in your repo#

A top-level LICENSE covers the code you wrote, not every asset that sits in the same repo. A third-party audio track or sprite sheet still needs its own entry in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt with its real license. Audio is the single most common source of takedown requests, so write down where it came from.

What happens when you upload#

• Non-hostable declared license: the Creator Console blocks the upload before it starts, with a message naming the license and a link back to this article.
• Notice file missing (when required), or a ShareAlike license: a non-blocking warning below the upload dropzone; the upload proceeds.
• No license declared, or unreadable meta.json: no message.
• Uploading outside the console with a non-hostable license is still rejected, just later, during processing.

Where this shows up#

• On your project page: the Credits section shows "Own content" whether you left license out or set it to "proprietary" — both mean the same thing — or the license id itself otherwise; plus your credits, source URL, and any warnings. Project editors can update License, Credits, and Source URL here; other viewers see the saved values.
• In the app: the game's menu shows a Credits entry with your credit line, license, and source URL. No declared credits, no entry.