Hi everyone, I still have a long way until my game is ready to be released, but I would like to start looking on some certain things that always bothered me, would really appreciate inputs.

1- Let's say some users backed my project through my website while still in development, now the game is released, can I give them redeem codes for Steam/Epic? Common sense tells me it's not possible because those platforms will still want their cut, but maybe they give some limited amount of codes or something? Just trying to understand how the system works.

2- About copyrights, I have no money to spend on this, is there something I can do to still protect my work?
If there is nothing, what can I do to avoid someone potentially registering my game name after it's released and preventing me to use it? Should I use some generic name that can't be copyrighted? Thoughts?

3- Anyone have had experience on Kickstarted? Some do's and don't would be great.

Thanks in advance!

The Game Design forum is the wrong place to ask about marketing, financing, and IP protection (none of those questions have anything to do with the design of games). All these questions belong in the Game Business and Law forum, so I moved your post there.

I can't answer your first question, but others have asked about Steam codes before. Click atop this page where it says "Back to Games Business and Law" to see other discussion threads here in this forum. Same for your third question, about Kickstarter, financing through crowdfunding platforms. Lots of others have asked about that here.

As for your second question, you don't need to spend money on copyright. Just write "copyright 2022 your name" on your title screen or something. Copyright is automatic. You also don't need to trademark your game or patent it. If you want to know more, I wrote an article (here). I'm not a lawyer, however.

Thank you, I tried to use the search engine before but site is totally unresponsive.

I have to send 200 times the same request to be able to get a valid response from the web server.

Is it always like this?

Yes, I've been having site troubles too. If you want to let the site owner know about it, you can post in the GDNet Comments, Suggestions, and Ideas board. Click Forums at the left, then click Community at upper right. You'll find the board listed in Community.

Oh, and to find those crowdfunding and Steam codes threads, don't use Search. Click Back to Games Business and Law to see the thread titles. Do some scrolling. Good luck. (Here's hoping this will post, it's been a trying day.)

Steam allows you to generate codes for your game for free, as many as you need (unless you do something ridiculous like generating massive amounts of keys for a game that doesn't sell at all).

You are also specifically allowed to give free keys to your backers. Here's Steam's documentation on keys, which includes all the details: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys​

Epic Games Store also has a way to generate keys, but the key request must be approved by Epic (except for “press/promo” keys, you can generate 1000 promo keys, no questions asked). Here's Epic's documentation on keys: https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/services/en-US/EpicGamesStore/AccessKeys/index.html​

@1024 Amazing, much appreciated.

So seems the other questions have been answered, so moving on.

Kick starter is not as easy as it used to be. Getting funding from there is a huge moon shot these days.

A lot of manual work is needed to just “run a campaign” from everything i heard.

Focus on finishing your game, and once it is done, you can look into all of these things Yourself.