"The playable build is yours to keep, share and replay long after the event." That sentence appears on this site and it is worth explaining why it is true, because a great many things sold as yours are not.
The short version: you receive a file, not access to something.
What you actually receive
One HTML file. Every image, every sound and all the code embedded inside it.
Not a folder of assets. Not a link to a hosted page that we maintain. Not an app that has to be installed, or an account that has to exist. A single document that you can save, email, put on a memory stick, and open by double-clicking.
That format is the whole reason the ownership claim means anything, and it is why we build them that way. The technical side is in putting an entire game in one file.
What that means in practice
It works with no internet connection. Not through a caching trick. There is genuinely nothing to fetch, because it is all already there.
It works if we stop existing. No server to go down, no domain to lapse, no company required. If this studio closed tomorrow, every game we have delivered would carry on working exactly as it does now.
It works with no account. Nothing to log into, no password, no licence check, no device limit. A gift that requires the recipient to create an account is a gift with an obstacle in front of it.
You can share it freely. Send it to whoever you like. There is no mechanism preventing it and no intention to add one. A game about a family is more valuable the more of that family has it.
It will very probably still open in ten years. An HTML file is about as durable a format as computing has produced. Browsers are extremely reluctant to break old documents, and nothing in the build depends on a service that somebody could withdraw.
That last point is the one that matters most for a keepsake. The realistic failure mode is losing the file, which is the same failure mode as losing a photograph and one people already understand how to guard against.
The trade
Being straight about the other side, because a single file is not free of drawbacks.
There is no updating. A fix is a new file. Anybody holding the old one keeps holding it until you send them the new one. For a keepsake this is fine; for anything with ongoing content it would not be.
Large files are awkward to email. A twenty megabyte build exceeds some mail limits, so delivery becomes a download link rather than an attachment. The file is still a file; only the handover changes.
Nothing is shared between commissions. Each build carries its own copy of everything. Wasteful in the abstract, irrelevant in practice, because the engine is small and the artwork is not.
Keeping it safe
Since the file is the thing, a few practical suggestions.
Save a copy somewhere that is backed up. Wherever your photographs live is the right place, because it is the same category of object and it will get the same treatment.
Send it to the people in it. Redundancy through distribution, and it is the best thing about the gift anyway.
Keep the original email. It is the simplest record of what you have and where it came from.
Do not rely on a link alone. Download the file. A link is convenient and a file is permanent.
The rights question
Worth being direct, because it is the part people are least sure how to ask about.
There are two separate things: the playable build, and the underlying artwork and engine.
The build is yours to keep, share and replay, which is what the site says and what this article is about.
Anything beyond that, for example whether you can print the artwork, use a character commercially, or have the source files, is a fair question and one to settle at the brief stage rather than assume. Ask before commissioning and we will tell you plainly what is included. It is a much easier conversation before the work than after it.
If a commission is for a business rather than a person, this matters more, so raise it early.
Why we build it this way
It would be easier to host these. A hosted game can be updated, measured and controlled, and it is how almost everything is sold now.
It is the wrong answer for something given as a keepsake. A sixtieth birthday present that stops working in 2031 because a service was retired is not a present, it is a rental that nobody described as one.
The point of these builds is that they outlast the occasion. That requires them to outlast us, which requires them to need nothing from us. Everything about the delivery format follows from that.
What this means
You get a file. Keep it where you keep photographs.
It needs no account, no internet and no company.
Share it with everybody who is in it.
And ask about rights before you commission, especially for anything commercial.
The rest of the process is in how commissioning a custom game works, and what it costs in how much does a custom video game cost.
