Prevent HTML5 3D game plagiarism

[Swatantra]

Hi Guys.

I am new to HTML5 game development. I have an idea and will implement the same in some JavaScript 3D libraries (threejs/babylonjs). My questions to the experts here is about various ways to protect my IP (intellectual property). Since most of the code will be in JavaScript, what are the various options I have? Minifying JavaScript makes it hard but does not prevent code/logic copying.

I would have used Flash earlier, but its obviously not a choice now. Also, there is still a long way to go for something like web-assembly to be widely available. So, my questions to the experts is: what other options do I have?

[b10b]

Have you considered server-side rendering / streaming?

Beyond that, good advice really depends upon exactly who your audience is, and how you intend them to consume your game.  General advice is to accept that plagiarism will be rampant for anything successful, and that a modern intellectual property strategy will do better to leverage that than impede it.

[BobF]

Be sure to enable variable renaming in the minification step. Minified code is easily deminified, but without comments and the original variable names the result will still be a little more tedious to follow. There are JavaScript obfuscators available that go a bit beyond minification, but they can't really protect your code either (and could cause bugs).

You can consider moving key pieces of your code server-side where it is better protected (or render the entire game there as b10b suggests), but the more functionality that resides server-side the higher your server costs will be.