Game studios7 min read•
Protecting game source code, engine forks and studio tooling
Code theft, insider exfiltration and ransomware are three different problems. Client-side encryption, key rotation and immutable snapshots answer them separately.
Try it in one click.
Three private surfaces. Same zero-knowledge architecture.
Three threats, three answers Studios usually talk about "protecting the code" as one problem. It is three:
- Outsider exfiltration — someone who should never have had access obtains a copy. Answered by content that is ciphertext everywhere outside your devices.
- Insider exfiltration — someone with legitimate access takes it with them. Answered by minimising who holds keys, rotating on departure, and logging access.
- Destruction — ransomware encrypts or deletes everything. Answered by versioned, immutable, off-site snapshots.
No single control covers all three, which is why "we have a private repo" is not a strategy.
Version control is not an archive VCS handles text well and binaries badly. Engine distributions, middleware, signing material, large tool packages and milestone archives end up on shared drives and in chat attachments — the places with the loosest controls. Those artefacts deserve the same protection as the repository.
Keys instead of permission lists A permission list is a rule enforced by a server you cannot inspect. A sealed key envelope per member is a cryptographic fact: someone without an envelope cannot read the content even if a rule is misconfigured. Removing an engineer rotates the remaining envelopes so their retained copy stops opening new revisions.
Chat is part of your codebase surface Config files, patches, credentials and internal tools circulate as attachments. If the messaging platform can read its own history, so can everything connected to it. Encrypted channels put those attachments inside the same protected boundary as the rest.
Ransomware recovery that actually works Snapshots must be off-site, encrypted, versioned and immutable for a retention window — otherwise the attacker deletes the backups first, which is the standard playbook. Hourly encrypted snapshots to EU object storage with an immutability window turn an extortion event into a restore.
Credentials belong in a vault, not a spreadsheet Signing keys, store credentials, service tokens and build-farm secrets should sit in an encrypted vault with per-item sharing and attachments, importable from whatever password manager the studio outgrew.
Try it in one click.
Three private surfaces. Same zero-knowledge architecture.