Yes, you're paranoid. No one cares about your ideas. Everyone has their own ideas that they want to make.

Is there any reason to be afraid of someone making a ripoff? For example, look at Paladins and Overwatch.

Some of the "ripped off" characters in Paladins were available in a public beta before the "original" character was ever shown to the public in Overwatch... which would make Overwatch a rip off of Paladins?... or alternatively both are rip offs of team fortress + generic fantasy archtypes...

Also note that even if one of these games was a direct clone of the other, copyright has no issue with that. Generic ideas, themes, settings, archtypes -- e.g. "a dwarf who is good at engineering" -- are not protected IP.

Not to mention that an idea is just an idea, and means absolutely nothing. It is your execution, your writing itself, that will determine a stories success or failure. Games are the same. Really anything is the same. Good ideas with poor execution will fall a lot faster then bad ideas with good execution.

Much further into development you can be worried that someone might steal your idea, but again it's a very very VERY small possibility. Backup your work on external drives and online. Keep a record of the work you do. That'll cover you for the most part.

And to me, I wouldn't care even if someone did steal my story (or game). Sure, they're now making money off of it. But it would mean my game had what it takes, and if that's true I can make many more - because the one stealing it cannot replicate you, and you are what made that story or game. Though I have an odd perspective on things, so I doubt saying that will help you.

The only kind of story I've ever seen be stolen was stuff that was already in a finished, salable format, generally novels. Because that's the only kind of thing where a thief could get some actual money out of in a fairly short amount of time. When it comes to game and game story ideas, generally everybody has lots of their own - I've tried to give mine away for years, and you just can't find takers. :rolleyes:

I understand the paranoia and it comes from a very true realisation that your idea has tremendous value. But it also comes from a misunderstanding of what an idea is.

An idea is much more involved than than what you can put into an elevator pitch, design document or what comes across when you write or talk about it to others. If Tarantino is making a new movie, he can give the script away and you listen to him talk about it for hours, but if you try to make the movie yourself, you are going to end up with something very different than what Tarantino will create. The idea is what ends up shining through the work, and it's very tied to the person with the creative vision. It comes through in all the little details, it's also tied to your business, the way your present yourself, how you market your games, etc. to make an impact and make the world listen up - everything must work in harmony and be congruent with a powerful idea that resonates with people.

Also if you work on your ideas and your creative vision, try to figure out what you really want to express and refining that - you'll always stay steps ahead of any copy-cat or hack that tries to emulate what you do. They'll have no idea how to take things to the next level, they can only copy from what you've put out in the past.

So don't worry about the copy-cats and immitators, worry about refining your own creative vision and keep expanding and unraveling it. That is what matters. So it's a slightly different take than the "ideas are worthless" modality, which can be useful but also cause you to not care about your ideas which really is the your lifeblood of your work.