If you have ever played a free game on a website, it is worth knowing something that portals rarely put in writing: the site you were playing on almost certainly did not make that game. It probably does not own it either. Understanding what sits between a developer and the page you are looking at explains a lot about how this corner of the web works, and it is the reason we decided to be explicit about our own arrangement.
The three ways a game ends up on a portal
Broadly, there are three ways a browser game arrives on a website that did not develop it.
A direct agreement. The site contacts the developer, they agree terms, and the game is published with permission. This is the cleanest arrangement and also the rarest, because negotiating individually with hundreds of studios does not scale for a small publisher.
A distribution network. The developer submits their game to a network, the network handles licensing to publisher websites at scale, and advertising revenue flows back to the developer through the network. The developer opts in deliberately, the publisher gets a licence without negotiating game by game, and everyone in the chain is identifiable. This is how the overwhelming majority of legitimate free-games portals operate.
Neither of the above. The site finds a game running somewhere on the internet, points an embed frame at it, and publishes it. Nobody asked the developer. Nothing was agreed. The game works, the page looks the same as a licensed one, and the developer usually has no idea it is happening.
That third route is more common than most players realise, and from the outside it is almost impossible to distinguish from the second. The same game, in the same kind of frame, on a page with the same kind of description around it.
How to tell the difference
There are tells, and they cost nothing to check.
Does the site say where the game came from? A publisher operating under licence has no reason to hide the source, and usually every reason to name it. A site that never mentions a provider anywhere, on any page, is generally not naming one because there is nothing to name.
Read the terms of service carefully. This is where the evasion tends to live. Language like "in accordance with licensing agreements or standard internet distribution practices" is doing a specific job: the first half sounds like a licence, and the second half quietly covers the case where there is not one. "Standard internet distribution practices" is not a legal basis for anything. It is a phrase that means we embedded it and assumed nobody would mind.
Check whether the copyright contact actually works. A copyright policy is only meaningful if a rights holder can use it. If the DMCA address on a site is at a placeholder domain, or the contact page lists a phone number starting +1 (555), the channel is decorative. That matters more than it sounds: an unusable copyright channel on a site full of other people's work is not an oversight, it is the door that should be open and is not.
How PlayNova works
We publish through the second route, and we would rather say so plainly than let you guess.
The games on this site are licensed through GameMonetize, a distribution network that developers submit their games to. The developer opts in, the network licenses the game to publisher sites like ours, and revenue is shared back. We do not develop any of these games and we do not own them. The copyright in every game on this site belongs to the studio or individual who made it.
You will find that stated on every game page, right underneath the game, along with the provider's own reference number for that title. Not buried in the terms. Not implied. On the page, next to the thing it describes, so that a developer who lands here can confirm in a few seconds what we are publishing and where we got it.
Our DMCA page explains what a copyright notice needs to contain and what happens when one arrives, and the address on it is a real mailbox that a person reads. If a game has been placed into a distribution network without its rights holder's permission, that is exactly the situation the process is there for, and we want the notice.
Why any of this matters to a player
You might reasonably ask why this should concern you if the game loads and is fun.
The practical answer is stability. Games published without permission disappear. The developer notices, sends a notice, and the page goes dead, often taking your saved progress with it. Licensed catalogues are duller in this one specific respect, which is exactly what you want from something you come back to.
The less practical answer is that these games are made by small teams and individuals, many of them working alone, and the revenue share attached to a legitimate licence is a real part of how they keep making them. A portal that skips that step is not getting the game for free. It is getting it at the developer's expense.
We would rather run a smaller catalogue on the right side of that line. There are currently a couple of dozen games here, each with a page we wrote ourselves. That is a slower way to build a site, and it is the one we are choosing.