Ownership requirements
Playing Age of Empires II with the Golden Age engine requires users to own Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition.
Legal and content use
Age of Empires II and Microsoft are trademarks or property of their respective owners. Golden Age is an independent, unofficial, non-commercial project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or approved by Microsoft.
Third-party rights
Golden Age is independently developed, non-commercial software for playing AoE2 through a separate engine. Microsoft owns its trademarks, copyrighted game content, proprietary assets, and other intellectual property.
Golden Age does not claim ownership of Microsoft's intellectual property and does not distribute Microsoft's proprietary game assets.
Microsoft's Game Content Usage Rules are available from Microsoft.
Game content and imports
No copyrighted Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition material is packaged with or distributed by Golden Age. To play AoE2 with Golden Age, users must run the import process themselves, using files from their own purchased Steam installation.
Implementation
Golden Age was developed independently, without access to or use of any Age of Empires source code. No Age of Empires engine was reverse engineered or decompiled to build Golden Age.
Gameplay reference information comes from public community wikis, official Age of Empires materials, observation, and memory.
Functional systems such as pathfinding, unit logic, map generation, multiplayer networking, UI, and replays are original Golden Age implementations.
Legal contact
For legal inquiries regarding Golden Age, including intellectual property or licensing matters, please use the contact page.