The .games Domain: An Ending for Whole Catalogues
.games was recorded in the root zone on 24 May 2016, and the contracting party in the IANA entry today is Dog Beach, LLC. The zone was first delegated to United TLD Holdco Ltd. and passed to its present holder on 2 June 2021. The nTLDstats page accessed on 12 August 2026 shows 91,138 registrations, of which 71,253 appear in the zone file.
The plural turns an address from one title into a collection: a publisher's catalogue, a board game series, a retailer or a community archive. Placed after a brand name it conveys breadth without a word of explanation. Try candidates with a .games domain search, and if a single production is the subject, compare the .game page.
.GAMES Domain at a Glance
- Sponsoring organisation Dog Beach, LLC
- Infrastructure provider Identity Digital Limited
- Root zone record 24 May 2016
- Transfer to current holder 2 June 2021
- Registered names 91,138 (nTLDstats, 12 August 2026)
- Present in the zone file 71,253 names, about 78%
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .games domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.games Domain Prices — No Surprise Fees
Registration, transfer and renewal fees are listed separately. The renewal price can differ from the first-year price, so you see both up front.
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New Registration
$18.75 /year -
Transfer
$33.79 /year -
Renewal
$36.39 /year -
Restore
$119.90 -
Late Renewal
$4.98
Included With Every .games Domain
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Free DNS management
Change A, MX, TXT and CNAME records yourself from the panel — no waiting on anyone when you move a site or mailbox.
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Domain lock
While the lock is on, nobody can move your domain to another registrar without your approval.
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Domain forwarding
Point the domain at your existing site, a campaign page or a social profile — at no extra cost.
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Free WHOIS privacy
Your name, address and phone stay out of public WHOIS records, which cuts down spam and scam calls.
.games Domain Lifecycle
What happens day by day after it expires
Day 0 is the domain's expiry dateIn short: your .games domain is put on Client Hold on its expiry date, so the site and e-mail stop that same day. You can still renew during the first 20 days, but from this point a late renewal fee is added on top of the renewal price. On day 20 the registration is deleted and until day 50 only a paid restore brings it back. Nothing at all can be done in the 5 days that follow, and on day 55 the name is open to anyone. There is exactly one way never to enter this chain: keep auto-renewal on.
Domain Is Available (Available)
A .games address at this stage has not been taken yet, and it goes to whoever registers first. Check the name you have in mind — if it is free, it can be yours within minutes.
Domain Is Active (Active Period)
Once registration is complete, the domain is registered to you for the term you selected. You can renew at any point before it expires to keep it active, or switch on auto-renewal so you never have to watch the date.
Renewal Window (Client Hold)
On its expiry date your .games domain is put on Client Hold: the site and e-mail go down that day, but the registration is still yours. A single renewal within these first 20 days brings everything back exactly as it was — nothing is lost. The only difference is that a $4.98 late renewal fee is now added to the renewal price; renewing before the expiry date avoids that fee entirely.
Redemption Period (Redemption / RGP)
On day 20 the registration is deleted and the 30-day redemption period that ICANN requires of every gTLD registry begins. The name is not released to anyone during this time; only you can take it back, by paying the restore fee, until day 50. That fee is far higher than a renewal — renewing on time is always the cheaper route.
Pending Delete (Pending Delete)
Once the redemption window closes too, the domain enters its final 5 days and there is no way back. Neither renewal nor restore works here; nobody — your registrar included — can return the name to you. The registry uses this window as the last hold before the name goes back into the pool.
Open to Anyone Again (Released)
On day 55 the name .games returns to the pool and anyone can register it. Sought-after names are often gone within seconds, and there is no guaranteed way to get one back. Yet staying out of this timeline is entirely in your hands: leave auto-renewal on and the expiry date will never catch you off guard.
The timeline above is the schedule Atak Domain applies and publishes. The ICANN chart you will find elsewhere shows a renewal window of up to 45 days after expiry; ICANN's policy on expired registrations (section 2.2.1) lets registrars delete an expired domain at any time, provided they disclose their policy in advance. We apply that window as 20 days and publish it here in plain sight. Full text of the policy: ICANN Expired Registration Recovery Policy
.games Domain Specifications and Registration Rules
Registration conditions, supported features and the registry's own timelines in a single table.
.games Domain Registration
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .games domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.games Domain Support
- IDN Support Yes
- Transfer Support Yes
- Late Renewal Support Yes
Frequently Asked Questions About .games Domains
The questions people actually ask before registering — answered plainly.
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The plural sets an expectation of a collection or a shop rather than a single title.
A visitor arriving at a plural address expects several products, a list or categories; a one-title page fails that expectation and sends them straight back. The choice is therefore not a grammatical detail but a decision that shapes how the page is built.
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Yes. The ending is not limited to digital titles; it covers the whole idea of a game.
For board games, the product pages, the rulebooks and the expansions all sit under one roof. Making rulebooks downloadable cuts support enquiries noticeably. A plural ending after a publisher's name also signals from the outset that the catalogue is meant to grow.
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91,138 registrations against 10,004; the gap comes from the word's reach and from separate registry policies.
The plural covers far more uses — shops, communities, catalogues. And because the two endings belong to different contracting parties, their marketing and distribution took different paths. You can look at the singular form on the .game page.
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Of 91,138 registrations, 71,253 appear in the zone file — around 78%.
The zone is both large and genuinely used. For your search that means genre words and general terms are mostly gone, while roots combining a brand with a category remain findable. To try several candidates in one pass, use the bulk domain name search.
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Yes. It runs on an authorisation code and the registry asks for no extra documents.
For a game shop the thing to watch is the payment flow: if a certificate or a nameserver setting is left incomplete during the move, a warning appears at the basket step and sales stop. Afterwards, confirm the certificate is being served correctly from the SSL checker page.
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