Do you add copy-protection to your game, and if yes how?

[Enerccio]

Hehe that guy is my friend, and now he moved to online-games (his next one will have exclusive "you must be online" requirements). He was sad, but had no other choice. I fear most of games will be like that in a few years, and the fault will be only of pirates, not developers

Online as in ubisoft online? That was cracked, later, but afterwards it was cracked within a day. You know you can just get what data is being taken from the server and emulate it, basically. If you have a LOT of data on the server, then this might not be viable, but then your costs will racketeer.

[jack_norton]

No, he has ALREADY done an expansion game that way (online campaign) and is uncracked 1 year later. As long as the logic is on server it's a big amount of effort and while some teams might do it for some big MMORPG like WoW/EQ, nobody wants to do that for a "simple" indie game (even a famous one).

[HikkiPanda]

No, he has ALREADY done an expansion game that way (online campaign) and is uncracked 1 year later. As long as the logic is on server it's a big amount of effort and while some teams might do it for some big MMORPG like WoW/EQ, nobody wants to do that for a "simple" indie game (even a famous one).

wow ... he is very genius and stubborn person ^^. Glad that your friend still gives those pirates a hard time

but it's sad that it seems there is no easy way to deal with those pirates

@Chu-3: after hearing all of these stories about piracy, maybe you should direct more energy to marketing instead of copy protection (I'm not saying that copy protection is unnecessary though, but it seems that we fight a losing battle .. >.<)? Like make a good game worthy for commercial release, affiliate your game, joint promotion with other indie games developer, etc?

[Chu-3]

Ah yes, but my problem is... I released it in Japanese first (at the month when a lot of new ones coming as well) and I still need times to release the English ver.

And worse, just a day after I released it one of the online store has a maintenance, and it hasn't been functioning well until now OTL and my game is truly full of text, which I need more than 2 months to translate. Seriously I'm deeply regretting that I didn't make it in English first.

and again, even if it's a simple one and might be hacked sometime, a protection might help to buy time than nothing >< well actually i have something in my mind to make something that might people buy the original, but i still don't have enough time to realize it.

[dott.Piergiorgio]

meh... Personally I strongly disagree on online playing, even solo, because this will invariably led the dissenting party (that is, the hackers) to charge frontally the online servers, and this not because of piracy or cracking, but because their mindset is naturally against every form of control (copy protection is somewhat legitimate, but what upset them is that by nature of DRMs and CPs one can't tell what is sent when the DRM and CPs "phone home", and this coupled by their antiphaty (euphemism) for the big and huge corporations is a very explosive mixture (as seen in what happened to PSN, whose will became the norm ) Indies like jack has nothing to fear, the small database of customers he has isn't seen as a "social menace" by hackers, whose aim to expose the 50M, 70M and over customer databases of large corporations for the reasons above (justified lack of trust on the actual data sent by DRM/activation programs)

this coupled with the very interesting times we have ahead (I have a roughly but precise idea of what will happens globally in the next few years. but I can say that the thing will start to settle and calm down not prior of mid-2014....) don't are exactly helpful to the gaming environment.

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

[jack_norton]

About privacy: the few online games I play, I play them on a separate PC with no personal info on it

[dott.Piergiorgio]

Agree, jack, and actually I have done more, because I apply the Naval saying "the best watertight door is no watertight door", and there are a permanently offline computer around

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.