I’m thinking about the next game in the Yore series which will most likely be monetized by selling level/quest packs. These will be downloaded into the client and will allow the player to play a new set of adventures.
However, I’m not sure how or whether to secure these downloads from being copied around or what not.
Anyone have any experience with this sort of thing or has any good suggestions?
Kev
PS. Valid suggestion is of course “No DRM!”
This is not really what you were asking for but maybe sell a Level/Quest editor which people can use to make their
own levels and quests that they can share which will help you add content for people whom just want to play the game, but also for people whom want to create content for the game and you would not have to worry about people
sharing levels because it would be a good thing.
Just an idea off the top of my head. Also if it is an applet or something could you just “enable” the level on their account if they pay for it?
In legends you check for paid access to level >20, can you not do a similar thing for access to the quest/dungeon packs, where the dungeon or quest knows which paid pack it belongs to?.
You still end up with the issue of having a cracked client or quest/dungeon pack, where the pack id of each quest/dungeon has been reset to that of the free ones.
Just an idea.
Interesting one. I’m hoping to sell these for the desktop too - which makes the backend just a bit more fiddly.
Kev
I thought princec’s method was pretty nice where he baked in the buyers name and email address into the game. You could do the same for the downloadable packs, so they display this information and have some sort of checks to make it unchangeable (sign the pack or something?).
You could build the packs into the game and just have the payed stuff be account based. That way if you buy them you can play them on your PC, iPhone, etc. Kind of like what endolf suggested. You would have to find a way to keep people from cracking the levels though…
You could require a register with an e-mail or something once per client, before they can play in offline-mode. Kind of like Minecraft.
require internet connectivity
check for purchased material
bake/bury the name/account into each package release.
if it gets pirated a little, enjoy free word of mouth/advertising
only have it cost money on mobile platforms and places where its harder to pirate. and places like traditional PC where its very easy to manipulate/hack, offer it for free or just make a fake drm to scare away the low level newbs from trying.
Offer exe encrypted versions to pc, and although mac/linux may have the direct jar or whatever, its a much smaller crowd and the pc pirates may not think to try and get a hold of the mac/linux jars?
To keep people from swapping packs, something in the pack needs to know about what installation it should work on. This could be a text file in the pack JAR. If that is too easy, compile the user’s email address into a String field in a class in the pack JAR. Important thing is to not waste too much of your time on DRM!