Suggestion on how to still make money from piracy

[Zantalos]

Yep, if Lugau was crazily pirated and not a single person donated. There goes your whole pirates-have-a-legitimate-role-in-sales idea. The fact is that pirates don't donate for something they already have, I can see why they should, but they didn't. So why try to make them feel included with a donate button centered around being a pirate, basically informing people how easy it is to pirate the game, and then make them feel like they're justified in doing it by having a donate button. I would like to see Coulton's donation rate to his sales and piracy rate.

I support the idea about checking for a legitimate copy during mod downloads. Piracy protection should basically try to check for a legitimate copy any time the user tries to do anything that proves he can go on-line. The only reason the game shouldn't check for a valid copy during install is that people will get upset and scared that they can't install the game without internet and that your servers might go down, preventing them from installing the game. But heck, anytime they try to go on-line, download a mod, you might as well check.

Also, most cracks seem to copy paste a cracked .exe file over the real .exe file. I wonder if you could quickly check for piracy by simply checking if the file is the same file size, they are usually several megabytes off, and if they make their crack too big, there's no way they can make it smaller.

[Endoperez]

If we're not talking about anti-piracy, Dominions 3 has a nice system. Even if the keycode is wrong, you can start a game, but after a while various "bugs" start appearing. Like, your whole GUI disappearing, forcing you to restart the game. Then you can again play for a small while, before it happens again.

In Overgrowth's case, it could be something like disabling the controls for, I don't know, 3 seconds at a time, randomly, during a battle.

I also liked Aquaria's system, where it showed your real name (that you gave them on purchasing the game) when you entered the keycode. That won't stop someone from reverse-engineering the keycode system, but it will stop people sharing their own keycode over the internet.

[GDer]

Also, most cracks seem to copy paste a cracked .exe file over the real .exe file. I wonder if you could quickly check for piracy by simply checking if the file is the same file size, they are usually several megabytes off, and if they make their crack too big, there's no way they can make it smaller.

The check can also be disabled in a crack. Everything that human has made, human can destroy. So wasting time isn't a good option.

Making the game worth buying instead is a good option because it makes people think that money isn't the first thing developers care. Of course, it's hard to look at these statistics showing piracy rate but the most important things are the number of pirates who have bought the game after stealing it and the satisfied owners.

If we're not talking about anti-piracy, Dominions 3 has a nice system. Even if the keycode is wrong, you can start a game, but after a while various "bugs" start appearing. Like, your whole GUI disappearing, forcing you to restart the game. Then you can again play for a small while, before it happens again.

That simply sucks. Sorry but read the "2D Boy" blog about the need of protection, you'll understand.

I also liked Aquaria's system, where it showed your real name (that you gave them on purchasing the game) when you entered the keycode. That won't stop someone from reverse-engineering the keycode system, but it will stop people sharing their own keycode over the internet.

Cracks can disable it easily. waste-of-time-again..

[Endoperez]

That simply sucks. Sorry but read the "2D Boy" blog about the need of protection, you'll understand.

Could you provide a link? I'm not sure which article you mean. Did you mean this one?
http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/
Or this forum thread about why games are pirated?
http://2dboy.com/forum/index.php?action ... pic=1822.0
Honestly, I didn't find anything other with keywords such as "piracy" and "drm". Is it the post where the writer received hundreds of e-mails from pirates and decided to go DRM-free and lower the cost of the game, since those are what most pirates said were reasons for pirating games? I'm not sure if that was 2D Boy, but it could have been.


Also, I would like you to iterate on why "that simply sucks" a bit more.
The publishing company of Dominions 3 hasn't given spesific numbers, but they get lots of support tickets for this "bug" caused by a pirated version. Every few patches or so (perhaps once a year), the old key-gens stop working. Some of the pirates who post about this bug on the public forum actually keep the nickname, after buying a legitimate copy.

It's the opposite of Secu-ROM. The real users have no problems, but the pirates are annoyed and unable to play the game. Since the game seems to work at first and never tells them what the problem is, they don't know the crack (keygen, in this case) didn't work, so they won't just download another, even though there's probably at least one working crack/keygen at any one time.

I also liked Aquaria's system, where it showed your real name (that you gave them on purchasing the game) when you entered the keycode. That won't stop someone from reverse-engineering the keycode system, but it will stop people sharing their own keycode over the internet.

Cracks can disable it easily. waste-of-time-again..

Please read my comment. "It will stop people sharing their own keycode over the internet." If someone downloaded a crack/keygen, he didn't find a working keycode online. If he has trouble finding a working one, he might actually launch Steam and buy it.