Anti-piracy for commercial ags games?

[Radiant]

Put it this way... multi-million-dollar software giants have tried their hand at copy protection and their track record is one of stellar failure.

What on earth makes you think you can do better?

Don't bother. I assume you're not in AGS for the money anyway? You'll get some, I'm sure, and you'll likely get more in donations from fans unless you alienate them by some bulky scheme. Other than that, if more people play your game, why is that a bad thing?

I've had a similar experience a few years ago... the popularity of my game skyrocketed when I changed it from copyprot to freeware. Go figure.

[Dave Gilbert]

One advantage a small shop has is that we can keep track of individual sales.  Since everyone buys the game directly from us, we can keep track of who bought which copy of which game.  That's something large companies can't do, since people purchase their games in stores.  Of course, that all goes out the window once you start using online distributors, but again they keep track of each individual order.

Again, there is no way this method could STOP piracy.  It would just act as a deterrent.  In order to put the game on a download site, someone had to have purchased the game to begin with. 

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I think this is definitely something you should consider for the future, but as for Shivah there is already a non-deluxe version floating around and the copies of the deluxe version without any protection scheme.  Introducing one now seems fruitless, and most likely you would see the non-deluxe version start cropping up everywhere at the very least.

[Vince Twelve]

I do think it would be a good deterrent.  I certainly wouldn't put a commercial game up for free download if I knew that it could be tracked back to me.  (I wouldn't put a commercial game up for download anyway... but whatever.) 

However, for it to be a deterrent, you would have to inform the customers that such a system was in place.  Otherwise they'll just do it anyways not knowing that you'll know who did it.  But if I saw a game that said "Warning: Each copy is watermarked and WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE!" on the side, I'd feel a bit insulted by the lack of trust the company has placed in me as a consumer.

[Dave Gilbert]

I think this is definitely something you should consider for the future, but as for Shivah there is already a non-deluxe version floating around and the copies of the deluxe version without any protection scheme.  Introducing one now seems fruitless, and most likely you would see the non-deluxe version start cropping up everywhere at the very least.

Nah,  Shivah is done and finished.  It's something I've thought about though, and not just for me but for anyone else planning a commercial ags game.

[dasjoe]

i think some kind of email-authentication would work as a deterrent. just make the player send you an email with his id and you send him some activation key. maybe encrypt the timestamp into it so you can make the key work for 24 hours.

or you could create the id from the "created on" timestamp of his game.exe and the download-id so the activation key would only work for his file. pgp sign it and make your game check the signature.

maybe just a bit over-the-top

[SSH]

The easiest way to watermark, that doesn't involve recompling the game for each downloader, is to have some bytes somewhere in the middle of the game file somewhere that are not used in the game and a php script could modify for each download.

Not hard to bypass, but if the person doesn't know where the watermark is, they'll need to buy two copies of the game...

For extra security, you could tack an MD5 or SHA hash on the end of the game and get the game itself to refuse to run unless it is correct.