Hey all, Not quite sure if this is the best place to put it but I will anyways =P What are some safe / secure ways to release patches to your program? For example, if you have a program and 1000 people buy it and then you need to patch the exe file, how would you go about releasing something like that without having any sort of registration methods you have in place being foiled by your own patch? ie.. If you have a secure download location for paying customers (through another website) and they pay to get the program. How do you release a patch that just replaces the .exe file, without screwing over those paying customers? I obviously don''t want to make the patch public, because then anybody could just snag it. Any ideas?

Use Clickteam''s patch maker:

www.clickteam.com

Most games rely on the fact that you don't need to patch textures, sounds, levels (usually). Those are the big things (99% of the size of a one-CD game). The EXE is usually less than 5 megs recently. If someone manages to intercept your full EXE, they also need all of the textures/sounds/etc.

And if they have those without paying for 'em, they know enough about pirating your software that you won't be able to stop them.

For smaller programs, say... Trillian for example -- they have a "Pro" version that you can buy for $25. The patches for that are in a login/password protected area of their site. Unfortunately for them, KaZaA has all of those "private patches" for download.

[edited by - Nypyren on July 7, 2003 11:22:44 PM]

You should never have to login or register anything to patch a program.

James Walkoski
Lead Programmer, JEI