Quote: I was wondering wy should i protect my release exe from hackers when my game is no more then 6 bucks and the hacker can buy it instead to spend hours and hours cracking my game.

It really depends on the "protection" you plan on implementing. Simple homebrew games only need a simple function to check for registration.

Quote: And he can distribute my game with the serial attached in a file.

True. He doesn't even need to buy it, he can simply download it and reverse engineer it. That's not the point....

Quote: Offcourse this is for a offline game, and i give my customers a registration code in their emails. What will make them buy my product? (other then doing the right thing :) )

That is it exactly.

A surprising number of people are honest and want to do the right thing. In this industry there is an above-average ratio of dishonest people, but there are still many honest ones.

With shareware, trial versions, or whatever you want to call it, you aren't really selling the product. Always remember this. You are selling the difference between the registered and unregistered versions.

If the unregistered version gives them all the functionality they need, then they probably won't register, honest or not.

Common differences between registered and unregistered software are mentioned above, including nag screens or annoyance messages, limited functionality, limited to x levels, date-based use, and so on.

So , in my particular case there is no need to protect my registration code ?
I will not do any bad guys hunting.
If there is someone to buy it he will buy, he will not even know that i don't use an md5 hashing to protect my key. It will all depend on my REAL targeted customers.

It is true that like 9000 serials will be uncovered but who cares.

My opinion is that in this domain of serial protection you give it 100% or do nothing. At least this is what i understand in the past 5 days.

Quote: Original post by republicall
My opinion is that in this domain of serial protection you give it 100% or do nothing. At least this is what i understand in the past 5 days.

There is a very interesting (short) article it might be worth your while to read, I can't find the original, but a copy is reproduced here. It is a few years old, but the concepts certainly apply.

"Registration code - really needed"

Quote: Original post by Nypyren
People complain endlessly about 'number of activations' DRM, see Spore forums for an example. Refreshing the # per month is a good idea, however.

Yes Spore has some of the worst DRM every seen in a game and plenty of people complain and have complained about it. I wonder if there is any connection?

You could always allow your game to be access free of charge but allow it to have product placement. I for one see no reason why product placement (if properly put in, and in context to the game) should be an issue if the game is free. Yeah, people might complain the obsurd ad, but the trade of is that they aren't paying for the game to begin with. If it is a medeival fantasy game it might be problematic but if your creative enough you can impliment any product the right way.

Are you talking about banners ? My game includes a football field and i put a banner with its own web page. The rest of them are made up.
Do you think people could not buy my product if there are banners? I mean in real life there are, so wouldn't it be bad not to put them? People will have a feeling of "not real life" because of the lack of banners that normally appear in real life.
Now i don't know what to do :)
Maybe i'll let the option to remove them and remained the name of the game or something.