I've been playing around with game development for about 6 years now, I have release a game I call PuzzleBlocks. I released it for Windows and Linux, and since it was more of a learning experience thing I just decided to release it for free (I always called it BETA) more or less so that I might actually have people play it. Now I feel I'm getting closer and closer to completing a second game, this time an adventure RPG with Zelda as the inspiration. What I'm undecided about is how I should sell this. I'm only looking at $2.50 maybe $5 for the game. The way I see it I have 2 options: 1) Complete the game the way I have it now. SDL and Cross Platform and use Paypal and my site to sell it. Problem here is that I need to do all the marketing myself. I don't have brand loyalty or brand security or anything like that. I don't really want to spend hours trying to block pirates or anything. 2) Rework my game for an alternate platform with built-in marketplace. iPhone is probably out, since the touch controls aren't a great match for my current game, and the cost of an iTouch, Mac Mini and Developer Sign-up is more then I want to spend. I am however thinking of XNA and XBLIG, it would mean more work before releasing but I think this would give free exposure in the marketplace, and give the customers security knowing that it passed the review. I keep telling myself to just finish and release Linux and Window versions, but I'm torn. You can take a look at my development blog to see some screenshots. What would you do?

For a desktop game, theres only so much you can do about piracy. There isnt really much to stop someone from releasing it as a torrent once they download it from you. I suggest putting on your site and using paypal, as that is a good way to go about it. In terms of marketing, I would go the route of perhaps making some gameplay vids to put up on youtube, and making a page of it on wikipedia. You could also look into the advertising facebook provides.

Unless you plan to store client personal data on the site, you shouldn't worry too much about hackers, most web hosts provide some basic security and that should be enough. Even if they break through, you can repair things in minutes, it's not like you lose some lethal secrets [lol].

For some small advertising, in addition to what agm_ultimatex said, posting your shareware version on free games/software sites and redirect people from within the game to your site.

If the business go well you may change to a virtual store. But if your game is good looking you should just search for some publisher to do all the stuff for you :P

I guess paypal is the simplest idea. I think since I'm only going to ask for a token amount of money for the game (I don't have any ideas of getting rich, I just think it would be awesome to make a little cash from my hobby), I'll just put the download link behind a paypal payment page, after that I don't think there will be any protection from making copies.

I'm not going to store any customer data on my site, when I was talking about security. I just mean that if a customer comes to my site they might like the look of the game or even like the video, or something but they might not want to pay since they have never heard of me.

Since you've moved beyond "Beginner" status by finishing your game and are now asking a "Business" question, this is moved to Business.