Didn't fit in any other categories so I'll just ask this here.


Is it possible to sell html 5 games? The biggest thing i see that makes this not possible is the fact that all code done is out in the open, however I wasn't sure if there has been a solution for this or not.

Didn't fit in any other categories so I'll just ask this here.


Is it possible to sell html 5 games? The biggest thing i see that makes this not possible is the fact that all code done is out in the open, however I wasn't sure if there has been a solution for this or not.

Sure you can, the code being openly viewable doesn't prevent selling the game or access to the game. copyright still applies.

[quote name='AlysiumX' timestamp='1326077518' post='4900832']
Didn't fit in any other categories so I'll just ask this here.


Is it possible to sell html 5 games? The biggest thing i see that makes this not possible is the fact that all code done is out in the open, however I wasn't sure if there has been a solution for this or not.

Sure you can, the code being openly viewable doesn't prevent selling the game or access to the game. copyright still applies.
[/quote]

But I hear copyright are only good if you have the funds to actually do something about someone violating copyrights, which doesn't seem logical.

People sell GPL-licensed applications, which dictate that the source must be distrubuted, so, yeah.

As for the code being out in the open, have you ever pressed "view-source" in a web-app like GMail? Compiled (obfuscated) javascript is definitely not readable.

If the web-game has any kind of multi-player / server dependency, you can definitely sell access to that server.
Even if there is no multi-player part to the game, you can make it much harder to pirate by only allowing file-transfers to authenticated users, and keeping the architecture fairly seperate so that only the code for the parts of the game that you're currently playing gets downloaded from the server. The server could send out obfuscated code in randomly generated filenames, making it almost impossible for a pirate to piece it back together. You could even obfuscate the code in a per-user fashion, so you can even tell which user is responsible for any piracy.

Obviously you can sell any kind of game you want, baring any regional restrictions, so with that silliness out of the way, let's get to the actual question: can you successfully sell a HTML 5 game without massive piracy? Yes, yes you can, with one massive disclaimer -- it must be a multiplayer game or people will pirate the beejesus out of you. If the players need access to a server, the chances of someone setting up a pirated server becomes much less likely -- even if s/he does, the choice of 'legal' servers would be more preferable most of the time since a) updates and b) stability c) official approval and general feel-good stuff (karma).

There are plenty of cases of this, but so far I haven't seen a single commercially successful open-sourced (or easily accessed source) single player game (minus donations, of course).

It is not so different than distributing any other game.

HTML5 is not so different than other more mature technologies. Yes, pirates can grab the .html file from the Internet. How is this novel?



People have been making money from Flash games for years; Disney was one of their first customers in 1996. Pirates can still grab the .swf file from the Internet if they want, yet it is profitable for many.

People have been making money from Java games for years; The creators of it started with games in 1992 (before it was called Java), and had games the day it was released in May of 1995. Pirates can still grab the .jar files from the Internet if they want.

People have been making money from traditionally installed games; even before widespread Internet use games were spread through BBS sites and sneaker-net (physical disks), and have done so since the late 1970's. Today, pirates can still grab the installer files from the Internet if they want.




There have been many stages of evolution (also revolution and revolt) over the years.

The two current trends are the SaaS model where everything is connected to a server, and the DRM model where a device (such as an iPhone) gets a securely registered token, the app gets a token, and when they jive the software is presumed to be a legitimate purchase and the data is then decoded.

Both of those can be made to work even when the executable is in the hands of pirates. Other models have seen various levels of success.

can any kind of obsfucation be done on HTML5?

can any kind of obsfucation be done on HTML5?

Of course it can, just as it can with plain JavaScript.

It's a very good idea just from a consumer perspective: When every variable and function is renamed to a single letter or two letters, when every unnecessary byte of comments and whitespace is removed, you can easily cut the size by half, sometimes even more dramatically like 80% or more. There are quite a few good compressors out there to 'minify' the script.

Consider the Google Maps system. The script behind it is a few hundred KB and it has been compressed/minified. If they didn't, it would probably be a megabyte or two.

That's not a big issue if you are fortunate enough to be on a connection measured in Mbps, but a huge population of the world still measures their speed in Kbps. The simple reduction in size by itself is a very good thing. The fact that it also obfuscates the code is just an added bonus.

There are a few ways -- one of them is selling on the chrome app store, another is requiring an authenticated log-in (like Minecraft, which is a Java app) -- or subscription, if appropriate. Google provides a payment API that can be used with Chrome apps (and non-chrome apps, I believe), or you can use your own payment provider.

In general I believe the best mechanism to make money from your game is to *make it really good* -- there will always be pirates, and a pirate through-and-through is not going to buy your game anyways -- not for $4.99, not for $0.99. Therefore, don't be afraid of these loathsome pirates, and concentrate on making your *paying* customers happy. Paying customers are your *only* source of revenue, so focus on gettting more, happier customers, rather than temporarily befuddling a handful of pirates.

You should use a minifier though, because it provides some level of protection against someone else ripping off your code and re-skinning it in China or something, as well as some measure of protection from cheaters. It also decreases load-times for your users and saves you money on your bandwidth bill. Many times you can configure additional compression (zip-based) to further reduce the bandwidth used. Source code, even minified, compresses quite well due to the repetition of keywords, symbols, and common patterns in the text.