How does construct .. deals with protection for piracy?

Since my game is geting near release.. one issue has come out in my mind.

How does construct output files in my case for steam and xbox one, handles piracy?

Sadly, if someone wants to pirate your game, there is nothing anybody can do about it. Your game will be cracked in no time.

However in my opinion, setting a good price/quality/players experience and good customer care can prevent at least some people of stealing your hard work. Maybe besides the game itself, providing something extra to a registered player is also a good idea. For example, if your game is kind of an adventure, create a challenge in your game. When that challenge is successful finished, give the legal player an ebook about the story behind the adventure. Check the player against the financial info.

Give the player some background information, how long did you work on that game, how did you create it, to what (great) extents did you go to create it. Or just try to convince them that you also need an income to feed your family and make other nice games.

I should not bother too much about protection. I also do not protect the ebooks I create or applications I made. Anyway, somebody who is pirated your game would also never be your customer. Nevertheless, even a pirated game can be good and free public relations for you.

As a general advice to anybody who reads this; just play or use everything legally. When it is affordable priced and it does what you expect you to do, just obtain it legally. It doesn't seems to be a crime to illegally copy others people creations because it is so easily and quickly done. However, for anybody seeing no problem in that illegal copying; why are you not working freely for lets say 6 to 12 months for your boss? That is exactly what happens when somebody illegally copies somebody else work.

Hope this helps.

Hi again,

Maybe giving the first 3 levels for free as a demo or show your good will to give the player an idea of your game. If someone wants to play the next levels, they need to pay. If you give a download link, make sure it is limited in time (48 hours). After that the download link expired. Also make sure you do not give a standard download link for anybody. If so, your game is easily copied.

Lastly, don't worry too much. Instead use the energy to create even better games. Or from time to time, reward a legal user with a surprise (preview, bonus,...).

Just some other ideas I forgot in my first reply.

Since my game is geting near release.. one issue has come out in my mind.

How does construct output files in my case for steam and xbox one, handles piracy?

My advice is to not worry about it. Almost no indie developers are trying to protect their games anymore. It is a waste of time and piracy can even be good for you as it can still work as marketing.

If your game becomes a hit then you can start to worry about that, but not now

You could try it with a subliminal message, like Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 on the Amiga from Gremlin Graphics.

-> <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile">

Xbox should be pretty well safe given the way its set up.

As others said, don't stress, it will happen, can't change it, move on.

One amusing tactic I heard of for hacks is to look for certain criteria. Eg: If you have over 1,000,000 coins, and you would never really have that many, then make the game exponentially harder/impossible. Make houses build really slowly, make enemies really fast all without calling out that you know they are cheating Yes, they might give you a crap review, but it makes it easier to spot the cheaters.

I don’t understand why piracy occurs with free games.

Do people download them, crack them then reupload with their own code and adverts in. Is that it?

[quote:2828x8kc]I don’t understand why piracy occurs with free games.

Do people download them, crack them then reupload with their own code and adverts in. Is that it?

Here's the two types of things I've seen over the years. I'm sure there are more reasons but I don't worry too much about it. These incidents were things that I happened to come across when Googling my games at one time.

The first was where an educator had one of my games on his site in an iframe such that my ads didn't show. There weren't any ads in the games. The ads were on the game page on my site. He had actually gone on a forum to tell people to come to his site where they could play this game without ads.

The second thing I saw is that some sites will block outgoing links such that the link to your website won't work. Not necessarily piracy but does defeat one of the reasons publishers might provide games for free.

I agree with the others in the fact that I don't worry too much about piracy. Especially with the types of games I have (educational and/or simple).