next »

[wMattDodd]

Google and various digital distribution websites have failed me utterly on this.

I want to offer personal download links (like the Humble Bundle does) so I can release test copies of my game to specific people without the risk of the URL getting out of my control and running amok across the internet. I don't mind hosting the files myself, as long as (again) they don't get out of my control.

Is there a website plug-in/add-on that could meet my needs? Or a free service?

Or am I thinking about this the wrong way?

Thanks for any responses.

[PompiPompi]

Drop box, shared folders.
To be honest, "getting out of control" would actually be a good thing. Ok, so you won't make money out of your "pirated game", but you will get tons of recognition and people will know your company\game.
Instead, you will keep your downloads secret, and you will find out that it's extremly hard to convince people to care about what you do even if you give it for free, not to mention if you ask money for it.

I wish my game would get "out of control".

Anyway, dropbox/sharedfolder.

Or just download with a password.

[nospoon]

I don't think that writing such system would be hard.

But links like the ones on humblebundle don't prevent piracy.
If you buy a bundle - you can share your link to other people, and they can download it too.
(steam keys are redeemable once, but it's a diffrent story)

[wMattDodd]

I had thought the Humble Bundle links were in some way restricted. Well, there we go then--if they aren't doing it, it probably can't be done (reasonably).

I'm not afraid of piracy, and even if I was I know there's no way I can even make a dent in it. I just didn't want to be on the hook for potential hosting costs over what I'm prepared for, and wanted to offer the test copies as rewards for signing up for the newsletter.

Thanks for the responses.

[Evan Balster]

If you have personal links you can make it so they can only be downloaded a certain number of times.  That's not particularly complex.

But I'll echo the sentiment on piracy:  It only cannibalizes sales when you have high market penetration, which is something most indie devs can only dream of.  Still, it's your game and certainly your call whether you want to risk such.

[wMattDodd]

If you have personal links you can make it so they can only be downloaded a certain number of times.  That's not particularly complex.

But I'll echo the sentiment on piracy:  It only cannibalizes sales when you have high market penetration, which is something most indie devs can only dream of.  Still, it's your game and certainly your call whether you want to risk such.

That's exactly what I'm looking for! Do you know of any tutorials or documentation on how to set that up? And how to provide personal links?

I think I'm being misunderstood. I do hope for my game to be popular enough to be a common target of piracy. I just don't want that yet. Right now I'm not ready to sell the game, so the chances of it converting into a sale later seem slim. I also don't want my costs to rise due to pirates (multiplayer server costs and bandwidth costs for downloading the game) at the moment, before I have any income coming in to offset it. As soon as I'm selling the game, the situation will changes dramatically. I'm just not in a position to benefit from piracy yet, and I am in a position to have actual harm from it (not hypothetical harm, ie lost sales).

[nospoon]

Well, you could write a system that generates an one time download link, and sends it via email.

edit:
Having a limited downloads is really simple to write.
Like in php :
get number of downloads from somewhere, and ++ it, if its > x - redirect to some page
if the number < x :
set content-type/disposition to attachment/whatever
include the .exe

[Hima]

Are you afraid that other people might find the URL accidentally or are you afraid that your testers might share the URL with others?

If it's the first case, using dropbox, share that folder and send the url to the shared folder through email would work just fine. As long as you don't post the url somewhere on the web that is trackable by search engine, I don't think other people will know about it.

If it's the second case, forget about it. If they have your game and they want to share it with other people, they can and they won't need your url. The best way to this is to trust them , ask them nicely and hope for the best.

[Evan Balster]

Keeping pirates from using multiplayer is waaaay easier than preventing your game from being pirated, so look into a system for doing that (unique IDs and a database, probably) and you're good.

The only "cost" thereafter is lost sales, which requires high market penetration to be of any significance.  This doesn't just mean selling well in indie terms -- it means a significant portion of your target market has actually purchased your game.  So sales on the order of tens or hundreds of thousands.  Again, this is something most indies can only dream of, so don't put too much effort into it in the present.  If you DO ever achieve market penetration that high, any DRM solution you create will be handily broken and you'll only be preventing casual flash-drive copying.

Ramble ramble ramble

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

the idea that piracy only affects people with high market penetration is actually a myth -- i've seen cases where individual indies with no DRM installed DRM and saw sales jump by 3x or so, without any additional traffic (e.g. it was the same number of people downloading the demo each month, but sales were 3x higher with DRM vs without). i don't personally use DRM because it's a hassle to set up, and i do agree that in some circumstances piracy can help a game, but the idea that piracy never ever hurts indies is obviously ridiculous

[wMattDodd]

Thanks for all the discussion. The game will be DRM free. I think at this point I'm just going to try sending out copies by YouSendIt. That way I'm not hosting anything, so I can't be on the hook for hosting costs. I'm really not worried about it costing me sales, especially because these versions are phase 1 of an at least 2 phase beta before release. As for the multiplayer server usage, at this point it's probably unlikely that I really have anything to worry about so I won't.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

unique download links that people cannot give to others *is* DRM

[wMattDodd]

unique download links that people cannot give to others *is* DRM

I guess so? But it's not like there's anything stopping them from throwing it on a torrent site, e-mailing it to one another, using it on multiple devices, or making backups, so... I look at it as less 'DRM' and more 'not officially giving it away for free'.

[agersant]

the idea that piracy only affects people with high market penetration is actually a myth -- i've seen cases where individual indies with no DRM installed DRM and saw sales jump by 3x or so, without any additional traffic (e.g. it was the same number of people downloading the demo each month, but sales were 3x higher with DRM vs without). i don't personally use DRM because it's a hassle to set up, and i do agree that in some circumstances piracy can help a game, but the idea that piracy never ever hurts indies is obviously ridiculous

Sounds interesting. Source?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

@agersant - the source is private sales data from another indie, i'm not sure i can make their name public since the info was posted in a private forum. however, this data shows similar but less extreme results: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17350#.UMtnBHeFvdQ and http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17408#.UMtw53eFvdQ

of course, there's also been cases where removing DRM actually increases sales (mostly due to the positive publicity of removing DRM). so you can selectively believe whatever you want and still have a lot of data for it. but specifically, i feel that an unknown removing or not using DRM would be unlikely to get much publicity for it (i mean, who cares if some random unknown game is DRM-free or not? my game immortal defense has always been DRM free but i never got any press over it. but if some more famous indie game removes DRM they'd get coverage everywhere. what really matters for game sales is *marketing*, not whether a game has DRM or not)

unique download links that people cannot give to others *is* DRM

I guess so? But it's not like there's anything stopping them from throwing it on a torrent site, e-mailing it to one another, using it on multiple devices, or making backups, so... I look at it as less 'DRM' and more 'not officially giving it away for free'.

if there's nothing stopping them from doing that, then *why bother* making each download link limited to one person or to a number of downloads?

but that's what drm is -- not officially giving it away for free. since drm never completely works or even works very well, that's all it means, that you aren't officially giving the game away for free. if you make indie games, you can either officially give them away for free, or only technically give them away for free, there's no third option.

[s0]

i've seen cases where individual indies with no DRM installed DRM and saw sales jump by 3x or so, without any additional traffic (e.g. it was the same number of people downloading the demo each month, but sales were 3x higher with DRM vs without).

does that include steam?

i can't even recall when i last played an indie game that had its own drm.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

no this was before the time of steam actually (or at least before the time that indies were allowed on steam). i'm talking indie games of the early 2000s era. most of those had custom DRM. it's become less popular today, but you still find custom DRM occasionally. custom DRM that you code yourself is often harder to break than pre-packaged DRM because they have to learn your system specifically to hack it, and if your game is small enough they may never even bother. but if the game starts to get popular it'll be broken eventually of course

of course, another problem with custom drm is that it sometimes goes haywire, as game maker studio's recently did: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/182558/GameMaker_DRM_goes_berserk_defaces_dev_work.php#.UMtsvneFvdQ

[Klaim]

the idea that piracy only affects people with high market penetration is actually a myth -- i've seen cases where individual indies with no DRM installed DRM and saw sales jump by 3x or so, without any additional traffic (e.g. it was the same number of people downloading the demo each month, but sales were 3x higher with DRM vs without). i don't personally use DRM because it's a hassle to set up, and i do agree that in some circumstances piracy can help a game, but the idea that piracy never ever hurts indies is obviously ridiculous

Do you think that already having an audience  before adding the DRM (as people keep getting free versions whatever the way quickly and widespread) plays a big role in such success?

[Zaphos]

if there's nothing stopping them from doing that, then *why bother* making each download link limited to one person or to a number of downloads?

At least then you don't pay hosting costs for distributing the game to non-paying players, and they have to get it from a shady, clearly not legit source.  When vvvvvv's early download link was leaked on 4chan, some people from 4chan were saying they didn't even realize it wasn't supposed to be a free game ( http://distractionware.com/blog/2009/12/final-push/ )

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Do you think that already having an audience  before adding the DRM (as people keep getting free versions whatever the way quickly and widespread) plays a big role in such success?

i think audience size affects it in complex ways, sure. but it's not as simple as 'indies are too small to worry about piracy, piracy can only help you'. i'd wager most of the people saying that have never actually tried selling from their own site

my own experience with piracy works something like this: i released immortal defense in 2007. no DRM. it wasn't pirated at all until around 2008, when i put the game up on the portal reflexive; after i did, a crack for the reflexive version of the game became available on torrent sites. my own sales on my own site went down drastically after that torrent became available, and has stayed at that low level of sales ever since. the conversion rate (number of sales per downloaded demo) used to be around 1.5%, and after the torrent went up it dropped to around 0.5%. i don't know with 100% certainty that the drop of sales / conversion rate was due to the torrent going up, it could be just a coincidence, or could just be a gradual reduction of interest since the game had been out for a year already, but i suspect that there's at least some connection

At least then you don't pay hosting costs for distributing the game to non-paying players, and they have to get it from a shady, clearly not legit source.  When vvvvvv's early download link was leaked on 4chan, some people from 4chan were saying they didn't even realize it wasn't supposed to be a free game ( http://distractionware.com/blog/2009/12/final-push/ )

hmm, that's a pretty good point. still, if all this guy wants is a way to make sure download links are limited in number of downloads so people pirate it from his own site, why not just use fastspring or bmt-micro? that way he doesn't have to host the full version of his game at all, it'd be the responsibility of the e-commerce service