"protect" paid downloads

[Mynight]

My googlefu is letting me down.

How would you go about protecting donationware?

inevitably if its popular it'll get cracked as such I dont want to penalize normal users with excessive attempts at preventing piracy.

Whats the solution just expiring download links then tie the software to a HWID?

 

[Scotty123]

Not sure if this is the best, but this is off the top of my head ..

Have the software get the HWID and communicate with a database of allowed HWIDs. If it can't connect to said database, or the hwid does not match, it closes itself. Yes people can modify it so it doesn't do the check/closes itself if they know how.

For the downloading of, you could require the link to have a generated one use token in the url. When the user clicks it, your server can check the token in the url (php, asp.net or whatever you're using) to see if it's valid and if so, grant access and open a file stream.

 

[Quartz]

Speak to Valve. They've already solved this problem with Steam, so why reinvent the wheel?

 

[Rroff]

Any effective measures will just make life a pain for legit users and anything less will be hacked in no time at all.

Stick a nice splash screen and maybe a placed banner inside the program reminding users to donate or whatever that can be removed by registration via a simple encrypted checksum of the HWID or whatever.

Roll with the punches I say use the effort to come up with ways that encourage people to get involved and pay rather than wasting a lot of time, effort and frustration trying to lock it all down.

 

[Mynight]

Speak to Valve. They've already solved this problem with Steam, so why reinvent the wheel?

I dont think they do donationware do they? Besides theyd take a cut so sod em . I also wouldnt really be learning anything by taking such a route.

Any effective measures will just make life a pain for legit users and anything less will be hacked in no time at all.

Stick a nice splash screen and maybe a placed banner inside the program reminding users to donate or whatever that can be removed by registration via a simple encrypted checksum of the HWID or whatever.

Roll with the punches I say use the effort to come up with ways that encourage people to get involved and pay rather than wasting a lot of time, effort and frustration trying to lock it all down.

Good idea.

I dont want to alienate users at the end of the day there's a free one that doesn't lock anything down. The donation side is just extra features.

I guess I should take it as a compliment if it does end up on torrent sites .

 

[leezer3]

Blunt answer is don't.

DRM always causes more problems than it solves.

Also, a slight personal rant-
Please don't call something 'donationware' if you're hiding features behind it.
There are several programs that spring to mind which hide a significant amount of features behind a minimum 'donation', which is nothing of the sort.....

Nothing wrong with asking for donations, or the odd nag, but anything else stinks, and gets boycotted on principle by me.

(Sorry, I develop the odd stuff, and am mildly militant BSD )

-Leezer-

 

[Mynight]

Maybe I'm using the wrong term but I wasn't planning on setting an amount. Literally could donate a penny lol.

The only features I'm hiding would be novelty things and a prettier UI nothing that detracts from the free ones functionality.

What's the correct term? don't want to get such a simple thing wrong lol.

I'll just use an expiring download link for the upgrade then. Don't want to screw users about for the sake of a few pence.

Might be worth lumping it all together into one in the end and just take donations if they want to.

 

[andshrew]

It does sounds more 'pay what you want' rather than a donation, if donating gets you access to additional exclusive features.

 

[Mynight]

It does sounds more 'pay what you want' rather than a donation, if donating gets you access to additional exclusive features.

Didn't even know that was a model .

How many types of wares are there now .

I might just affiliate link it and have a single edition.

 

[leezer3]

It does sounds more 'pay what you want' rather than a donation, if donating gets you access to additional exclusive features.

Now that's much more reasonable

Sadly there are a lot of programs with a habit of abusing the donation moniker, and that *really* gets my back up.
A prime example of my ire here is Android apps asking for 'donations' to remove ads. At least have the guts to set a level, rather than trying to guilt trip people into paying more.....

I'd suspect as well that they 'pay what you want' model is more likely to attract revenue than asking for donations- It sounds much better in the minds of punters.
If you want a look at a very successful implementer of this model, try Humble Bundle (IMHO their attitude took a nosedive when they started introducing large corps and the tiered bundles, but the business model is sound)

-Leezer-