"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?

 

[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 .

 

[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.

 

[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.