Preventing illegitimate game sharing

[EndlessChanceGames]

Hi all,

I am developing my very first game and have already received some helpful advice on how I can work with F95 zone to prevent or manage illegitimate sharing of my game (cracking the game, etc.)

I searched the site already but am unsure how I would start this process. Could anyone point the way or explain how I would initiate this as a request?

 

[Insomnimaniac Games]

My man, this whole sites purpose is illegitimate sharing.

But to give you a TL;DR, don't even bother. If your game reaches any level of popularity it'll be cracked in a matter of days. Your efforts are far better used by making the best game you can.

 

[c3p0]

My man, this whole sites purpose is illegitimate sharing.

Yes, sure. But, can you give advice how I can implement something like always online feature (my game need to run all the calculation on the server regardless, same as Sim City).

 

[F4C430]

You can't stop illegitimate sharing, the best you can do is try to slow it down but it will always be at an inconvenience to legitimate players.

Look up Elzee.

 

[anne O'nymous]

But, can you give advice how I can implement something like always online feature [...]

And you found the loophole. Online games are among the ones that are banned here.

 

[Nadekai]

This is a porn piracy forum.
The purpose of this forum is... well... pirating porn and porn games.
You cannot prevent your game being shared here.

 

[Sculptor]

My guy registers to a forum about sharing pirated games and asks how to prevent piracy.

 

[OldManGG]

Since you can't, the big brain move is to take it as free marketing, play testing, etc, and use it as a funnel to your paid content.

Besides, don't pretend like you don't pirate porn yourself, lol. Leave that level of hypocrisy to the politicians and priests.

 

[EndlessChanceGames]

Hey, all. Thanks for the replies. Got it. It was strange that someone had even given me that advice xD

I'll just post an announcement for the game then and just leave it at that. Thank you.

 

[PlayClaritas]

You can't prevent it, just make it harder. It will basically come down to the perceived value of your game weighted against the effort required to crack it. A very popular game with tough protection will get cracked, a not very popular game with no protection will get cracked, a not very popular game with above average protection might be left alone.

 

[Hagatagar]

Okay, here's my super-secret pro tip to prevent games from being shared on F95zone.


Add lolis, young lolis, that look really young...

Spoiler

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Pros:
- Game won't get shared here
- You might get some new users?

Cons:
- Game won't be allowed here at all
- Game can't be on Patreon, Steam or SubscribeStar either
- Potential same fate as Westy

It was strange that someone had even given me that advice xD

Obviously F95zone isn't running around and official announcing it being a pirate site, so there are many people who don't even realize this is one.

 

[DSSAlex]

Cultivate a relationship with fans on here so that they like you and make your builds free eventually. If people don't like you they'll be way more apt to leak builds. Be on here to an extent, get involved in the threads for your games. And sometimes builds will leak anyway. Be clear you won't provide any support for leaked builds if they fuck up saves or whatever, but give up the part of you that is very precious about never having leaked builds. This is a piracy website, ultimately

 

[MissCougar]

So if you're serious I think you can work on integrating user logins with a Patreon API that would effectively allow only users with permission to access that content, and lace this throughout your game code.

If the game is good, expect it to get cracked.

If you put out updates fast enough and change something with the authentication each time that voids whatever last DLL edit a person did to crack it last time, people will stop trying to crack each release.

Expect to get people annoyed, less advertising overall, bad vibes potentially with the people who actually would buy you game, and at the end when you do release and it's decent it'll get cracked anyway within a week.


I would focus on just making the game good, getting feedback from players, including people here, and make people want to support you because you're investing time in the game instead of copy protection antics.

It is up to you though! I hope you find your perfect mix and a final solution that works for you!

 

[Hagatagar]

Don't fight the pirates, be the pirate!

 

[Goeffel]

So if you're serious I think you can work on integrating user logins with a Patreon API that would effectively allow only users with permission to access that content, and lace this throughout your game code.

If the game is good, expect it to get cracked.

If you put out updates fast enough and change something with the authentication each time that voids whatever last DLL edit a person did to crack it last time, people will stop trying to crack each release.

Expect to get people annoyed, less advertising overall, bad vibes potentially with the people who actually would buy you game, and at the end when you do release and it's decent it'll get cracked anyway within a week.

There was such a game, its cracked version here at f95zone. (forgot the title)

It was sort of funny, since the result was that legit players (patrons) had to be online and legitimize themselves some clumsy way every time they wanted to play, while the pirates here just played without them hoops (was stripped from the version here).

And once the game went steam, they had to remove that stuff anyways.

 

[F4C430]

There was such a game, its cracked version here at f95zone. (forgot the title)

It was sort of funny, since the result was that legit players (patrons) had to be online and legitimize themselves some clumsy way every time they wanted to play, while the pirates here just played without them hoops (was stripped from the version here).

And once the game went steam, they had to remove that stuff anyways.

Look up Elzee.

That dev went all-in on pirate paranoia wasting everyone's time for no reason.

 

[anne O'nymous]

So if you're serious I think you can work on integrating user logins with a Patreon API that would effectively allow only users with permission to access that content, and lace this throughout your game code.

While it's a legit advice, it's also a bad one when it come to adult games.

Each day, there's dozen of new games or updates. And it's just for here, so it don't count the games that can't be here (online requirement, loli, IRL bestiality, lack of English version), or that are so low below the radar that uploaders/leakers don't know about them and no one requested them.
While having his game leaked here will not guaranty support and success, it provide the biggest exposure that a Western adult game can expect. What also mean that, for Western adult games, not having it featured here will serious limit the support and reduce the possibility to be successful.

Of course, once cracked it's not an issue, if it's of some interest the game will be present here. But there's a pitfall. If the security change with every update, the dev will looks like a jerk, and who would want to support a jerk?

Plus, like Insomnimaniac Games said above, the time past to protect the game would be better used to actually works on the game.
By example, I remember one dev who, few years ago, said that he past two weeks to come to the protection for his Ren'Py game sources. I needed five minutes to revert the said protection. And the same would apply for most other game engines.
Implementing a protection, whatever it is, is a long process, but bypassing it just need to remove a branching, and possibly force a value to True. What mean that, for someone who know what he's doing, it will generally just be a question of minutes; a bit more if it's Godot or Unreal. Then, after the first time it will be even faster, even if the protection change with every update because you know what you're looking for and where to find it. The only parade being for the dev to also change/move all the part where the branching happen, what imply even more works for him, and still few minutes to bypass it.

 

[c3p0]

Plus, like Insomnimaniac Games said above, the time past to protect the game would be better used to actually works on the game.
By example, I remember one dev who, few years ago, said that he past two weeks to come to the protection for his Ren'Py game sources. I needed five minutes to revert the said protection. And the same would apply for most other game engines.
Implementing a protection, whatever it is, is a long process, but bypassing it just need to remove a branching, and possibly force a value to True. What mean that, for someone who know what he's doing, it will generally just be a question of minutes; a bit more if it's Godot or Unreal. Then, after the first time it will be even faster, even if the protection change with every update because you know what you're looking for and where to find it. The only parade being for the dev to also change/move all the part where the branching happen, what imply even more works for him, and still few minutes to bypass it.

Even if you can implement a form of protection that is "secure" it needs only one bug or one entry point to get into the system and break it then from the inside.

Why should a, I assume, single dev be superior where the whole industry had failed? None of the copy protection system has worked over a long time, neither Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, EA, ..., the list can go on and on.

 

[osanaiko]

Hi all,

I am developing my very first game and have already received some helpful advice on how I can work with F95 zone to prevent or manage illegitimate sharing of my game (cracking the game, etc.)

I searched the site already but am unsure how I would start this process. Could anyone point the way or explain how I would initiate this as a request?

Hey, all. Thanks for the replies. Got it. It was strange that someone had even given me that advice xD

I'll just post an announcement for the game then and just leave it at that. Thank you.

You are not going to prevent piracy on this site.

But what you CAN do is demonstrate to the (dirty, unwashed, freeloading) pirate players, who are actually potential supporters, that you are serious about delivering over time and that you interact with community. And if your game is good / you are tickling their fetish nerve endings enoug... then some single-digit percentage of them will start to support you. And that's a lot better than the zero percent support which you would get if you were openly hostile to pirates.

There are many devs who very successfully have used f95 as a springboard to patreon popularity. Today, possibly the most prolific of these is the Love Of Magic dev, Droid Productions, who is openly running a weekly dev thread for his new game in the Programming, Development & Art subforum. it seems to be working for him!

 

[EndlessChanceGames]

Hi, all. Thank you for all the helpful advice! Didn't expect to get this much engagement from the community already xD

After reading through the feedback I think there are really only 2 things as next steps for me:

Just focus on making my game good.
Make a post in "Programming, Development & Art subforum" and engage with the community (which I need to work on...)

I don't have a deep enough understanding about security anyway so yeah I'll just do my best to establish a successful patreon and make my good enough for people to play at least 10 minutes of it haha. Plus, the odds of having my very first be decent are slim so I'm using this more as a learning experience. Despite all of that, I'll still try.