Post by redonihunter in [Help] How to check players own a key of my game?

Viewing post in [Help] How to check players own a key of my game?

I found out that itch.io is missing app authorization to find out if users own the games actually. What I want is to find out if players own my game. And if so, they can play the game. itch.io is missing that thing, so it's easy to get pirated for our itch.io games.

As in contrast to which games? If you can get pirated copies of AAA games, what do you think your games are?!

DRM is a problematic concept in many ways. Foremost, that it only punishes legit players. You will not sell more games, because a game has drm. The creator might have the fuzzy warm feeling that the game is harder to copy. But the concrete cold reality is, that no one will buy the game because it has drm, but many will intentionally not buy it, if it has one. Just read some steam reviews of games that implement additional drm.

For any kind of online experience, drm is moot anways. You have your servers and login credentials, a thing like client side drm does add nothing.

The api you mentioned requires you to have a server. Wich brings us back to the online experience. And there are users that will be very, very suspisious, if an offline game requires internet connection. And quite frankly, I would not trust a small time indie dev to handly any such thing at all.

But from what I understood, you could implement some login type drm with this oauth thingie. But after having a look at your creators profile and games, your concerns about pirated versions of your games are purely academical. And to be more specific, I for one would not buy any of your games, if I had to login onto your servers to play them. For the single reason, that I do not trust a small dev like you to still have that login server in two years.

Like Reply

Uju Studio1 year ago

Actually I don't think I am for DRM.

It's just for a check if user is a real user who has itch.io account. If he is a real itch.io user, than get his user name and ask itch.io if user with that name had legally bought the game. The game will start only if itch.io responses okay. Is that DRM bro lol

AAA games are not always hackable. I found COD MW 2020 isn't hackable. It has a strong checker that checks if player really bought their games legally.

I am not so strong with two arms only. But I leave this to itch.io api to check player ownership. Or maybe as previous response said about OAuth to use, which maybe better I guess. I'll research more ways out.

Let me see if I OAuth is better...

Like Reply

redonihunter1 year ago

Is that DRM bro lol

If you have an offline game, yes. That is precisly what it is.

If you have an online game, that is, online services, then, no, not really. It is just a side effect of the means of loggin in. What you need to do anyways to play the game with something like a persistent user account.

I found COD MW 2020 isn't hackable. It has a strong checker that checks if player really bought their games legally.

That is not, what is happening there. This is an online game. And they even made the offline single player campaign "online". Resulting in lots of frustrated players, because they could not even play the single player portion of the game during release, because their lame servers were not reachable. Proving my point, that it is legit players that suffer from drm.

If you have crucial elements of your game on your server, this goes beyond simply "checking", if the player bought the game. You force it to be an online game. And the game is prone to server failings of any sort, including quitting of the gaming company. If I pay for an offline game, I want to be able to play it, even if the company that made it, ceases to exist.

I think you are worrying about an aspect of game publishing, that is not relevant for the scope and type of games you make. (Unless you try to make an online game, of course). You should be glad, if people would want to pirate your games at your stage of recognition. You have more games published than followers on itch, for crying out loud! You think your authentication process will bring in more players?! The dangers of alienating the players you do have, far outweighs any perceived benefit of having such auth.

And imho it is perceived benefit and not real benefit. (Again, unless you plan on making an online game and merely are struggling with the necessary login stuff. Maybe I misunderstood.)

Like Reply