15 ms·

DRM done right: Puppygames

63 points by ewjordan 16y ago

willvarfar 16y ago
sad they say they aren't doing so well: "It means if our DRM system breaks, like for example our server melts down with the floods of sales we unfortunately aren’t getting, or Puppygames goes completely bust because you buggers aren’t buying nearly enough games for us to survive," ... " Hint: you’re not :("
- wccrawford 16y ago
  "Error establishing a database connection" Like, now?
- maushu 16y ago
  Well, if they aren't exaggerating with that 5% number. Then it means they are making around $270 per month. Kind of sad compared with minecraft that made $20k or something in a day.
  - ido 16y ago
    $100-200k a day currently.
  - c-oreills 16y ago
    I'd say Minecraft's more the exception here, not the rule. Or, turning your comment on its head, Minecraft's income looks absolutely amazing compared to this!
    - ido 16y ago
      Yes, this is far closer to the common indie experience than minecraft.
- houseabsolute 16y ago
  That is too bad. I bought one of their games too, and I thought it was definitely worth the money I spent on it.
tomjen3 16y ago
Not really - you _still_ can't script the installation of it, which means that you have to sit and type a bunch of numbers foreach and every single program you want to install.
rms 16y ago
>Error establishing a database connection Evidence that there is no such thing as DRM done right?
- StavrosK 16y ago
  Le cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=opera&rls=en-GB&q=cache:http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=574&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=opera&#3...
patio11 16y ago
I wonder how long it is going to take the fickle and rabidly cynical usual suspects to realize that "Our DRM / lack of DRM / pseudo-DRM / loud opposition to DRM is different" is, in fact, Marketing 101, and that they hate marketing almost as much as they hate paying for software.
- mjgoins 16y ago
  I don't mind paying for free software, if I think it's worth it. But I wouldn't take their proprietary software even if you paid me.
  - weaksauce 16y ago
    That's ok. You are not their customer.
borisk 16y ago
"Firewall Revenge of the Titans so it can’t ever contact Puppygames and get your totally free full game" Using DRM at all in such a setup looks quite pointless to me.
- IgorPartola 16y ago
  I agree, but what they are describing sounds less like the DRM we've come to know and hate (yes, I know that's the point of the article, but let me explain). When I think of DRM in, say, music purchases, I usually think of some way of restriction. But here the title DRM actually makes sense: it's Digital Rights Management. This actually enables the developer to distribute the right to the full version of the game to it's customers, not to restrict them. By that same token things like Valve's Steam allow Valve to distribute games, although on much more restrictive terms. Of course the FSF would completely disagree with any of this, but I would definitely like to hear RMS's take on this particular setup. I guess the big question is going to be "does this scale?"
  - TheAmazingIdiot 16y ago
    In the end of any scenario, DRM always means somebody who has rights on your computer over you, the owner. My computer is mine. I can give others limited access on them in terms of user accounts. However, I will not give myself a user account and give them root. The pirates can be said for getting things free. They are also more free due to less restrictions on their version of the code.
- jcl 16y ago
  While I'm skeptical that it will actually work, I think it's an interesting alternative approach. Think of it this way: DRM is effectively a way of monetizing the inconvenience of pirates. With traditional DRM, an unscrupulous person has two options: either buy the game immediately, or wait until it is cracked and then maybe deal with malware or crack-induced bugs. The Puppygames DRM adds a third option: download the game directly from the creator (no malware or bugs) and play the full game, but with the inconvenience of only playing it offline. This makes the game less likely to be cracked at all -- there's little glory in cracking a game that practically comes pre-cracked -- and a crack is less likely to see wide distribution when the creator is a more reliable source. So maybe more people will experience the minor inconvenience of playing offline, and maybe more of them will pay to have the inconvenience removed.
jrockway 16y ago
This DRM doesn't do anything; it just seems like extra code to maintain for no reason.
- wccrawford 16y ago
  They make a big deal about the download having your name and address embedded in it to deter people from spreading their copy all over the net. And then they said that their demo version will be full version until it contacts the server... And you can download the demo without an account. They defeated all of their own protections.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
lukifer 16y ago
The Pepsi Challenge of any DRM scheme is this: Will I end up regretting that I didn't just pirate it instead? (ie: Did the purchase experience leave me with anything less than warm fuzzies, and/or did the product end up being crippled in some way?) Though hardly bulletproof, or optimal, this particular mechanism clearly passes that test, and should be lauded.
- maushu 16y ago
  Yeah, this happened to me regarding Starcraft 2. I ended up regretting buying it after it took me half a dozen tries just to play single-player with my not-so-good mobile internet connection.
  - robryan 16y ago
    Had no problems with starcraft 2 at first, but the real telling moment came when I noticed that I couldn't play single player without first registering my account for offline play with a net connection that I didn't have where I was at the time. Felt weird having a game I had paid for and installed legit that I was being prevented from playing.
    - maushu 16y ago
      Yeah, I forgot about the need to register on battle.net
dekz 16y ago
While I admire their attempt at a different view of the DRM model, how many here have downloaded the game to either play or to at least test their DRM? I for one have, and if that is enough to get me to buy a copy of any of their games, I'd say the DRM (or at least the blog post) is a success.
cookiecaper 16y ago
They should just take all of this out and tout that they are DRM-free. If they trusted the user as they claim, they wouldn't feel like they needed to revert your refunded full game into a demo. Lots of people would have no problem registering the game to "Sir Pantsy Higginbothom <pantsy@throwaway-email-provider.com>" and then what good does their little name screen do? If they always reset your registration count no questions asked, there is no point in even having that there. It seems like they're trying to strike a balance but I just don't see the point. There's still extra hassle involved here, interestingly much of it is on the publisher himself, and there's no particular benefit for anyone. The publisher gains nothing from these measures because they are so easy to circumvent and they'll just creep out / bother users that registered the copy in their real name. Users gain nothing from these measures because they are almost not there and there's some slight intrusion made after buying 10 games. They don't add anything to the experience, unless you like your name flashing up as one of the intro credits. So there's really no point to any of this. They should just rip it out and then they could put shiny "DRM-free" buttons all over.
- ido 16y ago
  You ignore the fact that the purpose of DRM is to minimize piracy, not prevent it completely. if it introduced even a slight inconvenience in pirating the games it would probably already shave off a nice amount of pirating. PS: Puppy Games is just one guy trying to make a living from his games, it's not really much of a "company".
  - cookiecaper 16y ago
    OK, but it's not going to minimize piracy at all. Big-name games get pirated more and more and their attempts to "minimize piracy" are much more intrusive. If those don't deter people, a little flash of a name isn't going to deter people. The people who consume pirate media are just going to wait for it to pop on the torrent, just like anything, and crackers will have it out in a jiffy (assuming there's an audience that wants it...) specifically because there's nothing to crack. You just register the game as "1337 h4x0rs group", or better yet, go into a hex editor and replace the name of the person to whom the game is really registered. If people aren't deterred from cracking out SafeROM etc., they are not going to be deterred from cracking out a little name flash. They aren't even going to bother with it, probably, and will just put the game out there. So what's the point? I don't get it at all. Who is deterred by this?
compay 16y ago
"DRM done right" is an oxymoron.
- billybob 16y ago
  "We succeeded at failing!"
njharman 16y ago
Sorry if I missed it in the long obfuscated explanation but why? Why bother with DRM at all? Esp ineffectual DRM like theirs.
eli 16y ago
That's nice and all, but most games have much more invasive DRM yet they still get pirated. What stops someone from hacking the game to not display their name and to also never check in with the server?
- eogas 16y ago
  Especially if it's in Java, which, if I'm not mistaken, is incredibly easy to decompile.
- c-oreills 16y ago
  I think their point is "we've left it loose because we trust you". They say their demos will automatically become the full version if they can't find a Puppygames server on first run. You don't _need_ to hack the game, if you're so inclined to get it for free they've made it easy for you. They're encouraging a culture of trust between you and them, in the hope you'll thank them for it and actually pay for the game. Not a bad tactic considering some of the piracy figures indie devs have cited. At the end of the day they realise it's more beneficial to keep their paying customers onside rather than slightly inconveniencing those who are going to pirate it anyway.
  - eli 16y ago
    Hey, I'm totally down with that attitude. My point is that if your DRM is going to be so minimal anyway, why bother? It doesn't seem like this approach is likely to convince very many people to buy the software who wouldn't otherwise, and it surely takes time and resources to set up and run.
    - c-oreills 16y ago
      I think it plays on the psychology of concession. If you make me a concession then I'm more likely to do you a favour. They're saying, "We've made DRM, but we don't want to inconvenience our paying users, so the DRM will be incredibly forgiving and infact can be easily circumvented by someone with little technical skill". I think their potential customers would look at that and be more inclined to buy the games, because it appears they've been done more of a favour when a company cuts back on DRM, even at the expense of their potential income, as opposed to if they simply released the game for free.
jdietrich 16y ago
WAAAAAAAAYYYYYY too longwinded. This isn't a marketing message aimed at customers, it's a bit of clever design aimed at the likes of us. It's still massively inconvenient, in that I have to understand their ridiculously complicated scheme in order to understand what I can do with my game. As a rule, people who get angry about DRM aren't the kind of people you'd want as customers even if they did pay for software, and the average user is likely to be more put off by a complex permissive scheme than a simple restrictive scheme. Customers generally don't mind big, bold-face caveats, it's the small print that worries them. All this is rather beside the point - according to the numbers in that post, they're selling 20 copies a month. If you're writing good, attractive games but making so little money, you have much bigger priorities than your DRM scheme. Spend an hour implementing an off-the-shelf watermarking system to give yourself basic legal recourse against wholesale piracy, then get on with the job of selling. If this is just a hobby then fair enough, I have no right to argue, but if this is supposed to be a business then I really despair.
- makeramen 16y ago
  > according to the numbers in that post, they're selling 20 copies a month. please don't jump to conclusions. that's monthly salary per person, which in turn is how much they choose to pay themselves from the company's revenues, after monthly expenses, which I would assume include server and equipment costs among many other things.
- ewjordan 16y ago
  It's still massively inconvenient, in that I have to understand their ridiculously complicated scheme in order to understand what I can do with my game. Eh, as you mentioned, this post is aimed at people like us - to the normal end user that's not trying to play the full version for free, there's nothing complex at all. You just download the game, and enter your e-mail address. If you've already bought the thing, then you just have to click a link in an e-mail, otherwise you either play the demo or buy the thing, no surprises. Even sharing with friends is easy, you just enter your e-mail address and it works fine after you click the link. The other details involve edge cases; perhaps Cas will at some point release some stats, and tell us (for instance) how many people actually activate more than 10 copies of the game. I can't imagine it's very many, and for everyone else, the scheme is trivial. If you're writing good, attractive games but making so little money, you have much bigger priorities than your DRM scheme. I'd tend to agree with this. The level of polish in their games makes it surprising that they're doing so few sales, so there's probably a lot that could be done marketing-wise to improve things. Of course, I have no idea what these things are, myself. :) I'm sure Cas would be open to suggestions on this front, I know he's aware of this thread, so by all means, fire away if you've got advice...
ewjordan 16y ago
The tl;dr bullet points: 1) Sharing with friends and family is allowed, and encouraged 2) Your e-mail is your registration key - when you try to activate on another computer, an activation link is sent to you via e-mail, and you can do this 10 times. After that, you've just got to ask Puppygames for more activations and they'll almost always approve them (I assume the main exception would be if someone was passing around a registration all over the Internet, which is pretty easy to notice if it happens). 3) If anything screws up re: the DRM system, it errs in your favor. In particular, if you haven't registered when you boot the game and you can't reach the server, it will assume that you're good to go, and turn the demo into the full game. It will never shut you down because it can't phone home. 4) The only way the full game gets disabled is if the server tells it that you've asked for a refund (which they always honor). 5) They're aware that 3) and 4) are very easy to game (block the Internet connection once you get your refund), and that's fine, they prefer not to hassle legit users unduly. IMO, this strikes a pretty good balance - it tends to err on the side of the user while still throwing up a tiny barrier to piracy (pretty much just enough to thwart the casual pirate). To do more is not worth it, because people that will go through the trouble of bypassing the registration process on the demo would probably just find a cracked version anyways if it was any more difficult to do. Also, I should mention that the demos that Puppygames provides are quite substantial chunks of the full versions - if you've played enough of the demo to reach its limits, then chances are you've been liking the game enough to warrant buying it. I think this is pretty important, it's probably the main reason they have so few refund requests. Finally, I encourage everyone to check out the game itself at http://www.puppygames.net/revenge-of-the-titans http://www.puppygames.net/revenge-of-the-titans, too - Cas and Chaz have always put together really polished and fun games, and it's a shame that they haven't been able to figure out how to sell more of them (Cas was not joking at all with the self-deprecating stuff about people not buying the games, they really are only selling a handful of copies every month). FWIW, I have no relation to either of them, I'm plugging them because I've always liked their games and would hate to see them give up.
princec 16y ago
hello everyone! This is Cas from Puppygames. It's been very interesting reading this thread (thanks ewj for posting!) A few straight from the horses mouth facts: I sat down and worked out what our revenues are, and they work out as $750/month over the last 7 years. Out of that, we pay for hosting, advertising, accountancy, and tax, leaving about $400/month and then Chaz and I split the remainder. Chaz just about scrapes a meagre existence in Spain. I live in the UK though so I have to keep on doing a day job (I've got a family to support). So up till now Puppygames has always been part-time! It'd be nice to do it full time. If you're wondering why we bother at all, well, it's because it's actually a monumental pain in the arse to release two versions of every game - a demo and a full version. It's loads easier just to do a full version which can be unlocked. That's all our "DRM" is, really - just a really simple way of doing unlockable demos which won't go wrong and is practically impossible to not understand. Also, anyone who thinks that it was a "lot of work" developing the system should probably know... it wasn't. It's really trivial stuff, and most of the hard bits are built in to Java anyway like the public/private key encryption. We're already working our little fingers off making the game, can't afford to spend any more time on unlocking schemes! It really is utterly trivial for anyone with half a brain to defeat, and even crack and release. It's Java - any fool with JAD and Eclipse can rip it out. But what we're getting at here is... what's the point? The demos are lengthy, the games are cheap, the rights we give you along with the games are exactly the rights you would expect to have and want. They're exactly the rights I expect and want from things I buy, anyway. Lots of piratey types give all sorts of feeble excuses as to why they get dodgy copies of things but at the end of the day we basically addressed every single one of them except one which is that the games cost too much and you wanted them anyway! Which we're figuring out how to address right now. We tried in the past reducing the prices of the games but discovered they made even less money. Any suggestions?
- wtracy 16y ago
  My theory (I have absolutely no evidence to back this up) is that there's a level where there's no point reducing the price because the psychological cost of digging out a credit card, typing in the number, and wondering if you can really trust this merchant, is actually higher than the cost of the money you're forking out. For me, if I'm not willing to buy it at $20, I'm probably not going to buy it online at all. Other people seem to have a threshold closer to $15 or $10. Note that this doesn't apply in app store situations where your carrier already has your billing information. (Hence all the successful 99-cent iPhone games.) Also, ignore the "feeble excuses" from the "piratey types"--they're just that, excuses.

63 points by ewjordan 16y ago

sad they say they aren't doing so well: "It means if our DRM system breaks, like for example our server melts down with the floods of sales we unfortunately aren’t getting, or Puppygames goes completely bust because you buggers aren’t buying nearly enough games for us to survive," ... " Hint: you’re not :("

wccrawford 16y ago
"Error establishing a database connection" Like, now?
maushu 16y ago
Well, if they aren't exaggerating with that 5% number. Then it means they are making around $270 per month. Kind of sad compared with minecraft that made $20k or something in a day.
- ido 16y ago
  $100-200k a day currently.
- c-oreills 16y ago
  I'd say Minecraft's more the exception here, not the rule. Or, turning your comment on its head, Minecraft's income looks absolutely amazing compared to this!
  - ido 16y ago
    Yes, this is far closer to the common indie experience than minecraft.
houseabsolute 16y ago
That is too bad. I bought one of their games too, and I thought it was definitely worth the money I spent on it.

tomjen3 16y ago

Not really - you _still_ can't script the installation of it, which means that you have to sit and type a bunch of numbers foreach and every single program you want to install.

rms 16y ago

>Error establishing a database connection Evidence that there is no such thing as DRM done right?

StavrosK 16y ago
Le cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=opera&rls=en-GB&q=cache:http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=574&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=opera&#3...

patio11 16y ago

I wonder how long it is going to take the fickle and rabidly cynical usual suspects to realize that "Our DRM / lack of DRM / pseudo-DRM / loud opposition to DRM is different" is, in fact, Marketing 101, and that they hate marketing almost as much as they hate paying for software.

mjgoins 16y ago
I don't mind paying for free software, if I think it's worth it. But I wouldn't take their proprietary software even if you paid me.
- weaksauce 16y ago
  That's ok. You are not their customer.

borisk 16y ago

"Firewall Revenge of the Titans so it can’t ever contact Puppygames and get your totally free full game" Using DRM at all in such a setup looks quite pointless to me.

IgorPartola 16y ago
I agree, but what they are describing sounds less like the DRM we've come to know and hate (yes, I know that's the point of the article, but let me explain). When I think of DRM in, say, music purchases, I usually think of some way of restriction. But here the title DRM actually makes sense: it's Digital Rights Management. This actually enables the developer to distribute the right to the full version of the game to it's customers, not to restrict them. By that same token things like Valve's Steam allow Valve to distribute games, although on much more restrictive terms. Of course the FSF would completely disagree with any of this, but I would definitely like to hear RMS's take on this particular setup. I guess the big question is going to be "does this scale?"
- TheAmazingIdiot 16y ago
  In the end of any scenario, DRM always means somebody who has rights on your computer over you, the owner. My computer is mine. I can give others limited access on them in terms of user accounts. However, I will not give myself a user account and give them root. The pirates can be said for getting things free. They are also more free due to less restrictions on their version of the code.
jcl 16y ago
While I'm skeptical that it will actually work, I think it's an interesting alternative approach. Think of it this way: DRM is effectively a way of monetizing the inconvenience of pirates. With traditional DRM, an unscrupulous person has two options: either buy the game immediately, or wait until it is cracked and then maybe deal with malware or crack-induced bugs. The Puppygames DRM adds a third option: download the game directly from the creator (no malware or bugs) and play the full game, but with the inconvenience of only playing it offline. This makes the game less likely to be cracked at all -- there's little glory in cracking a game that practically comes pre-cracked -- and a crack is less likely to see wide distribution when the creator is a more reliable source. So maybe more people will experience the minor inconvenience of playing offline, and maybe more of them will pay to have the inconvenience removed.

jrockway 16y ago

This DRM doesn't do anything; it just seems like extra code to maintain for no reason.

wccrawford 16y ago
They make a big deal about the download having your name and address embedded in it to deter people from spreading their copy all over the net. And then they said that their demo version will be full version until it contacts the server... And you can download the demo without an account. They defeated all of their own protections.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]

lukifer 16y ago

The Pepsi Challenge of any DRM scheme is this: Will I end up regretting that I didn't just pirate it instead? (ie: Did the purchase experience leave me with anything less than warm fuzzies, and/or did the product end up being crippled in some way?) Though hardly bulletproof, or optimal, this particular mechanism clearly passes that test, and should be lauded.

maushu 16y ago
Yeah, this happened to me regarding Starcraft 2. I ended up regretting buying it after it took me half a dozen tries just to play single-player with my not-so-good mobile internet connection.
- robryan 16y ago
  Had no problems with starcraft 2 at first, but the real telling moment came when I noticed that I couldn't play single player without first registering my account for offline play with a net connection that I didn't have where I was at the time. Felt weird having a game I had paid for and installed legit that I was being prevented from playing.
  - maushu 16y ago
    Yeah, I forgot about the need to register on battle.net

dekz 16y ago

While I admire their attempt at a different view of the DRM model, how many here have downloaded the game to either play or to at least test their DRM? I for one have, and if that is enough to get me to buy a copy of any of their games, I'd say the DRM (or at least the blog post) is a success.

cookiecaper 16y ago

They should just take all of this out and tout that they are DRM-free. If they trusted the user as they claim, they wouldn't feel like they needed to revert your refunded full game into a demo. Lots of people would have no problem registering the game to "Sir Pantsy Higginbothom <pantsy@throwaway-email-provider.com>" and then what good does their little name screen do? If they always reset your registration count no questions asked, there is no point in even having that there. It seems like they're trying to strike a balance but I just don't see the point. There's still extra hassle involved here, interestingly much of it is on the publisher himself, and there's no particular benefit for anyone. The publisher gains nothing from these measures because they are so easy to circumvent and they'll just creep out / bother users that registered the copy in their real name. Users gain nothing from these measures because they are almost not there and there's some slight intrusion made after buying 10 games. They don't add anything to the experience, unless you like your name flashing up as one of the intro credits. So there's really no point to any of this. They should just rip it out and then they could put shiny "DRM-free" buttons all over.

ido 16y ago
You ignore the fact that the purpose of DRM is to minimize piracy, not prevent it completely. if it introduced even a slight inconvenience in pirating the games it would probably already shave off a nice amount of pirating. PS: Puppy Games is just one guy trying to make a living from his games, it's not really much of a "company".
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  OK, but it's not going to minimize piracy at all. Big-name games get pirated more and more and their attempts to "minimize piracy" are much more intrusive. If those don't deter people, a little flash of a name isn't going to deter people. The people who consume pirate media are just going to wait for it to pop on the torrent, just like anything, and crackers will have it out in a jiffy (assuming there's an audience that wants it...) specifically because there's nothing to crack. You just register the game as "1337 h4x0rs group", or better yet, go into a hex editor and replace the name of the person to whom the game is really registered. If people aren't deterred from cracking out SafeROM etc., they are not going to be deterred from cracking out a little name flash. They aren't even going to bother with it, probably, and will just put the game out there. So what's the point? I don't get it at all. Who is deterred by this?

compay 16y ago

"DRM done right" is an oxymoron.

billybob 16y ago
"We succeeded at failing!"

njharman 16y ago

Sorry if I missed it in the long obfuscated explanation but why? Why bother with DRM at all? Esp ineffectual DRM like theirs.

eli 16y ago

That's nice and all, but most games have much more invasive DRM yet they still get pirated. What stops someone from hacking the game to not display their name and to also never check in with the server?

eogas 16y ago
Especially if it's in Java, which, if I'm not mistaken, is incredibly easy to decompile.
c-oreills 16y ago
I think their point is "we've left it loose because we trust you". They say their demos will automatically become the full version if they can't find a Puppygames server on first run. You don't _need_ to hack the game, if you're so inclined to get it for free they've made it easy for you. They're encouraging a culture of trust between you and them, in the hope you'll thank them for it and actually pay for the game. Not a bad tactic considering some of the piracy figures indie devs have cited. At the end of the day they realise it's more beneficial to keep their paying customers onside rather than slightly inconveniencing those who are going to pirate it anyway.
- eli 16y ago
  Hey, I'm totally down with that attitude. My point is that if your DRM is going to be so minimal anyway, why bother? It doesn't seem like this approach is likely to convince very many people to buy the software who wouldn't otherwise, and it surely takes time and resources to set up and run.
  - c-oreills 16y ago
    I think it plays on the psychology of concession. If you make me a concession then I'm more likely to do you a favour. They're saying, "We've made DRM, but we don't want to inconvenience our paying users, so the DRM will be incredibly forgiving and infact can be easily circumvented by someone with little technical skill". I think their potential customers would look at that and be more inclined to buy the games, because it appears they've been done more of a favour when a company cuts back on DRM, even at the expense of their potential income, as opposed to if they simply released the game for free.

jdietrich 16y ago

WAAAAAAAAYYYYYY too longwinded. This isn't a marketing message aimed at customers, it's a bit of clever design aimed at the likes of us. It's still massively inconvenient, in that I have to understand their ridiculously complicated scheme in order to understand what I can do with my game. As a rule, people who get angry about DRM aren't the kind of people you'd want as customers even if they did pay for software, and the average user is likely to be more put off by a complex permissive scheme than a simple restrictive scheme. Customers generally don't mind big, bold-face caveats, it's the small print that worries them. All this is rather beside the point - according to the numbers in that post, they're selling 20 copies a month. If you're writing good, attractive games but making so little money, you have much bigger priorities than your DRM scheme. Spend an hour implementing an off-the-shelf watermarking system to give yourself basic legal recourse against wholesale piracy, then get on with the job of selling. If this is just a hobby then fair enough, I have no right to argue, but if this is supposed to be a business then I really despair.

makeramen 16y ago
> according to the numbers in that post, they're selling 20 copies a month. please don't jump to conclusions. that's monthly salary per person, which in turn is how much they choose to pay themselves from the company's revenues, after monthly expenses, which I would assume include server and equipment costs among many other things.
ewjordan 16y ago
It's still massively inconvenient, in that I have to understand their ridiculously complicated scheme in order to understand what I can do with my game. Eh, as you mentioned, this post is aimed at people like us - to the normal end user that's not trying to play the full version for free, there's nothing complex at all. You just download the game, and enter your e-mail address. If you've already bought the thing, then you just have to click a link in an e-mail, otherwise you either play the demo or buy the thing, no surprises. Even sharing with friends is easy, you just enter your e-mail address and it works fine after you click the link. The other details involve edge cases; perhaps Cas will at some point release some stats, and tell us (for instance) how many people actually activate more than 10 copies of the game. I can't imagine it's very many, and for everyone else, the scheme is trivial. If you're writing good, attractive games but making so little money, you have much bigger priorities than your DRM scheme. I'd tend to agree with this. The level of polish in their games makes it surprising that they're doing so few sales, so there's probably a lot that could be done marketing-wise to improve things. Of course, I have no idea what these things are, myself. :) I'm sure Cas would be open to suggestions on this front, I know he's aware of this thread, so by all means, fire away if you've got advice...

ewjordan 16y ago

The tl;dr bullet points: 1) Sharing with friends and family is allowed, and encouraged 2) Your e-mail is your registration key - when you try to activate on another computer, an activation link is sent to you via e-mail, and you can do this 10 times. After that, you've just got to ask Puppygames for more activations and they'll almost always approve them (I assume the main exception would be if someone was passing around a registration all over the Internet, which is pretty easy to notice if it happens). 3) If anything screws up re: the DRM system, it errs in your favor. In particular, if you haven't registered when you boot the game and you can't reach the server, it will assume that you're good to go, and turn the demo into the full game. It will never shut you down because it can't phone home. 4) The only way the full game gets disabled is if the server tells it that you've asked for a refund (which they always honor). 5) They're aware that 3) and 4) are very easy to game (block the Internet connection once you get your refund), and that's fine, they prefer not to hassle legit users unduly. IMO, this strikes a pretty good balance - it tends to err on the side of the user while still throwing up a tiny barrier to piracy (pretty much just enough to thwart the casual pirate). To do more is not worth it, because people that will go through the trouble of bypassing the registration process on the demo would probably just find a cracked version anyways if it was any more difficult to do. Also, I should mention that the demos that Puppygames provides are quite substantial chunks of the full versions - if you've played enough of the demo to reach its limits, then chances are you've been liking the game enough to warrant buying it. I think this is pretty important, it's probably the main reason they have so few refund requests. Finally, I encourage everyone to check out the game itself at http://www.puppygames.net/revenge-of-the-titans http://www.puppygames.net/revenge-of-the-titans, too - Cas and Chaz have always put together really polished and fun games, and it's a shame that they haven't been able to figure out how to sell more of them (Cas was not joking at all with the self-deprecating stuff about people not buying the games, they really are only selling a handful of copies every month). FWIW, I have no relation to either of them, I'm plugging them because I've always liked their games and would hate to see them give up.

princec 16y ago

hello everyone! This is Cas from Puppygames. It's been very interesting reading this thread (thanks ewj for posting!) A few straight from the horses mouth facts: I sat down and worked out what our revenues are, and they work out as $750/month over the last 7 years. Out of that, we pay for hosting, advertising, accountancy, and tax, leaving about $400/month and then Chaz and I split the remainder. Chaz just about scrapes a meagre existence in Spain. I live in the UK though so I have to keep on doing a day job (I've got a family to support). So up till now Puppygames has always been part-time! It'd be nice to do it full time. If you're wondering why we bother at all, well, it's because it's actually a monumental pain in the arse to release two versions of every game - a demo and a full version. It's loads easier just to do a full version which can be unlocked. That's all our "DRM" is, really - just a really simple way of doing unlockable demos which won't go wrong and is practically impossible to not understand. Also, anyone who thinks that it was a "lot of work" developing the system should probably know... it wasn't. It's really trivial stuff, and most of the hard bits are built in to Java anyway like the public/private key encryption. We're already working our little fingers off making the game, can't afford to spend any more time on unlocking schemes! It really is utterly trivial for anyone with half a brain to defeat, and even crack and release. It's Java - any fool with JAD and Eclipse can rip it out. But what we're getting at here is... what's the point? The demos are lengthy, the games are cheap, the rights we give you along with the games are exactly the rights you would expect to have and want. They're exactly the rights I expect and want from things I buy, anyway. Lots of piratey types give all sorts of feeble excuses as to why they get dodgy copies of things but at the end of the day we basically addressed every single one of them except one which is that the games cost too much and you wanted them anyway! Which we're figuring out how to address right now. We tried in the past reducing the prices of the games but discovered they made even less money. Any suggestions?

wtracy 16y ago
My theory (I have absolutely no evidence to back this up) is that there's a level where there's no point reducing the price because the psychological cost of digging out a credit card, typing in the number, and wondering if you can really trust this merchant, is actually higher than the cost of the money you're forking out. For me, if I'm not willing to buy it at $20, I'm probably not going to buy it online at all. Other people seem to have a threshold closer to $15 or $10. Note that this doesn't apply in app store situations where your carrier already has your billing information. (Hence all the successful 99-cent iPhone games.) Also, ignore the "feeble excuses" from the "piratey types"--they're just that, excuses.