I dread the idea of making a DRM pay lock like all games that require a serial activation key. Would people go for a pay whenever model for games? what’s your personal thought on this. For example, downloading the game as free access but being able to purchase an official license after you played the game.
I think the simplest solution is to set a price and publish it on Steam, itch.io, or GameJolt.
Don’t do “always online DRM” do “Always online licenses”
store them encrypted on your server, send your customers emails containing keys, and let your servers get hacked The goal isn’t to stop it, it’s to make it hard.
This saves your users a ton of headache, and it does not feel dystopian, all you’re doing is requiring they input a token into their software before they get to install it and then never again. This will stop 90% of pirates, people are lazy.
problem with itch.io is it don’t make the game safe, download link can be shared.
the only way to prevent sharing keys is some kind of server access which can be hacked like you said. I was hoping not to code that much.
you’re never going to stop all malicious intentions, the goal should never be to try and stop all hackers, you can’t, you won’t. the goal is to reduce the penalty on all parties when it happens. There are other ways to do DRM as well, typically offline is the most favored by users but leaves you at the greatest risk. even very badly written DRM is going to stop a huge amount of casual piracy but what I suggested is really best practice.