Selling of games (How to?)

[Cowbox]

Hi, people here may know me. I run a small team who make games and we are approaching our second release.

As the retailer of this game (because the first one was free) I would like some help as to how to retail this game.

Basically, can someone give me a simple step through process on how to sell the game to someone, I am hoping to have some sort of KEY requirement wall at the start of the game requiring a key to be put in, but I don't really know how to implement this idea. How does Hamumu stop people reselling or distrubuting its games for free?

Cowbox

[Mr.Onion]

AFAIK, they don't. :p

[Jamul]

We don't use any keys. We just have separate demos and full versions, which means that if you are going to pirate the game out to others, you have to buy it first! In practice, this is much more effective than a key system. Cracking a key system is exactly what the pirates enjoy doing. They don't so much enjoy hosting huge full version downloads as they do 100k cracks. Of course, full games are on torrents and such all the time, but it just doesn't have 1/10th the volume of key cracks. I think.

Regardless, my #1 priority is the people who DO pay. And I know how much I hate having to suffer through CD-in-the-drive requirements or finding CDs to enter a CD key, or installing Starforce to destroy my system, or any other anti-piracy measure that makes me, the purchaser, suffer. I'm gonna make more money spending my time on making more and better games than I am on working to lock down my existing games. If you can keep casual people from pirating (my system certainly does that), you're done. Hardcore pirates aren't going to be stopped.

Anyway, there are several security solutions you can get to wrap your game in. Names that are sitting in my brain right now are Softwrap, Armadillo, and... something else is there, but I don't know what it is. I think eSellerate incorporates that feature and purchasing direct from the application. So you can go with a pre-made system if you want to use keys.

[Cowbox]

I do agree with your statement about pirating, that hardcore pirates can't be stopped. But for the sake of extra security I am going to have a basic key wall with my games just to ensure I keep them as "pirate-free" as possible.

After I made this thread, I began making this basic key wall and it seems to work quite well. So as well as getting people to buy the games, they will need a key.

One last question though, how do you actually sell to someone over the internet? I mean, I can let people download things from my site and I can recieve money from people (using Paypal), but how would I actually make it so they had to send me money to download it? (Or do you do it another way?)

Cowbox

[Jamul]

I use Plimus, and there are many other companies that fill that role too, like BMT Micro and the aforementioned eSellerate. There are dozens of others, none of which I'd recommend. Paypal actually also does this (not the usual paypal money-sending system, but a credit card order page like you see anywhere on the internet), but I think you'd need to do coding to deal with the order. A place like Plimus can automate it, sending out the link or key when people place the order through them.