games need not be AAA to be profitable.

quite true. Rockland is proof of that.

If you really feel very strongly that you need DRM for your game to be profitable, you want to outsource for it OR sell to a AAA firm and have them do it for you.

the game has been and will continue to be profitable. drm simply helps ensure i actually see some of those profits.

unfortunately, the company is being re-started on a shoestring budget, so outsourcing or bringing testers onsite is not an option. all you get to work with is a $400 baseline pc (on-board graphics chip only), and internet access. everything else must be free.

The game type itself is not sufficiently mass market to warrant AAA publisher attention.

the idea of an expiration date for the beta is:

if a copy leaks out onto the web, it will not still be floating around out there once the game has been released.

expiration dates for beta versions is S.O.P. in "REAL" software development. you know how we gamedev types "can't get no respect!" <g>.

the game has been and will continue to be profitable. drm simply helps ensure i actually see some of those profits.

And yet, free copies of your final game will still be floating around the Intartubez after you launch the final game. You've said it yourself, your game is small enough to be put into a zip file and hosted on mediafire. Putting in a bunch of DRM will do what? Delay that from happening for a week or two? Once it's cracled. and it will be cracked, it doesn't matter how much DRM you HAD because all of it will be GONE.

I've mentioned Torchlight, The Witcher, and The Witcher 2 [somehow I don't think Caveman is quite on the scale of those three, at least not that I've heard - googling 'Caveman game' takes me to a free platformer] and another poster put up the list of DRM free games available from Steam (some pretty big names on that list). People who buy software will buy it regardless, so you'll see those profits no matter what. People who pirate software don't buy it, so those are 'profits' that you won't see under any circumstances. There are 'fence-sitters' who SOMETIMES buy software and sometimes pirate it. DRM may help you get some of those profits, provided it doesn't tic off an equivalent number of people from the first category (those who would have bought it if it weren't so locked down).

Just a thought, but if you think that Torchlight isn't getting hacked because of it's price point, why not just use a similar price point?

a too low price on a game infers lack of quality. especially when balanced against how much you get for the low price. a game that's priced to provide a gaming value too good to be true looks suspicious. say someone released a call of duty 5 clone for $5 tomorrow, you'd say, "whats the catch?" (or, at least i would...).

i price my games from a gamer's point of view: "how much is it worth, assuming they'd buy it? how much gaming value does it provide to the user?

for Caveman, the minimum answer would probably be $20. the max, perhaps $35 once i get all the features and options in there. once all the features are in, the minimum might be $25.

this isn't really hard to do. you can usually look at a piece of software you wrote with a critical independent eye, and pretty much say how much functionality and value it provides the target user at a minimum. IE: "oh dude! this game is worth at least $5!" (or 10, 15, 20, whatever).

As I see it, either your game wont' be as popular as Torchlight,

my lack of familiarity with torchlight makes it difficult to respond. can you think of a different example? perhaps something more akin to skyrim and the sims? (both of which are similar to Caveman in some respects). we may be talking apples and oranges here vis a vis Caveman and Torchlight.

but really, all of this is off topic.

the question is how to do it, not whether to do it.

same thing happened in the related thread about checksums in ram - many of the responses were not about how to do it, but whether to do it.

It sounds to me like you can skip the beta and get straight to work on the key check DRM, because you're not going to have any bugs for your testers to find anyway.

finding bugs is the coders job. they should not be allowed to sign off on a section of code until it has been thoroughly tested and debugged BY THEM! Then others can have at it. And there's always integration errors possible, even if each module is bug-free. Late changes that don't get thorough integration testing are another one that can slip through. here are the known bugs at the moment:

1. action area for selecting swamp terrain is too big

2. cross country movement supports toggle run (it really should be walk speed only - we hiked across the world, we didn't run across like marathon runners! <g>)

3. need to increase clip radius of short faced bear - think i did this already

the idea is to get the game into the user's hands and get the feedback that can make a good game great: "it would be cool if....". most of the time, the feedback i typically from long term beta testers on my games is "works great!, no problems! cool game!". as long as i keep hearing that, i figure i'm doing my job correctly. sometimes they'll have a suggestion. user feedback is vital to the iterative design "design, implement, test, get feedback" loop, which an excellent way to "evolve" one's software products.

most of the time, the feedback i typically from long term beta testers on my games is "works great!, no problems! cool game!". as long as i keep hearing that, i figure i'm doing my job correctly.

As long as you keep hearing that, you're using the wrong beta testers.

Long time beta testers (ie: fans) are not the people you really want testing your game - or at least not the main pool. You need to target people who you think would like your game, but haven't played it. You need to get some assholes in there who will try to figure out how to exploit the game before it goes live, especially if there is any multiplayer content.

If you want sim style games - X3: Terran Conflict, IIRC DRM was pulled after a few patches. X3: Albion Prelude (the expansion) is sold on Steam but you can download a 'no-steam' .exe from the official website. If it still requires Steam activation, then it still has some layer of DRM, though. I don't play a lot of Sim style games, so I can't really run down titles in that genre.

@Ferrous - Torchlight isn't getting hacked because retail copies were DRM free to begin with. One million units sold in the first four months. It's a Diablo/Fate successor for those not familiar with it.

You need to get some assholes in there who will try to figure out how to exploit the game before it goes live, especially if there is any multiplayer content.

single player, and the full version will include all testing cheats!

X3: Terran Conflict, IIRC DRM was pulled after a few patches.

yes, i've seen this sort of thing before. i think its a sort of a thank you to loyal users who still play the game. the 4th patch for silent hunter 4 removed the keycd check. no biggie, 5 was already out, i believe.

i googled x3, and yes, that's more like the size of game i'm talking about. i think you'd have to admit that selling x3 for less than $20 would be selling it too cheaply. note that i'm talking initial release price, not the current discounted price now that its 6 years old.

from what i understand of torchlight, its not quite x3, is it?

X3:TC is an interesting game because it's a big universe without a lot of content in it. It's a sandbox game with a few storylines to follow. At its heart it's an economic sim (the vast, vast majority of space is perfectly peaceful, unless you make it not so).

If you're going by gameworld size, I believe Daggerfall is the largest commercial RPG ever produced (It would take real life weeks for a character to run from one side of the world to the other - they tested it). Morrowind was smaller in size, but larger in content. Oblivion followed the same pattern. So when you say your game is "as big as Skyrim", do you mean the game world is the same size, or does Caveman have as much content in it for the player to do as Skyrim does?

In any rate I can't find release numbers for the X series, so I don't know which was more popular. $20 would probably have been the lowest sale price for a game like X3, MSRP retail closer to 39.99 If I'm guessing. Torchlight started at $20. I think that's about the 'breakpoint' between 'casual' and 'serious' games. (Just my personal observation and guess, with no scientific data to back that up). Games like Nancy Drew may start at $19.99 but drop to 6.99 pretty quickly. Torchlight held it's price point for a long time, then dropped to $14.99 for quite a while.

Games like Torchlight also tend to have a very long 'tail'. Look at Diablo 2 - The "Battle Chest" is still sitting on store shelves, which means it's still selling new units every month.