12 minutes ago, swiftcoder said:

You should be able to make obfuscator-llvm work with Rust (since the Rust compiler is LLVM-based). Never personally used it, however.

I'm going to... Mmm, on GitHub there is no source code there for it.

7 minutes ago, Rutin said:

If you click on the drop down under branch you will get:

https://github.com/obfuscator-llvm/obfuscator/tree/llvm-4.0

Rustc upgraded to LLVM 6 now. I don't know of that would work?

On 4/4/2018 at 3:55 PM, Rutin said:

The latest one I could find was for 5.0

https://github.com/Qrilee/llvm-obfuscator

I past'd in /r/rust/ on reddit. It does on release builds.  Thank you for the help.

@Kylotan  see https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/10/denuvos-drm-ins-now-being-cracked-within-hours-of-release/

So..

It's to be expected. But while it was working, it helped developers. So the struggle will continue.

My take on the whole thing.. There are basically multiple classes of DRMs. Some examples below.

• Always-online, like Diablo 3 or MMOs
• Try-hard, like Denuvo
• Honest-people-honest, like Steam
• DRM free

Forcing an internet connection and doing significant enough work on the server side is probably always going to be the most efficient method, but it may deter some sales in regions with poor connectivity. Keeping servers up can be expensive and a long-term commitment, and failing to keep them up may seriously hurt your reputation and long-term profits. Try-hard solutions can probably greatly increase your sales for very hyped titles, like many AAA titles. It will also very effectively keep some people, myself included, from ever trying your game. It'll make a lot of people angry and may give you some bad press, but you'll probably come out on top from a purely financial perspective, assuming there's a big enough hype surrounding your launch. If not, it'll probably do more harm than good (personal speculation).

Steam is mostly accepted as a platform these days, and while mostly ineffective as a DRM, it's convenient enough that a large number of players will simply buy instead of bothering with piracy if they find the price point reasonable. The DRM does not really prevent anyone from intentionally pirating your game, but may prevent some of the more "lazy" pirating ("oh, you didn't buy it yet? Umm, well, here, take the installer so we can play right away and you can buy it later" and forget about it once it's installed). For me, the convenience of steam is basically a requirement, to the point where I'm not buying games that are not on steam (looking at you, StarCraft 2).

DRM free is probably a bit tricky, if nothing else for that "lazy piracy" thing. Most seem to make it by being small-ish studios with rather low costs on development, and publicly talking about how they are small and how each purchase makes a difference etc. Many people buy these games as much to support a developer and idea they like as to get access to the actual product. I usually buy all the humble bundles (unless they are Uplay only) for this reason, even though I rarely play any of the games in them.

Then there are games like Minecraft, which is supposedly DRM free, but that has paid accounts that are effectively required for online play. 

As you may have guessed, I'd recommend going with Steam if you want to sell your small-ish game with an upfront cost.