DRM is bad and hurts sales. Requiring an Internet connection is just a fancy form of DRM and wont do a thing to prevent piracy. It's very easy, for instance, to spoof your game into "authenticating" with an invalid server or to simply circumvent the authentication functionality by hex editing the address of the function responsible into a dll injected "always return correct value" function. There are a multitude of ways, I imagine, to generate a pirate copy that could bypass any practical form of DRM. All it takes is one savvy software pirate to create and distribute a torrent for a modified version, and all your DRM is for naught.

Also, torrents increase sales (actually, any free access to intellectual property does). The more people that play your game - pirated or otherwise - the more word of mouth advertisement you get for the game and the more sales you eventually gain. Also, the more restrictive your DRM is, the more likely a client will say "I'd rather play a copy that doesn't require all these hoops" and go for the pirated/hex edited version. It's ultimately pointless to include DRM and no game has ever successfully prevented pirates for any significant period of time. Why waste the effort with something that does not and will never help your profit margin?

I don't think it is bad to see your game in a torret site. I'm even planning to upload my game into some trackers when it is ready. It is free advertising + you can also read the comments under the torrent and get fast feedback. If the user like the game he will buy it, even if he can access it for free. However, he will not buy for sure it if he don't think it will be fun\experienced it first hand.

I'd prefer people play my pirated game rather than any AAA title they buy.

At some point they might support me and in any case i gain reputation.

Make open source games. Ask people to pay what its worth if they like. Pirates torrent it?
Word of moth advertising! Thanks pirates!

Nobody would try to hack a program with a pure text editor though... that's just insane.

Why do people people climb mount everest? Because its there. I see some hipster reading your post and starting a club to hack games with regular notepad. Because they can.

I don't see many people pitching this idea, so I figured I will chime in. The problem with DRM is obviously, as everyone pointed out, it fails to stop the hackers in the long run, and inconvinances your paying customers. This, obviously, in and of itself is not a good thing. But that does not mean do not protect against pirates. I'll admit to having pirated a few games in my life. I will also admit to shoveling out the $60 to purchase diablo 3 when it just came out. The reason for that was because of how difficult and degrading to the experience it would take to do other wise. Was it worth it, ABSOLUTELY NOT, but their anti-piracy measures worked for me. (However, I would contest most pirates are NEETs, and your never going to get a sale out of them anyways). But what if you looked at this from another angle, using what we know about the multi-player markets. Instead of requiring your players to go through intensive procedures to play the game, offer your paying many small (perhaps weekly) updates. New level, new dungeon, bug fixes, new quests, etc. In many cases content that could (if the game was built in that direction) pushed out very quickly. But _NO_ DRM required to play. An account would be required to get the update, and have the updates specifically keyed to their computer.

Now of course, the hackers will eventually patch the add-on content as well, but it would be behind that of your paying customers. These customers wont HAVE to get the update, but odds are if they have access to an internet connection they are going to want to. The pirates, though they will still pirate, will be behind in the updates. will have to constantly patch and repatch, and eventually the convinance of your distribution method may even convince those pirates that CAN afford your game, to do so, in order to stay up with the free content.

Instead of requiring your players to go through intensive procedures to play the game, offer your paying many small (perhaps weekly) updates. New level, new dungeon, bug fixes, new quests, etc. In many cases content that could (if the game was built in that direction) pushed out very quickly. But _NO_ DRM required to play. An account would be required to get the update, and have the updates specifically keyed to their computer.

Now of course, the hackers will eventually patch the add-on content as well, but it would be behind that of your paying customers. These customers wont HAVE to get the update, but odds are if they have access to an internet connection they are going to want to. The pirates, though they will still pirate, will be behind in the updates. will have to constantly patch and repatch, and eventually the convinance of your distribution method may even convince those pirates that CAN afford your game, to do so, in order to stay up with the free content.

Fancy that, reward your paying customers with DLC.

Make open source games. Ask people to pay what its worth if they like. Pirates torrent it?
Word of moth advertising! Thanks pirates!

These two do not sound mutually exclusive to me, and it also sounds like you could tie this into Kickstarter, or something like it.

Can this idea with internet connection and checkpoints somehow be made to prevent people torrenting your complete singleplayer games?

Ubisoft was way ahead of you on that one. What it got them was an increase in piracy I think: who in their right mind would want to play a game that requires an internet connection for singleplayer if they could have the same game for free and without any requirement for the internet connection?

By the way, this idea recently occured to me: if you're able to package your game for digital download on the fly, you could put watermarked art in your packages, which would in turn make every copy of your game unique and make sharing it on torrent sites that much harder (because the person sharing would be easy to identify, and sue for damages).

By the way, this idea recently occured to me: if you're able to package your game for digital download on the fly, you could put watermarked art in your packages, which would in turn make every copy of your game unique and make sharing it on torrent sites that much harder (because the person sharing would be easy to identify, and sue for damages).

And what is the end game for this strategy? Sue every pirated copy? Crackers usually make purchases (for cracking purposes) using stolen credit cards so all that will happen is the pirated copies will have the same watermark. That pretty much puts you back to square one.