[patrickyeon]

I have not heard of a single protection scheme that could not be broken. Not from the laziest homebrew 'protection' to the schemes used to protect 5- or 6-digit sale price engineering software, passign through every game in between.

If you plan on implementing a protection scheme, here's what I would want you to do. Think of the best and worst things it could do to these two classes of people: legitimate customers and pirates.

Pirates. Worst [for you] case: it inconveniences them for an hour. Best case: it inconveniences them up until two weeks after your release [two weeks is the usual goal for a game, Spyro was legendary in a way, and lasted two months http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3030/keeping_the_pirat... ]

Customers. Best case: it inconveniences them for five seconds. Worst case: Depends on your scheme. Make it one where worst case is a one-day support e-mail away. Not where they lose all their files, are left cursing your name and treated like trash because they just wanted to move to a new computer.

[patio11]

There are more than two types of people though. Back when I wrote about the subject I came up with four shade, though there might be more.

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2006/09/05/everything-you-need-to-k...

To misquote a Chris Rock line, there exist at least some people who are as honest as their options.

I love online software over downloadable software for many reasons. One is it makes piracy virtually impossible. Another is that the conversion rates are much higher. Those might be totally unrelated, but hey, accounts in my DB means I don't even have to care. (Gamers are voting for this future with their wallets.)

[robryan]

Games are slightly different, for example with WoW there are plenty of people playing for free on private servers people have setup, you don't see this at all with SaaS apps. Although if your game is an MMO and popular enough the network effects mean the vast majority of players are going to want to be on the legit servers.