I have noticed several games such as the Talos Principle doing this in the last few years and was wondering exactly how they check to see if the game is pirated or not, if it requires web hosting or anything like that we are more than covered, I am looking to create a relatively concrete way of checking this and releasing a free online service for this if all goes well.
Some games do the phone home style - using their key and check if two copies with the same key are running at the same time by pinging a webservice. This can annoy users though as they need to be online all the time. Maybe doing it ever so often is ok.
Other games require (Diablo - I am looking at you) online access and server authentication, even for single player games. Often making the game worse by adding lag to single player game (Diablo - I am still looking at you).
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Pretty sure most of those games that have “caught” people (like an elevator on level 11 doesn’t work) release their own crippled version of the game to the torrent sites as a honey trap when they come knocking on the owner’s forum for tech support.
The best example of what GroZZleR said was Game Dev Tycoon:
They literally make it so that if you pirate the game, your games get pirated in return 
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Yeah, this is a tough question, its similiar to “question to life” 
There is no single universal answer, but you can think about different aspects of this subject : 1) Releasing quality games, so people would less think about pirating game to try it, if it even runs (big problem will all top game companies); 2) Quote from batman : “you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain” - its means anti piracy system can do its job, but do not go too far and dont make life hard for legal users with “999 steps user check” and remember, that pirates will remove all stupid antipiracy systems, and in the end you will be only hurting yourself and legal users - just like movies in discs - you buy one, and you fell asleep watching warnings about piracy and ads. 3) For now, put all focus on making a great game, and in the end, if you will be able to say “ubinoobs can blow it”, then you will figure it out easily how to make a simple license check. 4) If game is online, then checking license online time from time is ok, but if game is offline, then i curse developers, which makes online license checks, please increase your programming skills. 5) As i said, this is a hard question, but if you are a small indie developer, you shouldnt worry about this stuff, just make a great game and there will be enough people buying it.
I completely agree with all of this, and appreciate the time you have taken writing all this, and you objectiveness towards it.
We are a small company but have been burned in the past by individuals using our products without licenses, and this time I want to make sure this happens as little as possible.
As you have said, this is not something I should be worrying about for the moment, but I was just wondering how this would be done.
When talking about checking licenses, how would this be done for copies not running on digital distribution platforms such as Steam, but copies bought from our website? Would we need to provide a key on purchase and compare that against something typed in on the first startup or something?
waste of time and effort. work on anti-piracy when you have a game worth pirating.
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To build on the post from @JamesLeeNZ , when you have a game worth pirating, I’d consider asking the community pirating your game about what drives them to pirate it.
I’m serious.
Sure, some of them have never honestly obtained a thing in their lives, and won’t start with yours, but you’d be surprised how many people would legitimately buy your thing, if something else would change. Most often, this is, “I can’t legitimately obtain your product in my country”, but other reasons exist.
Piracy, when it’s not an expression of general douchebaggery or fundamentally flawed personal ethics, is a reaction to a business model. To combat piracy, change the business model to make it more accessible, and pirates will have far fewer legs to stand on.
best way to stop it is F2P. /sigh
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The point is, there is no perfect antipiracy system - offline games gets hacked almost the same day as released, mmo games gets hacked later with pirated servers.
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yep i agree you should ONLY invest time in making anti paricy feautures if you have somthing like a massive open world survival game thats worth pirating!
You just necroed an 8 year old thread. Please look at the dates of posts before posting.
Thanks.