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Make a limited free trial version


Ahmet Burçak

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I recommend you to make a free limited version of this game. I mean a free demo version.

So people could test the game and be sure to buy it.

Or people who can't afford could like it.

That version will be limited, people will see that they should buy the game to get the real fun from it.

You may make it similar to old minecraft demos.

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Demos are a problem for games in development. Unless you soak a lot of time and energy into the demo, it isn't current, so isn't a good demo anyway. But to put that kind of effort into the demo is taking time away from development. There are lots of streams that showcase the features, which is a demo of sorts; just not a playable one.

For those who want to try it out, I don't know of anyone who has requested a refund who did not get it. You are only out the cash for however long it takes you to decide.

If the problem is money, my lawn needs mowing and I could use the firewood stacked in my drying shed. There are likely people like me around no matter where you live.

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On 7/19/2022 at 4:42 PM, Thorfinn said:

Unless you soak a lot of time and energy into the demo, it isn't current

I disagree entirely, the original Minecraft demos were just you spawned randomly with a chest full of wooden tools or random items but the game loop was so good that it was enough to pull me in and probably millions of other people, a simple time limited world, optional chest with tools and a hand picked seed would be enough.

The only question to me is when is a good time to introduce an updated demo? If I was Anego Studios it would be before or after a big update to stir interest in the game. The old demo is just too outdated and unappealing to be acceptable from a PR point of view. It really doesn't have to be a time sink for the devs, like i said, A time-limited seeded world with a chest of optional tools would be sufficient.

On 7/19/2022 at 4:42 PM, Thorfinn said:

There are lots of streams that showcase the features, which is a demo of sorts; just not a playable one.

Watching something and playing is completely different, to build yourself a starter home, make your first spear and kill your first wolf is far more satisfying than watching someone else do it.

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It could work like trial license on game account.

You create a game account and you can activate your one-time trial license. After that you could login to this account and play the game for e.g. 2 weeks.

If you like the game, you could buy the game and the account would stay active after the trial period.

If you don't buy the game, the account would be locked and after some time entirely deleted.

You don't have to make any changes to the game itself and you don't need any extra demo package.

Edited by daretmavi
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4 hours ago, daretmavi said:

It could work like trial license on game account.

You create a game account and you can activate your one-time trial license. After that you could login to this account and play the game for e.g. 2 weeks.

If you like the game, you could buy the game and the account would stay active after the trial period.

If you don't buy the game, the account would be locked and after some time entirely deleted.

You don't have to make any changes to the game itself and you don't need any extra demo package.

That would open up a completely different can of DRM worms... Those timed trial software practices have widely gone away because of the issues coming with them. More often than not they had to be bundled with limited capabilities and developed aside the original to effectively work the way it was intended.

VS does not need a constant internet connection, the game does cache the successful login and that way is convenient for people to use even offline, one way to make sure it won't be used longer than the trial period would be: make the user log in at each start of the game, requiring a internet connection to start it at each start, might be only mildly inconvenient for most playing at home, but it still would be some inconvenience to players who bought the game. Additionally something similar is used by Steam for games that can be played for free for a limited time, Steam patches the game not working at the startup if you're out of the time frame, but you can just not close the game, et voila you can play indefinitely.

Another way would be some registry key or hidden file telling the game when to stop working or since when it was running or for how long it ran,... But that makes pirating the game really easy, just delete that entry/file or replace it with the one used by the full version, or constantly change the system clock back, et voila you can play indefinitely.

These trial periods are always easily circumvented, which is why software developer quickly began to switch to reduced functionality of trial versions instead, before internet was widely available at most places they just added restrictions to the full version while no correct key was added (and as the software needed to be able to see if the key is correct without internet, one key could be used by several different persons), nowadays they remove those features and the possibility for offline key activation from the trial versions completely and you need to activate the full version over the internet to get the missing parts.

Tbh. nowadays it's easiest for a dev to just not actively prosecute the use of the pirated version of the game (or to make outdated versions free for the public, which many devs do who produce their games through donations on patreon or similar platforms) and not provide any demo / trial version, just restricting support to people with activated game account and/or making sure servers can only accept active game accounts for multiplayer games (crashing the server instance if people with the same license are online on it and enabling a way to ban a specific license from joining would be a way) for example. Usually it is (way too) easy to find a slightly outdated pirated version and fighting the distribution of all the pirated versions is way too costly for the usually little benefit it brings.

Edited by Hal13
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On 7/22/2022 at 10:33 AM, GenocideAgent said:

I disagree entirely, the original Minecraft demos were just you spawned randomly with a chest full of wooden tools or random items but the game loop was so good that it was enough to pull me in and probably millions of other people, a simple time limited world, optional chest with tools and a hand picked seed would be enough.

Those were actually outdated versions additionally to the limited content. Or are you speaking about the time minecraft was still in alpha (now known as inDev)? Because at that point they had no DRM at all and you could just pass along the full version.

 

On 7/22/2022 at 10:33 AM, GenocideAgent said:

The only question to me is when is a good time to introduce an updated demo? If I was Anego Studios it would be before or after a big update to stir interest in the game. The old demo is just too outdated and unappealing to be acceptable from a PR point of view. It really doesn't have to be a time sink for the devs, like i said, A time-limited seeded world with a chest of optional tools would be sufficient.

Devs using patreon or similar usually make versions publically available that are several versions behind, but those games usually get at least one new version every 1-3 months. Hence I think 1-2 versions behind the recent one might work for that purpose, maybe limited to not being able to play on servers.

On 7/22/2022 at 10:33 AM, GenocideAgent said:

Watching something and playing is completely different, to build yourself a starter home, make your first spear and kill your first wolf is far more satisfying than watching someone else do it.

I agree, but those things can be done with significantly outdated versions too. And you can get a refund relatively easy too, hence there is no harm in buying to try.

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18 minutes ago, Hal13 said:

VS does not need a constant internet connection, the game does cache the successful login and that way is convenient for people to use even offline,

I forgot about this.

On the other site, first time you need to login online, or? This is kind of DRM.

And every time you login on another pc, you have to login again (except you are offline).

22 minutes ago, Hal13 said:

These trial periods are always easily circumvented

Yep, you are right.

I don't want to destroy your world, but even now it is not really hard to pirate VS for more people. It has some restriction, but it is possible. I'm not going to write how, because I believe Devs deserve to get fair money for they work.

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1 hour ago, daretmavi said:

On the other site, first time you need to login online, or? This is kind of DRM.

And every time you login on another pc, you have to login again (except you are offline).

Yes, it is a kind of DRM, but it's, at this point, the least invasive kind of DRM, and as you can have a fully portable installation, I'm totally okay with that (even though I usually do prefer no DRM). It does it's job and it doesn't inconvenient any players who bought the license.

1 hour ago, daretmavi said:

I don't want to destroy your world

I assure you: You won't... I'd bet to find at least one pirated software copy in about any home with a pc. Tbh without a pirated copy I may not have bought a VS account, I mean maybe if I'd stumbled across the game after getting locked out of MC because I won't migrate.

And just to be clear, I would never distribute pirated software (outside of it being a private copy or offsite backup at most), though I'd do use it to determine how much I'd be willing to pay for the software, though in some cases that might be nothing for the state it is in or the use cases I have for it.

Edited by Hal13
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What's the possibility of creating a world that has a seed hard-coded and iron generation removed as a demo world? This would make a demo that gives pretty much all of the current game mechanics (short of steel) but limits game play to encourage purchase of the game.

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