Protection on Tutorial Game?

[GhostRik]

I'm working on a tutorial game. If all goes according to plans, there will be a demo version and a separate full version to be downloaded after purchase. I'm wondering how much, if any, protection to put on it. Is that overkill for a limited-appeal niche product? Armadillo is out because I'm writing it in Game Maker but if I wrote a registration system into it (there's a demo available from a GM user) would that be better than nothing (probably easily crackable if anyone cared to do it), or should I go with nothing?

[KNau]

You will probably be better off to just release a limited version demo and have the full version of your game as a seperate download. Password schemes are always the first to get warezed.

[Pallav Nawani]

I am thinking about this, too.
I am about to release my game, RiotBall. My previous game was released on a Download Demo, buy, download full version model. What I wonder is, will the sales of the game be higher if the user downloaded the game, liked it, registered it, entered the key and you have a full version?

Which method will have a better chance of making a sale?

Pallav

[stan]

This has been discussed to death and from what I have read, different developpers experimented "failures" and successes with both methods. Just look at dexterity games : separate full version. And PopCap : keycode.

I personnally lost a lot of time thinking about this, too. As a developper who has troubles getting anyone to try/buy his game, my advice is to pick whatever is the easiest for you to develop and don't worry at all about piracy. At least for your first game... There are so many other more important things to be taken care of!