Help us choose between E-commerce solutions

[nights]

We are about to send out a beta version of our games to various portals and companies. Right now we are looking at DRM solutions, and we are having a hard time choosing between the solutions.

We have found three alternatives which seem promising, but we would like to get some feedback before we make a decision. Since we are only shipping a beta, it would be nice if we could use the system to protect the game without the user actually being able to buy the game. Later on we will of course need to be able to actually sell the game through the solution :-)

The three options are: BMT Micro, Plimus and Armadillo.

[Leon]

The three options are: BMT Micro, Plimus and Armadillo.

I couldn't find Armadillo's website but here are a few thoughts on comparing Plimus and BMT.

First off, money wise(The important one:P).
For products sold between 0-40$ BMT is asking 15%, with a minimum of 1.25.
Plimus asks 10% for 9-50$ with no minimum, 15% for 5-8.99$ and 75 cents for 4.99$ and under.

Plimus allows your product to be available in 18 different currencies, I don't know all of them nor do I see a list of which on the site.
BMT only allows US Dollars, Euros or Great British Pounds.

Probably not a big deal, but it might matter depending on where you get your sales from.

Both will host your full game download, but BMT comes with the little tag, "* Single files over 20MB may be subject to restrictions". No idea what the restrictions are/can be.

Plimus has Coupons, which I think are fairly interesting and could be useful in a marketing campaigns. I don't see that BMT has this feature.

That's all I can think of between the two. There are plenty more people here who have much more experience with them than I do so hopefully they'll chime in. Most importantly, read up on them and then choose which one you feel works best for your situation.

Congrats on sending your beta out and good luck, hope the portals like it. :)

[Vic Davis]

I've only worked with BMT Micro for the last month and a half but they have been outstanding. I just got my first check from them today and it was mailed promptly on Saturday, 1 Sep 07. So they don't mind working the holiday weekends here in the US or they are fantastically automated. Either way the service has been great which is why I picked them.

The file size of my game is 70Mbyte. Haven't had any problems or complaints so far. I asked them about it and they said it shouldn't be an issue and that although they recommend the smaller size they have several clients that sell larger file size products.

Any email contact that I have had with them has been responded to promptly. Never more than a business day. I haven't used anybody elses interface manager but the BMT micro one gets things done and has been very easy to figure out. They also did a great job of making my order page integrate well with my website. In short, based on my experience so far I would recommend them highly.

My pricing for BMT is 9.5% which is their standard plan I believe

[Desktop Gaming]

Armadillo (http://siliconrealms.com/index.shtml)
Not quite sure how Armadillo fits into the comparison alongside BMT and Plimus though since its a product, not a company.

[gwilnai]

Right now we are looking at DRM solutions, and we are having a hard time choosing between the solutions.

Plimus actually has several options for DRM, in order of increasing sophistication:

1) You can supply a batch of license keys to be consumed one per order or one per item on an order.

2) You can use Armadillo. This is a wrapper solution, and thus more subject to cracking than 3-5 below.

3) You can supply your own license generator program, to be called by Plimus on each new order (or each item within an order).

4) You can use, at no additional charge, Plimus' own Piracy Protection. This is a server-based license key generation, activation and validation mechanism. It offers very tight protection, and requires you to embed some basic web calls in your game code for activation and validation.

5) For a small fee (3% after the first $50K/year in product revenues, which is fee-free), you can use the new Plimloc (a Plimus and Uniloc solution). This solution incorporates Plimus' fraud protection along with Uniloc's software protection and code protection. Uniloc is the seminal patent holder in device fingerprinting, with a "tolerance" feature that can recognize a previously activated computer even when multiple components (e.g., video card, NIC, hard drive, sound card, etc.) have been swapped out. In addition, Uniloc provides a strong code protection mechanism that can prevent undesired cracking or reverse engineering of your game. This solution is fully hosted by Plimus. You can read more about this solution at http://www.plimus.com/marketing/Plimloc/.

Best regards,
Guy Wilnai
Senior VP, Worldwide Sales & Marketing
Plimus, Inc.