Managing free updates (BMT)

[Applewood]

We're considering making a concerted effort to sell a PC version of our upcoming Great Little War Game sequel.

On all other formats everything is automated, but if I'm just selling downloads from our own website, what's the best way to handle free updates for patches and bug fixes etc?

I plan on using BMT micro unless there's an obvious better choice to handle this side of things.

Any suggestions please?

[Dingo Games]

Are you doing separate demo/full version, or unlockable demo?

We do separate demo and full version through BMT. My only suggestion when doing it this way is to use the "Never Expires" password option. This will allow players to download the latest version using their original purchase receipt. (BMT has some anti-piracy measures in place so if a customer posted the download link publicly the link link would be invalidated after too many downloads)

As far as notifying customers of updates - we just post it in our forums for the more hardcore players who would be interested in that.

[Applewood]

That sounds like a cunning plan. Definitely going the separate demo/full route so we're good with that.

Thanks!

[CasualInsider]

Above is what we do as well and it has worked great for years.

[zoombapup]

How about shipping using an auto-updater? http://www.autoupdateplus.com/ has one that looks like it might be ok. I'm planning on trying it out with my game once I get to a workable state. But then I'm aiming for something that is "perpetually beta".

[Applewood]

"The only application update tool that reliably runs on Windows Vista, an operating system that will soon be standard."

Hmmmm.

[lennard]

Paul, I thought you said you had an HTML version of the game?

[Applewood]

Not quite. The original game has a chrome version which I think was done in javascript. (It was done out of house and I didn't manage it).

onan games did that for us and were fast, good and handy to know. So of course some greedy bastards who didn't need them acquired them to spite the rest of us. Although I'm sure that's not how their press release went!