OK, so I want to send a beta version of my game to a bunch of people, and I'm moving beyond the 'friends and family' stage to a moderately large group, so I'd like to protect this beta in some way. I own a pro copy of SoftwarePassport and have accounts setup with Plimus and BMT. I also want to make it relatively painless for the beta testers. Obviously, I don't want to make them pay anything or submit credit card info. Should I set it up as a product in Plimus, and then send each tester a one-off coupon for a free copy (is this possible?). If I do that, will they still need to submit credit card info? I guess I could just generate a standard version with a single key, but set up to time out on a specific date - maybe 2 weeks hence or so. What do you guys do?
I did an expiration timer in Land of Legends beta, and that worked well. If the expiration date had passed, they were directed to download the newest version. I had no user complaints, and very little out-of-date feedback. This is easily the cheapest low-hanging-fruit solution, and it's pretty effective. The big-hammer approach I want to use in the future is to have a little login box when the player launches the beta. They enter their account info, and there's some internet validation w/ the central server. (You can use sockets, web services, http requests, or any other easy technology). If the user account is valid, the game launches. It also does a version check and requires that they're using the newest version. This is drawn from what another big casual games company does now, but I think it's the just natural evolution of keeping things tight and controlled. -Hiro_Antagoinst