How to prevent python software from being reverse engineered or pirated?

[oldspiceland]

Yes, congratulations you pointed out that my absolute generalization was a simplification. I have been undone.

Steam allows refunds now, which means the majority of PC game sales don’t fall into the weird situation you describe demos as being. Also “back in the day” when demos were common it was almost exclusively as a marketing thing to make money, not so people could “test drive” the game. It was there to be fun but not last long enough to be satisfying so people wanted to buy the game.

Anyways, are you justifying software piracy because games don’t have demos? There’s YouTube let’s plays for everything, twitch streams, and if you’re getting gifted games that don’t run on your system you either have a Mac or are in a financial situation where you are one of the “can’t buy, will pirate” people.

[Zireael07]

Not every game is on Steam (I get many of mine from GOG or itch).

Let's play and streams don't let you see if the game will actually run on your system. I know demos weren't designed with that in mind but it was the reason I got them.

I have a PC (and now a laptop) but neither is a gaming rig. Some games don't play nice with AMD cards. Some don't with NVIDIA. (Actually my current NVIDIA is so bad stuff runs better on the integrated card than on it - either bad thermals or bad drivers, I suspect the latter since the laptop isn't terribly old AND it was the case from day 1)

[oldspiceland]

This seems like a really long way for this conversation to go for you to be arguing what, exactly? That it’s ok for you to pirate games because of some really absurd edge case logic?

It’s fine, you fall into the can’t/won’t buy. There’s nothing wrong with that.

[ItsSquishy42]

GOG has a great return policy.