How to prevent people from leaking a paid addon?
I am interested in creating an addon for the gmodstore marketplace but I am concerned it will be leaked online and it will hurt sales. Is there any way I can prevent this or make it more difficult?
drm combined with code obfuscation
what drm can be used with glua
the one you code for it
what link it up to a server
I'm confused on what you mean by "what link it up to a server". Like joe said you would have to code your own DRM that works for your addons. You should do some research on code obfuscation, this makes the code hard to understand for humans. If you're looking for a place to get started, I know billy has an old drm on his github (https://github.com/WilliamVenner/moondrm), as far as I know it's public so you're ok to look at it for ideas, just don't copy and paste it because it doesn't work.
Some have found that leaks don't detriment sales as much as they provide free advertisement. However, there are definitely cases where leaks take away from an addon's income, notably smaller addons that don't benefit as much from advertisement as a medium-sized addon would. This being said, I wouldn't let leaks be the sole reason you don't list something here. Additionally, on almost all download sites, you can often get their leak download taken down within a reasonable amount of time (through DMCA requests)--even if the download isn't hosted in the US, the US has a lot of copyright international agreements that make a DMCA effective even against EU countries and other countries with these agreements. *Don't take this as any sort of official legal advice
As others have also stated, you can opt to use a digital rights management system (DRM). Essentially, this system would limit who has access in a way that prevents leaks. You will likely have to write your own DRM system with your own ideas for preventing cracking and so forth. There are some more obviously known methods I'm sure you can think of (code obfuscation, bytecode VM, etc.) and I recommend going for an unobtrusive system as having an obtrusive system can deter customers.
thanks a lot for the detailed response very usefull
I think you need add "Logger" its super little and simple. But you can found a guy, and ban him GS account if he - USE or LEAKING your addon!
The most popular its DRM System, but its harder