Work continues on my new game, which I hope to release later this year. But I've got a problem, now that I've finally decided to charge a license fee for it. What's the best and most secure way to do this? I plan for the thing to be distributed the same way UBB is... that is, pay a license fee, get members area access, and download as often as necessary until the members area access expires. But I assume that Groupee is probably using something they developed in-house to manage their members area subscriptions. So I'm wondering if anyone around here has any experience with any similar products.

I've been looking through Hotscripts, but almost all the Paypal IPN interfaces for "digital goods" tend to revolve around immediate downloads via time-limited or single-use download links sent through email, and don't really seem to support the concept of a members area. There are a couple members area type scripts there, but they don't have any reviews and their websites look a little spooky so I'm not really sure whether I should trust them or not. And I thought about using Digital River, but there's no mention of how much that service costs anywhere on their website - they want you to fill out a form requesting a callback from one of their "friendly sales associates" - which probably means I can't afford it.

So yeah. I don't suppose there's any chance someone here has any experience with this type of thing? Or perhaps could point me to some other site that's more suited for this kind of question. Thanks in advance.

---Jamin

Have you looked at RegSoft.com? I've seen them for a couple of products.

You could also grow something using PayPal and their API's. I've played a little bit with PayPal's API's for a class project.

I was screwing around with some code a while back and started writing a subscription like service that authenticated against my UBB. Essentially in your customer record, you would need to have some sort of expire date, and if someone renews, you go in and initiate a 1 year extension for the order. I'm guessing that's how Groupee does the member's area.

In my testing stuff, I had a db record that referenced the UBB's User Number and tied their subscription record to that. I never rolled this into my production site because the project died.

I know you are a skilled PHP coder, and it would take you no time to cook up a Member's Area

hmm... does seem like an added profile field (classic or threads) could be used to allow/disallow access to a private forum wherein a "members area" could be stashed With threads they could be given access to a member's group with access to the area.

With threads an attachment wouldn't have a directly linkable link, tho I'm sure some experienced people could figure it out

www.oscommerce.com may be another option

I use a software called "AWBS" (Advanced Web Billing System) for our registries and hosting bills that we use for customers; it has a built in licensing system and only costs lke $120...

www.awbs.com

Thanks for the suggestions, y'all. I'd thought about the Threads profile field or the User Group access and attached files, but it would still involve manual intervention to process the Paypal orders, which is what I was trying to get away from. (Not like I plan on this thing having more than like 5 orders a month, but still... I'm really lazy! ) It may work in a pinch, though.

Allen, my host has a one-click install for oscommerce, but I haven't gotten around to trying it out yet. Just looking at its website, it looks fairly complicated. But it's probably going to be the first thing I really try to make work, since I won't have to buy anything extra.

Gizzy, that looked to me like it was more for hosting and domain registration, but it definitely has a better-looking website than any of the stuff I found on Hotscripts, so I'll keep digging and see if it can do other stuff besides that.

---Jamin

Well, it IS marketed as a webhosting/domain registration solution; in fact, you get a free $7.95 enom account with it; however it is easily adapted for much much more (including the built in licensing system).