That’s when concepts of Freemium games and Season Passes came into play. Not all game genres could or would keep up with a steady stream of content updates, but other styles of games also wanted to be able to cash in on this regular income stream. But we gave it a try and many were pleasantly surprised. This was initially met with MUCH resistance, because it was new and there was not yet an established trust that the content and access would be worth it. Every year or so, an expansion would be released which would change the game and require a purchase of the expansion to access the new content, while also continuing monthly payments. With a steady stream of content and a reasonable monthly fee, this was accepted and has proven to be a good business model in this area. Many popular Massive Multiplayer Online Games would require one to purchase the game itself and then pay a monthly subscription to maintain access and keep the game up to date. With software keys, you’d buy the software, install it, enter your software key and you were good to go.įast forward to today and we are seeing more and more software and games providing a pay-as-you-go lease option. PC Games would typically have some copy protection built in to make it difficult to duplicate the media before they moved into using software keys. One would have to blow on the dirty connections or run a pencil eraser over them every now and then to keep the game working, but that was the biggest concern. Cartridge based systems were a no brainer basically, the software and the protection were built into a nice convenient casing with a proprietary console. And at least when they are, they are much smaller and usually in the form of a USB device.Īnother method used was a software key, entered when the software is installed to unlock its functionality, and stored somewhere in the event you needed to reinstall later.īeing a long time gamer, another form of software I am quite familiar with is video games. Luckily, large hardware dongles are not used as often these days. It was not uncommon to find many PCs pushed out from their comfy location by a horizontal tower of multiple dongles uncomfortably sticking out the back, sometimes requiring a little makeshift scaffolding just to hold it in place.
Before USB, dongles were plugged into the Parallel port along with the printer. I am sure a few of us can remember the days when most professional PCB software came attached with a Hardware Dongle, which was plugged into a port on the back of our PC. In the realm of professional PCB and EDA software, I have seen various methods used to charge for software while also attempting to protect the valuable IP from being stolen and used for free.
Each with advantages and drawbacks, and in some cases there is no choice of how one purchases their software. Over the years, software licensing has gone through many iterations.
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