I don't want to name names, but recently there have been several counts of people from both this forum and other forums stealing our games and claiming them as their own.
This happened again recently in the DarkBasic Pro forum, so you can go there and check it out yourself if you want to.
Anyways, I can't stress it enough to make sure you put in your copyright information not just in the media, but contained in the game executable, in *several* places. Many people, if they try hard enough, can hack it with a hex editor, but it takes some work. Also I would recommend putting some kind of hidden easter egg in the game, where you do a certain thing, like a cheat code, and another copyright message will come up. This will further add protection to your games.
One way to keep people from hex editing your executable would be to put some junk characters in your name. For example, in the hidden easter egg, you can have some fun with the lettering:
C-o-p-y-r-i-g-h-t J@k3 J3nS3n, 2004
Many people may not know what that means, but if you know, "Copyright Jake Jensen, 2004" then it becomes clear. The way hex editors work is you can search for a certain string using some sort of find feature. Many times the executable is too large to manually look for certain strings, so people using a simple find won't find your hidden code.
Just something I thought I should make aware. If anyone has any other ideas to further protect your executable, let's hear them!
Good day
