How to protect your plugin or app from piracy, step by step

Protecting your software from piracy involves a series of steps to make sharing inconvenient, traceable and more expensive than purchasing. The plan begins by deciding what you are fighting against - often, a single buyer sharing their copy with friends or reposting a jar on a leak site. The first step is to give each buyer their own key automatically, usually through integration with popular payment platforms.

This allows for tracking who is using what, and disabling a single copy when needed. The second step is to limit where a key can run, such as by setting a cap on the number of servers or machines a key can be used on.

The third step involves checking the license at startup and periodically throughout the app's operation, stopping only on clear 'no' indications like a revoked or expired key. To prevent customers from modifying this check, it's recommended to make the process hard to delete. This can be achieved by core unlocking - encrypting essential code that is only decrypted after a valid license check. Tamper reports can also be used to detect modifications.

Obfuscating your release builds is the next step. This involves renaming classes and methods, encrypting strings, and scrambling control flow, making it harder for anyone to find and patch the checks. Watermarking every download with a buyer's information deters sharing, as the copied file will show the original buyer's identity.

Regularly monitoring for sharing instances and responding swiftly when something leaks is also important. Finally, making the purchasing process as easy and rewarding as possible - with fair pricing, fast updates, real support, and a vibrant community - is the best anti-piracy measure.