Anti-piracy poll

Hey guys, just wanted to run something by you all to see what you think.

First of all, thank you so much to those of you that support me financially by paying for the game when it first releases. I appreciate it so much and you guys are the main reason this game can be made.

So as many of you know, my game always gets leaked by one of my patrons at some point after release. And unfortunately, the last two updates were leaked on the second day after the first release. Because of this, I lose a lot of money which is very discouraging. I spend over a hundred hours per month working on this game and I sacrifice all my hobbies and even time with my family, so to make it worth my time I need to make a bit of extra money to help pay for all the 3D assets, music licenses, software subscriptions, etc. This stuff isn't cheap, and after all that I still need to set aside a ton of money for income tax which is like 25% of everything I make, plus Patreon takes their 10% and then there's payment processing fees, and currency exchange fees. So you can imagine how frustrating it is to see the game leaked less than 24 hours after release.

So, what I was wondering is what you guys think of this.

I release a web based version of the new updates on itch.io that would play in any web browser that supports html5, which is pretty much everything out there as far as I know. This would only be the latest chapter and previous saves will work. You would just need to import the save into the game which although easy, would require finding the files and using the import feature from the main screen of the web version. I've tested this and it works just fine, but it is an extra step. I would include full instructions for how to do this and it's very simple. So the way it would stop piracy, is that the game files would be stored on the itch.io servers and the game would basically be streamed through the web browser. Like I said, I've tested it and it works fine and looks and sounds exactly the same, although I haven't tried it on a computer or device with slow internet. Access to the game would be with a key system. Basically all you would have to do is click the link in the patreon post when a new update is released, itch.io checks to see if you are a patron of the required tier and lets you play it and it gets linked to your itch.io account. The keys are one time use for each itch.io account, so if someone posts the link on a forum and someone tries to use it, it will ask for them to log into itch.io and then it will tell them they are not a patron or not a patron of the required tier. Then after the new release runs its course I would release the full version with all the chapters in one big download as usual. The reason I can't put all of it in a web based version is that there is a 1gb game size limit and currently the latest version is almost 3gb. So that's basically it. I'm currently testing this with the Halloween update. If any of you would like to help out by testing this, just send me a message.

So just to be clear, I have not decided to do this yet and I'm just curious about if it might be a solution. This would only be for the first three weeks, and then it's all back to how it has been.

So please vote and let your voice be heard and comment how you really feel about this as I know this will be a divisive poll.

Thanks for your help.

Bobby