Is it wise to share a beta program?
I read about how people can test the beta of a game online. But can people not "pirate" it by having access to it?
Also, if people play the game as a beta, why would they want to buy the finished game, since they know what it is like?
going to give my point as more of a beta tester, not a dev.
1. if you can't answer the question: why am I doing a beta? NO.
Else, well you know why
2. It's as safe as releasing a game^^. AAA with top notch protection get pirated, so there is no absolute protection against that (except never releasing your game
)
3. For me, demo and beta tends to kill my willingness to buy. (exception if your product is damn good and lot of replayability/or I find a regular usage for it)
Yeh, be wise enough to not put "the full game" in the beta if it's possible.
It depend a lot of the genra. I mean for a F2P with IAP, beta is just fine. For a Visual Novel, from my perspective thing are not going to end well (I mean with a buy).
But don't forget that having a limited number of beta players that get enough through the beta and don't buy, isnt much of a loss. It can still really worth it if it helps polish and get a quality game/app that many more players/users are going to buy.
Alternate way is to get some way to have paying beta (like kickstarter campaign).(*)
One of my last beta test install for
http://nevercenter.com/pixelmash/
honestly beta 2 and 3 were deciving for me; tool's interesting and has much potential, but lack of feature to make it usable standalone AS IS. next beta 4 with the new dynamic layer transform is exciting, (and there are also other feature in the pipeline that are coming that are also exciting).
p.s.
(*) honestly on 3 items I've backed on KS, they are all over due date. I dunno if it tells how unreliable they are... or overconfident they where with their time prediction. Perhaps more how betas and taking into account feedback of beta testers can lead to additionnal time required to refactor feature/polish, etc...