When my game is done, it will have a free version and a paid version with some extra little stuff in it. Mainly, it will be a way to support us if you liked the game, but getting some extra things is cool too.

I've been struggling with how I should implement this, though.

Should I have an entirely different version of the game for the gold edition? That would mean trying to keep two versions updated.

Should I have only the added data be available as DLC? That could get confusing to maintain eventually, because I hope to add more stuff at some point.

Well, I just thought of the easiest solution, finally. I think I will have all of the gold edition data exist in the free version of the game, but locked behind one file that will add a toggle to the option menu to enable the gold content.

This file shouldn't ever need to be updated, since it is just a toggle, so I can simply keep the game updated across both versions in one package, with the only difference being the existence of this file.

The potential problems this could lead to are:

1) somebody not finding out that they have the enable the content. I'll see if I can enable it by default if the file exists but, if not, at least it will only be a simple support question. You would think that, eventually, a player would open up the options menu and that's the first thing they'll see if they have the gold edition DLC downloaded.

2) a slightly larger file size for free players. Since the game will have all of the data for both versions in it, the only difference being that toggle file, the free version will have "useless" files in it for free players. This isn't a huge concern, however, because as it stands the game is under 300mb. I think the file size is small enough that it shouldn't be an issue. The majority of the additional content's data will be a retro soundtrack, which takes up around 60mb iirc. As long as you can fit the game on a CD, I'm not particularly worried.

3) easier piracy of the gold edition. Since the data already exists in the game, all someone needs to get access to it is this one file. If anyone knew what file it was, they could simply copy it and share it to anyone else and voila, free gold content. This is a faux issue, though, because the game itself will not have any form of DRM and back when I was going to have only a paid version I even considered hosting a pirated torrent of it myself. If people want to get things for free, then they'll get things for free, simple as. The paid edition only exists to let people support us, and it's totally optional, so I don't mind if anyone hijacks the toggle file or whatever. This would still be a problem even with the other two proposed solutions, because rpg maker decryption software is readily available. Someone could just as easily take the gold edition data and add it all to a free version of the game, so I think it is better to take the easiest route as a developer.