Anti-Piracy Placeholders

Download protection lets you hide invisible, per-user placeholders inside your product files. Each time someone downloads your product, free or paid, PixelEast quietly swaps those placeholders for values that are unique to that account. If your product later turns up somewhere it should not, you can take the leaked file, read the hidden values, and trace it back to the exact account that downloaded it.

What are placeholders

A placeholder is a short piece of text such as %%__NONCE__%% that you write into your own files. Your master file is never changed while it sits on our servers. Only at the moment someone downloads the product does PixelEast build them a personal copy and replace every placeholder with a value tied to their account and that download.

Because every account receives a slightly different copy, a leaked file carries a hidden fingerprint that points back to whoever downloaded it.

Where to find placeholders

Everything lives in your creator dashboard. Open the product you want to protect and select the Placeholders tab.

1. 1

   On the Setup & detection sub-tab, turn on Enable download protection.

2. 2

   Add the placeholders you want into your files (see the list below). You can place the same placeholder in as many spots as you like.

3. 3

   Upload a new version. PixelEast scans it, and the placeholders are filled in on every download from then on.

Placeholders you can use

These are the placeholders you can use in your files. Copy each one exactly, since they are case sensitive. When someone downloads your product, each one is replaced with the value shown next to it. In the Placeholders tab you can also create your own name (an alias) for any of these and use that in your files instead.

Where placeholder injection works

Placeholders are replaced in the following places:

Older versions are not covered

Protection only applies to versions you upload after you turn it on. Any version that already existed stays exactly as it was and will never receive placeholders. In the Versions list those older uploads are labelled Before protection. Older versions simply cannot use this feature, and it will not be available for them.

To protect an existing product, add placeholders to your files and upload a fresh version. Turning the feature off later does not remove the protection from versions that already have it.

Check where your placeholders are used

Open the Versions sub-tab to see the result for each version: Protected (with the number of placeholders found), No placeholders found, Scanning, or Scan failed.

For a protected version you can expand the file list to see exactly which files inside your upload received placeholders and how many each one got. You can also use Download test copy to pull a real personalized copy with the placeholders already filled in, so you can open it yourself, confirm the values landed where you expect, and check that the file still works.

If you find your product somewhere else

On the Setup & detection sub-tab there is a Detect a leak box. Upload the leaked file, or paste a placeholder code you found inside it.

PixelEast reads the hidden placeholders, matches them against everyone who downloaded your product, and shows you which account it traces to, along with how confident the result is.

From there you can file a report so our team can take action, such as banning the account, and use the result to support a takedown or DMCA request.

Obfuscation and placeholders

If you obfuscate your code, the obfuscator can rename or strip string constants. That would destroy your placeholders before we ever get to fill them in.

To prevent this, add the placeholder strings to your obfuscator's keep list or string-exclusion list so they survive as literal constants. Also remember that injection changes the file's bytes, so allow for that in any checksum or integrity check you run on your own files.

A protection measure, not a guarantee

We want to be honest about what this does. Placeholders are about attribution, finding who leaked a file, not prevention. No client-side protection is uncrackable, and this one is no exception.

Someone who fully rebuilds your file from decompiled source, or repacks it, can strip the placeholders out. Someone who downloads twice from two accounts can compare the copies to spot where the placeholders sit. The file itself can still be cracked and shared.

What you get is a strong chance of identifying the account responsible, especially against a careless leaker. That is exactly why nonce placeholders matter and why spreading many of them across many files is worth the small effort.