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Encrypt and ship your DLC! Create your DLC logic and assets and securely unlock it at runtime with signed licenses (generated using bevy-dlc CLI).

Works with Bevy's asset pipeline.

Features

• AES-256-GCM encryption of DLC packs
• Efficient random-access decryption of specific assets without reading full packs
• Product binding — prevent token reuse across games
• Security checks to prevent common mistakes like packing executables or other packs

Install

Add to your Cargo.toml:

cargo add bevy-dlc

Note

bevy-dlc will always be compatible with Bevy 1.## with the minor version being used for bug fixes and new features. So bevy-dlc = "1.18" will also work and automatically get you any compatible bug fixes and pack format version updates.

To use the CLI tool:

cargo install bevy-dlc

Then bevy-dlc --help for available commands.

Quick Start

Generate a license

bevy-dlc generate -o keys/ my-game dlcA

This will generate two files in keys/:

• dlcA.slicense — a secure license token that can be safely embedded in your game binary (e.g. with secure::include_secure_str_aes!()) or stored securely on disk. This token contains the encrypted symmetric key needed to unlock the DLC, but can't be decrypted without the private key.
• dlcA.pubkey — the public key that your game uses to verify the license and extract the symmetric key to unlock the DLC.

Create a pack

bevy-dlc pack --product my-game dlcA -o dlc -- assets/dlcA

• --product — binds the pack to a product name
• assets/dlcA — directory or file(s) to pack
• dlcA — DLC ID (used in licenses to unlock this pack)
• -o dlc — output path for the generated .dlcpack
• --types — optional list of asset type paths to include in the pack index (e.g. bevy::prelude::Image), otherwise all assets will be indexed with their full type paths. This can be used to normalize type paths across different versions of Bevy or your game. The types you specify are fuzzy matched against the actual asset types in the pack, so you can just specify assets::MyAsset and it will match my_game::assets::MyAsset in the pack if that's the actual type.

This creates dlcA.dlcpack and prints a signed license token.

Alternatively you can use bevy-dlc generate --help to review how to generate a signed license without packing, or bevy-dlc check --help to verify it.

Note

bevy-dlc help <command> for detailed usage of each CLI command.

Edit a pack

You can edit the contents of a .dlcpack with bevy-dlc edit:

bevy-dlc edit <my_dlc>.dlcpack

This opens an interactive REPL where you can add/remove files, list contents, or even merge entries from another .dlcpack. When merging or adding content you must supply an Signed License — just run bevy-dlc edit --signed-license <token> [--pubkey <key>] or keep .slicense/.pubkey files next to the pack (created using bevy-dlc generate). Changes are saved back to the .dlcpack when you save and if you forget and exit, REPL will ask you. REPL is not a AI.

You can also use bevy-dlc edit <mydlc>.dlcpack -- <commands> to run REPL commands non-interactively (e.g. from a script or Makefile).

Use help within the REPL for available commands.

Usage

Review the examples for a complete example (run with cargo run --release --example <example>).

API Overview

• DlcPack is a custom Bevy Asset that represents a loaded DLC pack. In V4, it uses a binary manifest and block metadata to support efficient random-access decryption of assets from the .dlcpack file on disk. You can load it directly with AssetServer::load("my_pack.dlcpack").
• DlcPackEntry represents a single asset within a pack. Loading via AssetServer::load("my_pack.dlcpack#path/to/asset.png") only decrypts the specific asset.
• DlcLoader is the internal low-level loader that handles granular decryption and forwards resulting bytes to the appropriate concrete loader.
• Events are emitted when packs are loaded:
  • DlcPackLoaded — emitted when a pack manifest is successfully parsed and ready for use.
• Finally, DlcPlugin is the main plugin that sets up the DLC system. It requires a DlcKey::Public (or Private) and SignedLicense to unlock packs.

Suggestions and Contributions

Contributions are very welcome! Please open an issue or submit a pull request with any improvements, bug fixes, or new features.

Note

If your PR affects the pack format or encryption logic, it will be reviewed with extra scrutiny to ensure it doesn't introduce any security issues. Please include tests and consider backward compatibility.

Benchmarks

Benchmarks are included in benches/dlc_bench.rs and can be run with:

cargo install cargo-criterion
cargo criterion

See the generated reports in reports/criterion for results.

License

MIT