Piracy has been a problem in the gaming industry almost since the beginning. Over time game developers (and publishers) have attempted to counter this pernicious problem with various anti-piracy measures. Some of these anti-piracy techniques are more direct like the much hated always online DRM, and the change to optical media in the mid-90s. However, there are some developers that get clever with their anti-piracy methods. There are also some companies that accept piracy will occur no matter what techniq✱ues they employ, and instead find ways to trick people into admitting they are playing a pirated copy of their game.
Updated January 17th, 2021, by Thomas Bowen: While piracy is all but unheard of on most modern day consoles, it once ran rampant throughout the gaming industry. Mod-chips and bootleg cartridges allowed criminals to sell illegal copies of games for a fraction of their retail value whilst hacks and cracks helped PC gamers to download the newest titles without paying a penny. Rather than relying on the long arm of the law to deal with this problem, however, many developers decided to take matters into their own hands. These are just some of the more creative solutions that they came up with.
15 💖 Earthbound 🀅
The team over at HAL Laboratory went to great lengths in order to prevent players from pirating 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Earthbound. Some of them are fairl🍎🧜y simple, like having the game check the region of the console or making sure that the cartridge doesn't have more memory than it's supposed to. Those who make changes to the rom to get around these will encounter some far more devilish measures though.
Hacked copies of the game will greatly increase ꦜthe number of enemies that the player encounters which can make the game far more di🥂fficult and tedious to play. Even if players battle through this plethora of additional enemies, however, they still won't be able to complete the game. Upon arriving at the game's final boss, the screen will freeze forcing them to reset. Upon doing so, they'll find that all of their save files have been completely deleted; effectively eradicating around 28 hours of hard work.
14 ꦅ ꦦ Garry's Mod
No matter how much work is put into designing anti-piracy measures, people are always going to find a way to crack them. It can sometimes take only a matter of minutes or in other instances a couple of months. Ultimately though - much like death and taxes - it's something of an inevitability. Knowing this, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Garry's Mod creator Garry Newman took a sl♓ightly different approa🌞ch.
Rather than trying to stop people from running pirated copies of the game, he instead programmed in a special error message that reads "Unable to shade polygon normals" and is accompanied by a unique error code which identifies the player's Steam ID. Naturally, many of those affected took to forums to inquire abou𓃲t the error, allowing Garry to identify their accounts and also those who'd purchased the game legitimately to laugh at these dastardly deviants' stupidity.
13 The🌠 Witcher 2
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Much like its 2015 sequel, the Witcher 2 allows players to r168澳洲幸运5开奖网:omance many of the game's NPCs and even treats them to some fairly rudimentary 'sex' scenes for d🌟oing so. Those playing on pirated copies of the game are 📖in for a bit of a shock though, with romanced NPCs replaced by a creepy old lady named Marietta Loredo. This wasn't the only measure that CDPR put in place either.
The game also includes a selection of randomly triggered cutscenes in which Geralt is killed. Sadly, however, neither the sight of Geralt getting it on with Marietta nor the threat of sporadic deaths was enough to deter the many would be pirates out there, which ultimately led to the developer tracking some of them down and requesting financial co🎶mpensation. As one might expect; the very real threat of possible legal action proved far more effective.
12 Alan Wake
The team over at Remedy Entertainment adopted a similar tactic when designing 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Alan Wake, although rather than trying to out these crimi🧜nals to the community, they instead wanted to shame them in private. Whether or not it actually worked out that way is hard to say🎉 though.
If the game caught any whiff of piracy, the game's protagonist would be shown wearing an eye♍-patch throughout the game. It had no real bearing on how the game played nor did it prevent completion. What it did do though is constantly remind affected players exactly what they were. Dirty, stinking pirates. The same thing happens in pirated copies of the studio's 2016 title Quantum Break as well.
11 🍃 Red Alert 2
Those wanti꧙ng to succeed in Red Alert 2 have to focus o𓆏n two things. Firstly, they'll need to build up a strong selection of units with which to take on enemies and stave off attacks. Secondly - and perhaps most importantly - they'll need to keep their base standing in order to avoid the dreaded 'game over' screen. It's therefor quite fitting then that EA opted to target these two areas when designing the game's anti-piracy measures.
Within 30 seconds of a new game beginning, those playing on pirated copies of could only watch as their base and units self-destructed causing the game to end instantly. In many ways, this was actually quite generous of EA, as many developers would have instead opted to allow players to sink some time into the game 💝before initiating this self-destruct sequence.
10 The Secret Of﷽ Monkey Isꦏland
In the early days of PC gaming piracy was rꦓampant. It was incredibly easy to copy games – all that was needed was a blank disk, and of course a PC. This lead to an early method of anti-piracy, or “copy protection” as it was known at the time, where the player needed a legit copy of the game to answer a question. The question was typꦰically like, “What is the second letter of the first word in the first paragraph on page 4 of the game manual”.
Early versions of The Secret of Monkey Island included a wheel with a spinning inner wheel, called the “Dial-A-Pirate”. The player would need to line up the🍎 top and lower halves of the indicated character’s face to get the correct four digit code. This code-wheel system would be used by many companies in the late 1980s and 90s.
9 Crysis Warheaไd
Crysis Warhead was a follow-up title to the over-achieving original Crysis game that featured a hilarious anti-piracy technique. The game did have a version of SecuROM that digitally authenticated a properly acquired copy of the game – but that’s not what ea𓂃rned Crysis Warhead a spot on this list. There is an anti-piracy measure in this game that causes the player’s weapons to shoot chickens in pirated copies. These chickens don’t cause any damage to enemies (though they will stagger them); this leaves only physical attacks as a means for the player to cause damage. This makes Crysis Warhead a lot more amusing to play/watch, but it also makes it nearly impossible to beat.
8 ཧ 🅺 Batman: Arkham Asylum
Batman: Arkham Asylum launched a series of games 🦹that many consider to be the best of all time. This game succeeded at something that many before had failed to do – make the player feel like they were . One of the best features of the series is the ability to glide through the air. Many parts of the game actually require players to use this gliding ability to advance. So when the developers were deciding on anti-piracy measures they decided to focus on the gliding ability – which is absent in pirated co🎀pies. Instead of gracefully gliding to the next platform, Batman drops like a rock. This effectively makes this game unbeatable.
7 Mirror’s ♋Edge
EA is famous for their online Origin system for DRM (digital rights managem🍸ent). Though with Mirror’s Edge EA decided to go a bit further and added a “feature” that only appears in a pirated copy of the game. The protagonist in Mirror’s Edge frequently utilizes parkour for getting from point A to point B.
Parkour involves a lot of constant motion, jumping, and tumbling skills. Pirated copies of this game reverse the protagonist’s momentum, causing her to slow down when running instead of accelerating. This makes the game completely unplayable – as the first🍰 big jump players encounter is rendered uncrossable.
6 Sims 4
The Sims games have always been a bit modest in terms of adult content. When a character in these games does something that is normally done in private the game will pixelate the “offending” area. To punish those players who play the Sims 4 with a pirated copy, EA/Maxis decided to take this “modesty” to another level. When performing one of these pixelating actions, like taking a shower or using the toilet, players of a pirated copy will soon discover the pixelated area remains after the action is complete. Those who choose to ignore this effect and continue will soon find themselves playing with th𝓀e entire screen pixelated.