Earth Bound had a particularly brutal anti-piracy measure. It would let the player progress all the way up to the final boss, and then the game would freeze, forcing the player to restart his console, at which point he would discover that all of his saves had been deleted.
I know about the following thing from Ashens' talk on piracy. In Alan Wake, you could play the entire pirated game no problem, but your character would have an eyepatch with a pirate skull on it. Thanks for the video!
2:54 Fun fact: In 3D modeling, Normals are non rendering indicators that show which side of a polygon are outward facing (shaded) the opposite side would not render. So they are not something that should be shaded or rendered. 100% a troll by the developers, and getting pirates to screenshot their ID is brilliant.
Vertex normals can be shaded, in the sense that they are interpolated over the triangle, which is what smooth shading means. But vertex normals actually aren't how the GPU knows which side to render, that would be the winding order: whether the vertices are drawn clockwise or counter-clockwise. Which order the GPU considers to mean the front side can be configured in all graphics APIs, at least the ones i've used.
No its dumb cause all it does is get the fakeid the steamemu is using as thats the way to play steamgames over official servers namingly the goldberg emu even simpler none online cracks run fakeids for steamapplications
what baffling me was, the audacity of the people who pirated the games, but still ask for support to developers. Imagine if software was like IKEA's furniture "Hey I stole your chair, and I want to complain since its not as comfy as I thought"
@SoulAlmighty1660 I know. But, did you? you called support because mostly something not working as intended hance the metaphor "its not as comfy as I thought" which for some people choosing the chair for its comfortable and there is nothing such "you don't like something" on my sentences. Most will get the comparison and understood immediately by what I trying to get, but you choose to nitpick at something else, good job!
@@rafid7t491 "piracy" is the term that used to describe illegal activities on high sea that may contain violence, robbery, kidnaping. The term "piracy" is more used by most people and law then the "illegally copying software" or something similar with that because it is "theft" since you still "obtaining something illegally". Of course you can argue that piracy is not theft with the mindset that the original copy still exists not missing, even if majority people in reddit argue it different it doesn't make it right or used to justify yourself for you to use piracy software/games, don't get me wrong I also use game and software that I got from piracy's site but I acknowledge its wrong and try to buy it one by one to make up for it instead of finding legitimation for what I did. And again, most people may understood what I mean with the metaphor but instead like your friend above, you still choose to nitpick at something else differently.
This wasn't a piracy thing but I remember in Theme Hospital when you entered a cheat the lady doing the overhead announcements would come on and say "Hospital administrator is CHEATING!" in a really shocked voice. I laughed so hard at that the first time.
In good old Sacred, when you finish Chapter 1 and are about to start Chapter 2, you need to pick up a canister right at your feet to bring water to a dying man in the desert. However, in pirated versions, the canister was missing. The players, myself included went mad searching after the canister as at this point, you are already well into the game. Genius.
Sacred has a fantastic anti-cheat system. Messing with memory in any way would literally explode your character on-screen. If you'd try to export the character file, it'd appear as empty at first. Trying to load the character in any game later on would only explode them. At that point the character just is not playable anymore.
What surprises me is that there are still scores of people who run straight to an official forum to ask questions when they could search for the answer first. At least then they would avoid getting caught for questionable or illegal activity.
@@indiankid8601 For the companies to protect their product or for you to pirate? The issue for companies is that if they put more anti-piracy stuff in their game it will affect all the users at the end. Nobody wants so many things to register at just to play a game. DRM can mess with the expirience of the normal player. But companies still try their best but some know that your product will always be cracked eventually and it usually doesn't take long.
Ok, with that cricket game, letting pirates that then legitimately buy it keep their progress is actually pretty nice and generous. Smart, too, because it gives extra encouragement to actually buy it beyond just not having to deal with all those issues from the pirated version. Gives them more reason to buy a legit copy rather than just dropping it over this. There’s also just a level of respect to it. Basically throwing the pirates a bone and saying “yeah, you pirated our game, but we’re all human, we’re not gonna treat you too harshly or demonize you too much, we get why people do this, we’ll work with ya.”
The save file carrying over is nothing. They literally do nothing to make that happen. It would take more work to detect if a save came from a pirated copy.
there is nothing nice about it. It's a push towards a player to actually buy it, giving them incentive to actually do it. Otherwise a player might think "I have to start all over again if I buy it? No way I'm doing that!"
The Battle For Middle Earth games got me good. In this RTS you would build your army and get ready for battle only to suddenly have your entire army die instantly. But this only happened after like 50 minutes to really make you mad. Great anti-piracy measure.
you mean like 10-15 minutes, it always happened in the beginning of the game for me. 50 minutes so long you can easily play a full match in that duration.
I think with Game Dev they also added in "Piracy Mode" for people who actually bought the game. It simulates the Piracy issue and makes the game STUPID HARD to play let alone even beat.
@@brodriguez11000 elden ring has been one of the most pirated games, and sold really well. Your point is bullshit. Piracy doesn't really hurt a developer, if the game it's good it's just free advertisement.
My brother once got a cracked version of Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. He got mad when you went to the oblivion planes, and these T-Rex type monsters would just slaughter him. Then when the game reloaded the checkpoint, his stats were 0, and MORE T-Rex creatures showed up. He was so mad, and it was pure comedy gold.
I remember playing serious Sam as a kid. I bought the game, but after hearing about the invincible scorpion guy I got a cracked copy to see how long I could survive with him chasing me the whole time. It was not very long before I returned to my purchased copy lol
You missed the epic quote from Arkham asylum devs: When someone asked "WTF, what is this bug I'm getting? Can't progress!" The devs went with what is imo the best answer ever to such question: "It's not bug in a game, it's bug in your moral system"
@@frankreynolds9930 I’d be willing to bet that 99+% of people contacting developers were not from those countries or economic conditions. It’s far more likely they had a sense of entitlement that got them to pirate the game and then complained to developers. They would have more favourable pricing if gamers and grey market organizations didn’t take advantage of the arbitrage. There are plenty of other points to be made, but in the end video games are a luxury and it sucks for those people in those economic conditions because people who can afford to buy ruin it for them.
in USA it takes you 6 hours minimum wage work to buy a $60 game, in 3rd world 6 days of $10 dollar a day college graduate rated work and literally no food for 6 days. imagine that.
If developers priced the game according to the country's economy and the average salary of the common man in that country, I think people will buy the game. For example let's take a 60$ game. In most developed countries like US it's not a big deal if you have a job but for me that 60$ dollar can be used for paying my rent for my home and with the balance amount I can buy food for next 10 days
That's cute, not even Denuvo is invincible these days though. It makes sense because 99% of pirates haven't experienced these "anti-piracy" measures because the people who crack the game are actually good at what they do and remove them from the game.
Except that numerous people had that 'anti-piracy' measure appear on their fully genuine versions of the game, to the point where Sony had to replace a BUNCH of Spyro 1-3 discs because when they got scratched even the TEENY TINIEST little bit? The anti-piracy nonsense would trigger. With digital versions today that is much less likely to happen... but it still can.
Number one makes me smile every time i see it. Every other anti-piracy measure is just to make a game unplayable and annoy the player, but this one is extremely clever (granted it could only really work with that game, but the fact that they realised that and implemented it is nothing short of brilliant).
@Henry Tan protection scheme the cd is using might be so old it doesnt work with windows 10(as drivers it requires might not work, even worse if they do work they may damage stuff unintentionally), maybe its starforce protected or tages protected, anyway... crack away, it should work.
AC Creed Players: “Why do I have to crack the game to get a 33% framerate boost?” Soulsborne Players playing Serious Sam: “Why do I have to crack the game to get a challenge boost?”
Me ten years ago: "Why do I have to crack the game to run it without the disk?" Also me: "Why do I have to crack the game to avoid having to use GFWL?"
AC Origins denuvoless crack collab was the height of piracy, everyone is rooting for both CPY and Codex to succeed, and now it still they ask nothing but proves how scummy and sometimes downright insulting a DRM is, imagine a pirate is having better experience than the ones who paid it, long live GOG. What's funny to me is that the game hasn't gotten the DRM removed since 2017 while unironically EA removes Denuvo after several months/years
@@AhmadWahelsa exactly. I could never bring myself to pirate. But I grew tired of playing Ubi demos/betas only to realize upon purchasing that my above average rig couldn’t muster 1080p60fps on maxed settings.
One of my favorite anti-pirate feature was in Star Flight. Anytime you launched you had to enter a code from a wheel. IF you entered a wrong code your space ship was eventually stopped by the space patrol and blown away. It got funny if you had certain artifacts on board you become invincible and you could destroy the police but they would come over abd over until you entered the correct code. IT was a good source of materials. It was worthless since most people came up with the same way of defeating the code.
There was also Command and Conquer Red Alert 2, in which if it detected that you were playing a pirated version of the game, it would play normally for a while before every unit and building you have blows up, making you lose.
Players: “Since you’re putting all these anti-piracy measures in place, you’ll make the game playable on next-gen consoles, right?” Devs: “Haha, no 🙂❤”
Not just increased prices but releasing broken, buggy and unfinished games. There's more of an incentive to do a 'try before you buy' now than there's ever been. It's just a pity that only one person is dealing with Denuvo, which is usally what the scummiest companies use.
@@Elwaves2925 Yeah, I use to just buy games straight out but "try before you buy" is a good thing. I bought Resident evil 4 on steam and on ps2, good times but the pirated version... worked better while the steam one had a white line down screen.. and at the time took a lot to fix. I recommend keeping this practice is a must buy supporting them if you like the game as I have. Indie,s I would almost never do it.
Well too be fair, AAA studios are struggling to put out a game that isn't absolute dog shit and is actually finished. So when they barely got time to finish it, I'd assume they wouldn't really have time to bother with piracy. And the publishers or companies being their usual arogant self and having too much faith on pre-orders certainly adds up.
Honestly, as a guy who has pirated games mostly to see if I am going to like them or not, I appreciate these tricks and find them hilarious. I don't know how many people will remember this, but companies have done the reverse of this as well. Westwood Studios leaked a version of Tiberian Sun that was pretty much the full game, minus all of the video content. Doing this bumped the sales up big time.
the no movies thing was very much a thing for all their titles atleast up untill and including RA2:YR (EA at that point) - atleast part of the reason was for the "crackers" to save on disc space. since without the movies they could reduce the amount of CDs needed. and the slow internet speed back then. so only movies was usually the ones mid mission (in the radar frame) Blizzard actually did a similar thing with D2. allowing you to install a "lesser" version where the cutscenes had to be loaded from the CD.
@@carlcarlson5553 So true. A lot of the code crackers out there take every advance in security as a personal challenge. And since many of the crackers are ALSO security DEVELOPERS, you can imagine how this can get crazy. There are even messages to each other buried in some of the code from what I understand.
As a developer, you're goal isn't necessarily to hurt the pirates, but to enthral them, and entertain them into buying the game Or at the least make fun of them so hard, that they have to buy it to get around it to not be embarrassed
Sid Meier's Pirates! has to be among the earliest examples of this. During your campaign you would be randomly asked to identify the flag of an incoming ship, the names of which could be found in the manual. If you got it wrong the game would turn incredibly difficult. Your crew would always be disgruntled and eager to mutiny, you would plunder fewer valuables and resources, and the wind would constantly blow strongly in the opposite direction of where you were trying to go.
reminds me of several very old Apple games that would periodically ask you "trivia" questions that could only be answered by reading the game's paper manual. the one at the VERY end of "dark heart of Uukrul" was particularly obscure, it's part of the "untranslatable prayer": "wur quanar wur..." that's all i remember.
The old "Police Quest" games on PC all started like that! They needed something like your "locker combo" or to put a name to a mug shot. All of which could only be found in the manual!
I love the ones where it makes the pirates out themselves online its just so hilarious to see them complain and then get publicly shamed for it, how embarrassing
In the Ravenfield modding scene, some modders have made their own anti-piracy scripts which end up replacing every single texture in the game to a random PNG of their choosing. JakeCoin being the most famous, I've dabbled in the script too while testing around - it's definitely silly fun. I believe you could also make it to where certain users couldn't use the mod, the one I know of was a guy who refused to pay for a commission he said he'd pay for. So the guy made it public for everybody, but the script activated for that one guy in particular.
This has happened in the Rimworld modding community too, but targeting someone like this is a great way for the mod creator to get their mod removed. One creator didn't want people using lewd mods with their characters, and messed with people who had the infamous lewd mod installed along with theirs in several ways that rendered the game unplayable. Of course this caused the mod to be removed
@@Holgast Yeah I can agree with targeting specific people can be an issue, I know Datae (A Garry's Mod addon creator) has some sort of script on Beatrun where your character has a beaver head placed on them if you're using a mod he claims is incompatible. He's done some other not-so-good stuff as well, I know he used to leak IPs of people who pirated his mod.
Do any of these anti-piracy features ever turn on for no reason for people who have bought the games? Feels like something that's bound to happen, I can imagine Rockstar releasing an update that just accidentally turned on one of the random anti-piracy features and then having to scramble to fix it.
exactly what i thought, thats a big risk for all those games except the first one, since the pirated version was spread by the devs themselves so the pirated code was not on the original copies
Seeing some of these makes me wonder if there's some "major, game breaking glitches" for games that are actually anti-piracy measures that haven't been revealed as such yet. Sometimes you hear about such things, major glitches that are ruining the games for some people but a lot of people in the comments of videos and articles about it have never experienced it. What if they are anti-piracy measures and because people obviously aren't coming forward about it, they haven't figured it out yet while the devs haven't outright admitted it yet?
There have been some rare instances where anti-piracy measures were accidentally triggered on legit copies of games, which may also be causing what you describe.
@@AmazedBunion well you will when you end up with bland generic AAA games because no one with an imagination and a small studio can afford to make anything lol
I pirated numerous games. When we first got a computer, I was immediately addicted. My parents didn't like all the 'gaming stuff' so they didn't give me any money to buy games. Piracy was the only option I had really to play new singleplayer games. Those were more simple, good times.
In the old The Settlers 3 game, if pirated, the iron smelters would produce pigs instead - completely crippling your industry and preventing you from building any kind of miliary units.
@Henry Tan my brain had to run on a treadmill so i could read this reply, what is up with your grammar, m8? mine ain't the best either but at least people can understand me, while yours is just.... yikes
Came here to post this. I think they eventually removed this because it could be triggered for some people who had legitimate copies, and they got extra mad. This was the early days of the internet, so releasing patches was less common.
In The Talos Principal, I pirated it BC there was no demo, and after the first small set of Intro Puzzles, it would lock you in the elevator, and auto save on you. I remember thinking it's a bug, replaying the beginning again, just to get locked again. I googled and figured it out fast. But, the intro puzzles and the story had me hooked, I had to buy it :) DEMOS NEED TO MAKE A COMEBACK!
It was one of the last games I pirated and I bought it immediately after I found out why they had locked me in the elevator. Not because I necessarily needed to finish the game, but because I respected it so much.
Coming from Eastern Europe I remember laughing at the concept of anti-piracy measures until that one level in Arkham Asylum where you had to glide all the way to the batcave... that was a good one...
I pirate games, try them out for a couple of hours, test the performance on my PC, then I buy it when i get my salary. Now i have hundreds of games in my steam library.
Sims 4 didn't create that, operation Flashpoint did it. You could play the game at first, but it would slowly Pixelate until it was unplayable. It gave you a chance to try it like a demo
i'd like to see a video how they even detect pirated copies or the various ways to do that. It's an interesting technique to not totally block their fun in hopes they may buy the game.
I don't know... If I encountered any of these glitches and then discovered that it's the company's anti-piracy thing, it would only discourage me from buying anything from the company in the future.
Stormworks was pretty cool, the game would work as normal then after around 20 minutes it would just constantly rain down fish making the game unplayable. The devs made it that way as sort of a demo or by "giving them something then taking it away" as they put it. It was definitely worth trying out because raining fish was pretty funny to see.
Mafia 2 had a good one where after a certain point in the game your health would be lowered to the minimum and no matter what you did it would stay like that. So if you got hit you died. Although it was fixable by using a save file that let you load in after the mission where it started to happen.
4:07 #7: Yooo thats a sick idea. Props to the Cricket 22 Devs. Instead of being sore about it.. Just say "If you buy the full game you can transfer your save & finish the game." Shiiiii, GG to them haha.
@@warbync absolute facts. I'm chatting from Nigeria and to be honest $80 will conveniently get you enough groceries that you'll use for a month plus. $80 will pay my internet bill for 3months. So I agree with you.
Well... my friend pirated most of those games and did not experience any of those bugs... wink wink. He's a bad person, I know... :D Long live Cpt. Jack!
My 'friend' also pirated Arkham Asylum (originally) and didn't encounter any of the things mentioned. I guess those measures didn't work, or it's all an urban myth.
I remember when i pirated portal it had so many missing textures and I absolutely loved the story. That I ended up buying the game to experience the game with no missing textures.
@@zim07 back in the day there were a few heavily compressed versions laying around the net. Depending on your skills, the coder's or if you tried to extract it on a tuesday, the files would be either damaged or have the wrong permissions.
Extra one: dunno if it happened only to me but on euro truck 2 pirate vers your truck will randomly receive an bright pink Dye, and if you purchase another color, the game will dye it back to bright pink while you're driving it
the Talos Principle had an elevator that refused to function. Pirates patched it though after they found out about it. Same as the Arkham Asylum measures, they made a fix for it. Both games I bought later. The Talos Principle also didn't have any computer dialog in the pirated version so it made it way less fun and somewhat confusing at times. Definitely worth buying for the dialog being included.
The first time I played Talos Principle was a pirated copy and I had zero issues. Now I have it on the Epic store and Steam so I guess piracy does have its perks lol.
@@xavierabii548 Yeah it helps when you're broke and still want to experience the good stuff. And I feel I we have an ethical obligation to pirate AAA games, but need to try to support independent devs when we can.
In the Talos Principle, people who bought the pirated version where unable to use an elevator, which allows the player to progress to the next stage of the game.
I had an original copy of the original Civilization installed on my dad's IBM PC in the 90s. I eventually swapped the game for another with a friend but 2-3 weeks later got the itch to play again. The anti-piracy measure was that a rival world leader would denounce you as a usurper and you would have to prove your worthiness by answering a question, with the answer of course being in the manual. I had played the game so much by this point that I had memorised them all! I did later give a deliberate wrong answer to see what would happen. I was overthrown and executed.
Yep, Game Dev Tycoon is my most favorite anti-piracy measure. It requires no DRM, no "always online" or any crap like that. Just make sure to distribute your own "cracked" version of the game so people cannot progress further and come online to whine about pirates stealing their in-game money. :)
They even released a modified version of that as a game mode that allowed you to play a harder version of the game where you have to keep up with copy protection in addition to the usual gameplay loop, or else lose all your profits to pirates.
I had an idea for an anti-piracy measure if anyone ever designs a theater impresario sim game: If it is pirated, limit the troupe's repertoire to _The Pirates of Penzance._
There was also original Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis (original ARMA), where the computer AI would start cheating progressively more and more. Sniping you from from a mile away whilst moving. Your helicopter controls being out of order, your gun using more ammunition than what's being fired, etc.
snipers "sniping" is just arma. flashpoint was a great game, but it required a lot of change in tactics when compared to other games that came out in that age (mostly lying on the belly in the forrest, among bushes, nervously looking left and right, god forbid meeting enemy armor xD)
The only anti piracy that worked with me, was from Metal Gear Solid 1. When the NPC says the frequency code of Merly was written on the back of the cd case. I looked for a CD case everywhere in the game until I realise: "Oh! he meant the actual CD case of the game... ... Damn! I don't have that! 😑"
I had an actual copy of the game, and for years, I had to use the manual to find it, because I couldn't figure out where it was ont he back of the case (I assumed it was a mistake ont he developer's part or something) I felt like a dumbass when I realized where it was... There's a screenshot on the back of the case where snake is talking to Meryl via codec, and the frequency is literally right right there between them...
The funniest part of the Arkham Asylum one is that a pirate asked a dev if it was a bug and they responded with “It’s not a bug in the game’s code, it’s a bug in your moral code.” 😮 😂
The game dev anti piracy thing is ofc the best fit. That just hits home. Well, to be honest. A huge problem has always been the lack of demos and STEAM is not making it safe enough to try a game before the refund option expires. I wish you could set a stop timer that cancles the game automatically. The other thing I hate about certain games I have purchased but had to get the pirate version of. Are the ones that always need STEAM to be online to start. The WORST part in a game...I don't have internet and have to take my PC to the city to download and update. So I can only ever buy a hard copy or play it once online. So yeah, some devs just don't think of people without internet. At least now I can afford tethering to my cell to get into games, so that's an upside. There are advantages and obvious disadvantages to pirated games, the devs certainly deserve to be paid, if you like what you see.
Hopefully the piracy detection principles / algorithm are dependable, because accidentally trolling actual customers would backfire severely. I like the Serious Sam scorpion, the drunken mode and the chicken mod best, though i would have like for them to be a bit more mature like the scorpion making surprise appearance, inflicting a drunk debuff if stung while attracting a horde, or the weapons to fire chickens only if you need bullets the most like being down to 10% health, possibly with them harassing you afterwards on top of it. This way those become more of a laugh, which I believe to be better than just being crude or cruel.
I've seen that happen. The buyer comments in a forum (Sims 4), gets mocked and ridiculed by the devs and players, shows 100% proof they bought the game and the devs still do nothing. Thankfully they had the last laugh as they refunded the game, downloaded the cracked version, which had already removed the pixelation 'feature', then showed that on the forum before the devs deleted the post.
One of the earliest I can remember was from the 1992 DOS game "Legend of Kyrandia" (a point and click adventure). At various points throughout the game, you would be prompted to enter a word from the game manual. Pirated copies often didn't have the manual, so after 3 incorrect attempts, you'd see an animation of the protagonist Brandon turning to stone. Not only did the game quit, but the whole system rebooted at that point!
last time i pirated a game was probly 15 years ago or more, its much nicer to just have it working and getting updates without any fuss having to recrack it or shit.
I remember that anti piracy thing in Arkham Asylum. I was a poor kid and I pirated games. I managed to get past the grapple hook thing, by using a trainer to enable noclip and just float to the next part. Also I remember in Assassin's Creed 2 there was a certain mission that would just never show up, and you couldn't progress. Think I replayed the game like three times up to that point, before realizing the issue.
I come from a relatively low-income country, for many people here buying a game at full price would often mean spending 20+ % of your monthly salary, which simply is not going to happen. Especially if you are a kid asking your parents for it, and absolutely not if like me you are the 5th of 5 kids. So yeah, I pirated pretty much all the games I played until I was 19 or so (plus there were people selling pirated games on the street and even under the table in legit stores). Today, I make a very decent amount of money (for my country anyway), and I have bought a copy of pretty much every game I have played (and enjoyed) in the past :)
GTA 4 screwed me over, once I completed the game, it believed i pirated the game, i had the damn DVD inside so I was drunk camera all the time. It was wild.
Ahhh, I'm reminded of the first Witcher, which used a novel (at the time) method of putting key information on a secondary hidden layer of the physical disc such that it could not be read by the software used to make the .iso files. Some of the hidden layer included entire NPCs required to progress past the first town, rendering the pirated version little more than a bloated demo (which was actually fine and the standard protection at the time was SecuRom iirc, which we all hated because it behaved like a rootkit)
The Batman Arkham Asylum anti-piracy measures were so good, it was legitimately the last game I ever got on pirate. I was so impressed I bought the game straight after and never looked back!
Quitter. The real challenge is to break the anti piracy, not the silly game. The silly or actually fun ones, sure you ruefully laugh along and maybe buy the real game. The really annoying ones, to quote Ivan Drago, "I must break you."
The person you call bad is actually our savior in Iran. You don't know how much a 70 dollar game costs in Iran. Yes, for you, this price is a normal thing, but for us, 70 dollars is equivalent to buying a luxury car!
I remember playing a pirated game. It prob had anti piracy. But i told friends it was bugged af. And none of us bought it. Months later we found out it was antipiracy.
The only one I know from my childhood is Black and White 2 with kids never growing up. I was suprised how I don’t have enough food even tho I doing everything I can to have it, while also not having adults to assign to be farmers. Then I saw a big line of kids running around and I fully understand what happen.
I've had a problem with a game I actually legally owned. It was Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth and I installed it on my old PC, where it ran smoothly. Years later I then installed it on my new computer and there it suddenly had a "bug" where when I went into the story and had Frodo and the others start going into the mines of Moria, they all just.. died on the spot. Had to google that to find out that it's the anti-piracy thing. I am still not sure why it happened; I played with the original CD. u-u'
Most likely it was an issue with how the os handled the piracy check. Game expects X data when using Y function but OS xyz returns Y+1. Hence game thinks it's pirated.
I once pirated Shadow of Mordor and somewhere in the game (the mission where you get the power to control others) I got stuck, none of the character's movement worked, much less I could pause or enter the character menu. Not to mention the constant boos that started to appear and repeat themselves in a loop. Coincidentally, the game was on sale, so I bought it and started playing again lol
I think it was smart for the company to make the game playable for pirates but then make certain key aspects unplayable (like the mirrors edge, or cricket games), so it kinda makes you throw in the towel and buy the game
I think the sims 4 thing got cracked basically instantly, I am not ashamed to say that I pirated the sims 4 VERY early on, and nothing was different, from the real version, other than being better running than the original version. I bought the Sims 4, after deciding I liked the game (this was before the dlc hell it is now), but these days EA are just milking the absolute shit out of the game with massively overpriced DLCs, so today the best way to play Sims 5, is actually to pirate it.
![10 Gamers BANNED For DUMB REASONS [Part 2]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/meIxqeS13A8/mqdefault.jpg)
Earth Bound had a particularly brutal anti-piracy measure. It would let the player progress all the way up to the final boss, and then the game would freeze, forcing the player to restart his console, at which point he would discover that all of his saves had been deleted.
That’s not even counting the brutal difficulty the game will be
So save your game on a removable media and take it out before you start the final boss.
Epic
@@brockpulling8515 jeez, thanks captain hindsight
@@brockpulling8515The game is gonna still freeze
I know about the following thing from Ashens' talk on piracy.
In Alan Wake, you could play the entire pirated game no problem, but your character would have an eyepatch with a pirate skull on it.
Thanks for the video!
Quantum break
Hahahahah wow
my pirated version of Alan Wake doesn't have that tho... my dealer is giving me good stuff 😁
the better version of the game.
I wish I could wear a pirate hat in Alan Wake. If anything, they're only punishing the paying customers.
Funny that I played some of those and never saw these 'anti pirate' things.
you got a good crack same here never got any
Because, thode stuff are already extinct
its because its a lie and most of what Jake is talking is out of his ass
Long Live Piracy ☠️
They fixed in like 5 days after the release lol
2:54 Fun fact: In 3D modeling, Normals are non rendering indicators that show which side of a polygon are outward facing (shaded) the opposite side would not render. So they are not something that should be shaded or rendered. 100% a troll by the developers, and getting pirates to screenshot their ID is brilliant.
Vertex normals can be shaded, in the sense that they are interpolated over the triangle, which is what smooth shading means. But vertex normals actually aren't how the GPU knows which side to render, that would be the winding order: whether the vertices are drawn clockwise or counter-clockwise. Which order the GPU considers to mean the front side can be configured in all graphics APIs, at least the ones i've used.
Yeah, it's not about _which_ side is outside, but _what direction_ "outside" is, which determines how much shading/light a polygon gets
No its dumb cause all it does is get the fakeid the steamemu is using as thats the way to play steamgames over official servers namingly the goldberg emu even simpler none online cracks run fakeids for steamapplications
That has to be different from normal maps.
what baffling me was, the audacity of the people who pirated the games, but still ask for support to developers. Imagine if software was like IKEA's furniture "Hey I stole your chair, and I want to complain since its not as comfy as I thought"
support and saying you dont like something is different
The chair is theft, piracy is more like copy. So yeah, different stuff
@SoulAlmighty1660 I know. But, did you? you called support because mostly something not working as intended hance the metaphor "its not as comfy as I thought" which for some people choosing the chair for its comfortable and there is nothing such "you don't like something" on my sentences. Most will get the comparison and understood immediately by what I trying to get, but you choose to nitpick at something else, good job!
@@rafid7t491 "piracy" is the term that used to describe illegal activities on high sea that may contain violence, robbery, kidnaping. The term "piracy" is more used by most people and law then the "illegally copying software" or something similar with that because it is "theft" since you still "obtaining something illegally". Of course you can argue that piracy is not theft with the mindset that the original copy still exists not missing, even if majority people in reddit argue it different it doesn't make it right or used to justify yourself for you to use piracy software/games, don't get me wrong I also use game and software that I got from piracy's site but I acknowledge its wrong and try to buy it one by one to make up for it instead of finding legitimation for what I did.
And again, most people may understood what I mean with the metaphor but instead like your friend above, you still choose to nitpick at something else differently.
This wasn't a piracy thing but I remember in Theme Hospital when you entered a cheat the lady doing the overhead announcements would come on and say "Hospital administrator is CHEATING!" in a really shocked voice. I laughed so hard at that the first time.
hmmm
I like stuff like that. lol
The same thing happened back then in Postal 2, the player always calls you a p*ssy when you're using a cheat :D
noob
Thanks
I honestly forgot about theme hospital 🏥 I wasted too much of my youth playing that game 🎮
In good old Sacred, when you finish Chapter 1 and are about to start Chapter 2, you need to pick up a canister right at your feet to bring water to a dying man in the desert. However, in pirated versions, the canister was missing. The players, myself included went mad searching after the canister as at this point, you are already well into the game. Genius.
this was the only game that I experienced something like this
Sacred has a fantastic anti-cheat system. Messing with memory in any way would literally explode your character on-screen. If you'd try to export the character file, it'd appear as empty at first. Trying to load the character in any game later on would only explode them. At that point the character just is not playable anymore.
i think it was a bug. you had to type wasser (water in german) and that cannister would appear
What surprises me is that there are still scores of people who run straight to an official forum to ask questions when they could search for the answer first. At least then they would avoid getting caught for questionable or illegal activity.
Gotta appreciate those poor bastards. They took the fall for us so we can Google it
can there ever be a permanent solution to piracy? Asking for a friend.
@@Virtual-Playground God bless idiots
@@indiankid8601 For the companies to protect their product or for you to pirate?
The issue for companies is that if they put more anti-piracy stuff in their game it will affect all the users at the end. Nobody wants so many things to register at just to play a game.
DRM can mess with the expirience of the normal player. But companies still try their best but some know that your product will always be cracked eventually and it usually doesn't take long.
@@ReeN1995 okay. What is denuvo? They can use that.
Ok, with that cricket game, letting pirates that then legitimately buy it keep their progress is actually pretty nice and generous. Smart, too, because it gives extra encouragement to actually buy it beyond just not having to deal with all those issues from the pirated version. Gives them more reason to buy a legit copy rather than just dropping it over this. There’s also just a level of respect to it. Basically throwing the pirates a bone and saying “yeah, you pirated our game, but we’re all human, we’re not gonna treat you too harshly or demonize you too much, we get why people do this, we’ll work with ya.”
they are in practice just using the pirated version as a "sales demo" - and considering how few demos you find nowadays. thats a good move
A better way to have people buy your game would not be making broken unplayable shit,their NRL games are worse than the ones that came out in the 90s
Rain glitches? I guess you could say that's... a sticky wicket.
The save file carrying over is nothing. They literally do nothing to make that happen.
It would take more work to detect if a save came from a pirated copy.
there is nothing nice about it. It's a push towards a player to actually buy it, giving them incentive to actually do it. Otherwise a player might think "I have to start all over again if I buy it? No way I'm doing that!"
The Battle For Middle Earth games got me good. In this RTS you would build your army and get ready for battle only to suddenly have your entire army die instantly. But this only happened after like 50 minutes to really make you mad. Great anti-piracy measure.
any malicious anti-piracy measure guarantees piracy
you mean like 10-15 minutes, it always happened in the beginning of the game for me. 50 minutes so long you can easily play a full match in that duration.
yep, I refuse to buy games that are mean to pirates. I bought the second BfME though@@kingmasterlord
I heard that if you pirated RA2, eventually all your shit would blown up
I think with Game Dev they also added in "Piracy Mode" for people who actually bought the game. It simulates the Piracy issue and makes the game STUPID HARD to play let alone even beat.
A funny example of "a mile in my shoes".
Interesting concept for a setting in the options menu. Not one I would EVER play for the principal alone.
I'd rather play with Mods that are okay in the community, like in Fallout 4 or NV.
The Anti-Piracy for Crisis Warhead was better in my opinion.
@@brodriguez11000 elden ring has been one of the most pirated games, and sold really well.
Your point is bullshit.
Piracy doesn't really hurt a developer, if the game it's good it's just free advertisement.
My brother once got a cracked version of Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. He got mad when you went to the oblivion planes, and these T-Rex type monsters would just slaughter him. Then when the game reloaded the checkpoint, his stats were 0, and MORE T-Rex creatures showed up. He was so mad, and it was pure comedy gold.
😂😂😂😂😂😂
The invincible unstopabble fast scorpion is always on these lists and I love it for that.
👍🏼
@@gameranxTV 👎
The scorpion 🦂 that the mummy returns always needed 😂 still better cgi too .
It also appears if you mod the game in any way.
there should be a way to turn that mob on in a legit copy for fun!! Just imagine the streams and seeing how long you can survive with a timer
I remember playing serious Sam as a kid. I bought the game, but after hearing about the invincible scorpion guy I got a cracked copy to see how long I could survive with him chasing me the whole time. It was not very long before I returned to my purchased copy lol
I’d pirate any EA game without a second thought
🫵🤨📸
@@ToeConsumor good, take as many pics as u want lol
Fuck EA
me too whats you gonna do about it?🤣
Even playing the pirated version is too much attention
@@sadiquehaque210000 you right lol
OH use cheats and hacks too XD
Ive pirated alot of games when I was young but never experienced these kind of trolls.. lol
same, i remember i pirated mirror's edge back then (i bought it now), and never experienced that slowdown thingy
@@NisekoiARG You got the good crack
Because people who crack these games aren't incompetent at their hobbies.
@@NisekoiARG probably patched some people release crack fixs , then the devs cant do anything
Because they updates it lol
You missed the epic quote from Arkham asylum devs:
When someone asked "WTF, what is this bug I'm getting? Can't progress!" The devs went with what is imo the best answer ever to such question: "It's not bug in a game, it's bug in your moral system"
Or just bad luck to be born in poor country.
@@frankreynolds9930 exactly
@@frankreynolds9930 I’d be willing to bet that 99+% of people contacting developers were not from those countries or economic conditions. It’s far more likely they had a sense of entitlement that got them to pirate the game and then complained to developers.
They would have more favourable pricing if gamers and grey market organizations didn’t take advantage of the arbitrage. There are plenty of other points to be made, but in the end video games are a luxury and it sucks for those people in those economic conditions because people who can afford to buy ruin it for them.
in USA it takes you 6 hours minimum wage work to buy a $60 game, in 3rd world 6 days of $10 dollar a day college graduate rated work and literally no food for 6 days. imagine that.
If developers priced the game according to the country's economy and the average salary of the common man in that country, I think people will buy the game. For example let's take a 60$ game. In most developed countries like US it's not a big deal if you have a job but for me that 60$ dollar can be used for paying my rent for my home and with the balance amount I can buy food for next 10 days
"You don't wanna do Batman dirty like that, do ya?"
For some reason, that had me in stitches... well done 🤣
I feel like it might have made that game more enjoyable for me. That thing was hot garbage.
That's cute, not even Denuvo is invincible these days though. It makes sense because 99% of pirates haven't experienced these "anti-piracy" measures because the people who crack the game are actually good at what they do and remove them from the game.
When I got to the part about lemons and lemonade at 05:13, all I could think was "Don't make lemonade. Get MAD!" lmfao
PS1 Spyro was pretty aggressive against pirates. Erasing some progress periodically until deleting the save file before the final boss. Harsh af
Deserved tho. At that point you’re into the game, know you like it, there is no “just testing it before I buy to make sure I enjoy it..” excuse.
@@Priuloch how do I know you didn’t do the same thing
Except that numerous people had that 'anti-piracy' measure appear on their fully genuine versions of the game, to the point where Sony had to replace a BUNCH of Spyro 1-3 discs because when they got scratched even the TEENY TINIEST little bit? The anti-piracy nonsense would trigger.
With digital versions today that is much less likely to happen... but it still can.
as harsh as deserved
I used to play spyro a heroes tail
The save fails gets deleted after days that i speedrun the game
Number one makes me smile every time i see it. Every other anti-piracy measure is just to make a game unplayable and annoy the player, but this one is extremely clever (granted it could only really work with that game, but the fact that they realised that and implemented it is nothing short of brilliant).
@Henry Tan batman was number 10. This is a countdown video. Gamedev tycoon was number 1.
@Henry Tan protection scheme the cd is using might be so old it doesnt work with windows 10(as drivers it requires might not work, even worse if they do work they may damage stuff unintentionally), maybe its starforce protected or tages protected, anyway... crack away, it should work.
It's called, "Walk a mile in my shoes."
AC Creed Players: “Why do I have to crack the game to get a 33% framerate boost?”
Soulsborne Players playing Serious Sam: “Why do I have to crack the game to get a challenge boost?”
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Don't forget one piece odyssey being so easy it's not fun at all.
Me ten years ago: "Why do I have to crack the game to run it without the disk?"
Also me: "Why do I have to crack the game to avoid having to use GFWL?"
AC Origins denuvoless crack collab was the height of piracy, everyone is rooting for both CPY and Codex to succeed, and now it still they ask nothing but proves how scummy and sometimes downright insulting a DRM is, imagine a pirate is having better experience than the ones who paid it, long live GOG.
What's funny to me is that the game hasn't gotten the DRM removed since 2017 while unironically EA removes Denuvo after several months/years
@@AhmadWahelsa exactly. I could never bring myself to pirate. But I grew tired of playing Ubi demos/betas only to realize upon purchasing that my above average rig couldn’t muster 1080p60fps on maxed settings.
One of my favorite anti-pirate feature was in Star Flight. Anytime you launched you had to enter a code from a wheel. IF you entered a wrong code your space ship was eventually stopped by the space patrol and blown away. It got funny if you had certain artifacts on board you become invincible and you could destroy the police but they would come over abd over until you entered the correct code. IT was a good source of materials. It was worthless since most people came up with the same way of defeating the code.
There was also Command and Conquer Red Alert 2, in which if it detected that you were playing a pirated version of the game, it would play normally for a while before every unit and building you have blows up, making you lose.
Players: “Since you’re putting all these anti-piracy measures in place, you’ll make the game playable on next-gen consoles, right?”
Devs: “Haha, no 🙂❤”
that sounds more like a publisher thing
With the increased prices of games, i feel like we will be seeing more of these soon lol
Not just increased prices but releasing broken, buggy and unfinished games. There's more of an incentive to do a 'try before you buy' now than there's ever been. It's just a pity that only one person is dealing with Denuvo, which is usally what the scummiest companies use.
@@Elwaves2925 Yeah, I use to just buy games straight out but "try before you buy" is a good thing. I bought Resident evil 4 on steam and on ps2, good times but the pirated version... worked better while the steam one had a white line down screen.. and at the time took a lot to fix. I recommend keeping this practice is a must buy supporting them if you like the game as I have. Indie,s I would almost never do it.
The Sims 4 costs 1000 USD approx. if you take all DLCs. Irrelevant to the original comment but I thought would be a cool fact to drop here
@@uranus256 Yep and they haven't even finished releasing packs for it. There's at least a year or more left.
Well too be fair, AAA studios are struggling to put out a game that isn't absolute dog shit and is actually finished.
So when they barely got time to finish it, I'd assume they wouldn't really have time to bother with piracy.
And the publishers or companies being their usual arogant self and having too much faith on pre-orders certainly adds up.
Honestly, as a guy who has pirated games mostly to see if I am going to like them or not, I appreciate these tricks and find them hilarious. I don't know how many people will remember this, but companies have done the reverse of this as well. Westwood Studios leaked a version of Tiberian Sun that was pretty much the full game, minus all of the video content. Doing this bumped the sales up big time.
That's because Westwood was a studio that made games because they enjoyed making games. There aren't many AAA studios like that nowadays.
the no movies thing was very much a thing for all their titles atleast up untill and including RA2:YR (EA at that point) - atleast part of the reason was for the "crackers" to save on disc space. since without the movies they could reduce the amount of CDs needed. and the slow internet speed back then. so only movies was usually the ones mid mission (in the radar frame)
Blizzard actually did a similar thing with D2. allowing you to install a "lesser" version where the cutscenes had to be loaded from the CD.
Yeah but more anti-piracy measures unfortunately means WAY more piracy.
@@carlcarlson5553 So true. A lot of the code crackers out there take every advance in security as a personal challenge. And since many of the crackers are ALSO security DEVELOPERS, you can imagine how this can get crazy. There are even messages to each other buried in some of the code from what I understand.
As a developer, you're goal isn't necessarily to hurt the pirates, but to enthral them, and entertain them into buying the game
Or at the least make fun of them so hard, that they have to buy it to get around it to not be embarrassed
nobody is embarrassed to pirate lmao
You think pirates care lmao? Anyways, your little antics will get removed pretty easily when the game is cracked.
then you gotta make the game good first and not make the people feel like they have been robbed by buying it
EA almost made more effort in to the ideas for anti piracy than they did for the gameplay.
Definitely 💯
Sid Meier's Pirates! has to be among the earliest examples of this. During your campaign you would be randomly asked to identify the flag of an incoming ship, the names of which could be found in the manual. If you got it wrong the game would turn incredibly difficult. Your crew would always be disgruntled and eager to mutiny, you would plunder fewer valuables and resources, and the wind would constantly blow strongly in the opposite direction of where you were trying to go.
reminds me of several very old Apple games that would periodically ask you "trivia" questions that could only be answered by reading the game's paper manual.
the one at the VERY end of "dark heart of Uukrul" was particularly obscure, it's part of the "untranslatable prayer":
"wur quanar wur..." that's all i remember.
The old "Police Quest" games on PC all started like that! They needed something like your "locker combo" or to put a name to a mug shot. All of which could only be found in the manual!
You can include Megatraveller 1 and Tunnels & Trolls in those examples.
That's actually a very interesting and creative reaction. Back then the standard response to a failed question was simply to close the game.
the saves carrying over sounds pretty cool!
👆🏻
I agree, if I make a game, I'll do something like that...
But also do something like the chicken gun. lol Too funny.
I love the ones where it makes the pirates out themselves online its just so hilarious to see them complain and then get publicly shamed for it, how embarrassing
today you get punished by preordering a game
In the Ravenfield modding scene, some modders have made their own anti-piracy scripts which end up replacing every single texture in the game to a random PNG of their choosing. JakeCoin being the most famous, I've dabbled in the script too while testing around - it's definitely silly fun. I believe you could also make it to where certain users couldn't use the mod, the one I know of was a guy who refused to pay for a commission he said he'd pay for. So the guy made it public for everybody, but the script activated for that one guy in particular.
This has happened in the Rimworld modding community too, but targeting someone like this is a great way for the mod creator to get their mod removed. One creator didn't want people using lewd mods with their characters, and messed with people who had the infamous lewd mod installed along with theirs in several ways that rendered the game unplayable. Of course this caused the mod to be removed
@@Holgast Yeah I can agree with targeting specific people can be an issue, I know Datae (A Garry's Mod addon creator) has some sort of script on Beatrun where your character has a beaver head placed on them if you're using a mod he claims is incompatible. He's done some other not-so-good stuff as well, I know he used to leak IPs of people who pirated his mod.
sounds like skyrim modders
@@HolgastIts good that it was removed. Shit like that counts as malware at that point.
@@King_CreepaLot I thought he leaks every IP that is from east europe, regardless if you are paying him or not?
Do any of these anti-piracy features ever turn on for no reason for people who have bought the games? Feels like something that's bound to happen, I can imagine Rockstar releasing an update that just accidentally turned on one of the random anti-piracy features and then having to scramble to fix it.
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I think there was an event back then that happened involving one of the old Rainbow Six games
You literally just said it, so for context windows live for games just shutdown and it broke one of the games using it which is GTA 4
This isn't quite the same thing but the batman happened to me when I bought it officially I could only play it cracked after they got around it.
exactly what i thought, thats a big risk for all those games except the first one, since the pirated version was spread by the devs themselves so the pirated code was not on the original copies
Seeing some of these makes me wonder if there's some "major, game breaking glitches" for games that are actually anti-piracy measures that haven't been revealed as such yet. Sometimes you hear about such things, major glitches that are ruining the games for some people but a lot of people in the comments of videos and articles about it have never experienced it. What if they are anti-piracy measures and because people obviously aren't coming forward about it, they haven't figured it out yet while the devs haven't outright admitted it yet?
There have been some rare instances where anti-piracy measures were accidentally triggered on legit copies of games, which may also be causing what you describe.
The old "thank you for supporting us and our hard word by buying our game" trick always works on me, and I feel too guilty to carry on.
Them multinational billion dollar corporations really be struggling these days 😢
@@purplefishy8164 it's usually smaller studios/indie developers who suffer from piracy.
@@purplefishy8164 and most people who work at those companies are poverty stricken. What's your braindead point again?
@@AmazedBunion well you will when you end up with bland generic AAA games because no one with an imagination and a small studio can afford to make anything lol
@@AmazedBunion no one cares *for AAA companies*
Remember, piracy can't be stealing if paying for it isn't owning.
You never own them in the first place.
So if you don't return a rental car it's not stealing because you can't own it ?
@@fancelke Renting games went out of style. Nowadays is so much worse.
@@fancelke renting is not buying it
I pirated numerous games. When we first got a computer, I was immediately addicted. My parents didn't like all the 'gaming stuff' so they didn't give me any money to buy games. Piracy was the only option I had really to play new singleplayer games. Those were more simple, good times.
In the old The Settlers 3 game, if pirated, the iron smelters would produce pigs instead - completely crippling your industry and preventing you from building any kind of miliary units.
@Henry Tan my brain had to run on a treadmill so i could read this reply, what is up with your grammar, m8? mine ain't the best either but at least people can understand me, while yours is just.... yikes
Came here to post this. I think they eventually removed this because it could be triggered for some people who had legitimate copies, and they got extra mad. This was the early days of the internet, so releasing patches was less common.
So... they made pig iron? Yes, that's a real thing.
3:40 *Chef's kiss* 🤌🏽 for that statement from Gary
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After more than 12 years, the Mirror’s edge bug I had back in the day has been finally explained 😂💔
Mirrors edge was released in 2016... What do you mean more than 12 years ago
@@businessgamerprb5398 The game's from 2008
@@businessgamerprb5398 That's the second mirrors edge game, Mirrors Edge Catalyst. The first one released in 2008 or 2009 if I remember correctly.
@@wishwereperera oh didn't know that... Thank you
@@businessgamerprb5398 👍
The Sims 4 had more creativity in catching piracy than in it's actual gameplay lol
That last one was genius 😭😭😭 I love how the irony was completely lost on them lol
In The Talos Principal, I pirated it BC there was no demo, and after the first small set of Intro Puzzles, it would lock you in the elevator, and auto save on you. I remember thinking it's a bug, replaying the beginning again, just to get locked again. I googled and figured it out fast.
But, the intro puzzles and the story had me hooked, I had to buy it :)
DEMOS NEED TO MAKE A COMEBACK!
But the Talos Principle did have a demo, I remember playing it. Although now that I look for it on Steam, I can't find it. Weird.
"Play less than two hours" money back policy in steam is pretty much a free demo.
It was one of the last games I pirated and I bought it immediately after I found out why they had locked me in the elevator. Not because I necessarily needed to finish the game, but because I respected it so much.
Coming from Eastern Europe I remember laughing at the concept of anti-piracy measures until that one level in Arkham Asylum where you had to glide all the way to the batcave... that was a good one...
Has anyone in Eastern Europe ever bought a Game ?😂😂😂.
@@RealBadGaming52 👀
"Nooo!!! you must buy our game and micro purchases!!"
hehe, pirate go brrr...
I pirate games, try them out for a couple of hours, test the performance on my PC, then I buy it when i get my salary. Now i have hundreds of games in my steam library.
Just a couple of entries in, but the theme seems to be: “You don’t buy, you don’t fly.” 😂
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Just get a good torrent and you fly for free 🎉🎉
it's actually funny, how these punishments came out to the surface of the internet
Sims 4 didn't create that, operation Flashpoint did it. You could play the game at first, but it would slowly Pixelate until it was unplayable. It gave you a chance to try it like a demo
👍🏼
It's worth pointing out that measure didn't work in the Sims 4. The pixelation was cracked very soon after release, so pirates weren't affected.
i'd like to see a video how they even detect pirated copies or the various ways to do that. It's an interesting technique to not totally block their fun in hopes they may buy the game.
I think there were parts of ram which are dedicated to not being changed unless it is pirated using certain systems
I don't know... If I encountered any of these glitches and then discovered that it's the company's anti-piracy thing, it would only discourage me from buying anything from the company in the future.
Stormworks was pretty cool, the game would work as normal then after around 20 minutes it would just constantly rain down fish making the game unplayable. The devs made it that way as sort of a demo or by "giving them something then taking it away" as they put it. It was definitely worth trying out because raining fish was pretty funny to see.
Mafia 2 had a good one where after a certain point in the game your health would be lowered to the minimum and no matter what you did it would stay like that. So if you got hit you died. Although it was fixable by using a save file that let you load in after the mission where it started to happen.
"makes the pirate walk the plank"
OMFG that is amazing
😅
especially since oftemost it were the landlubbers and not pirates, that walked the plank instead.
4:07 #7: Yooo thats a sick idea. Props to the Cricket 22 Devs. Instead of being sore about it.. Just say "If you buy the full game you can transfer your save & finish the game." Shiiiii, GG to them haha.
Well, I downloaded cracked Batman Arkham Asylum but didn't face the consequences you said. Guess I was lucky
Noobs don't know how to pirate properly like us, keep it secret🤫🤫
I've gotten cracked copies of games before but I've never experienced these. I think it's a great way to curb piracy
@@warbync absolute facts. I'm chatting from Nigeria and to be honest $80 will conveniently get you enough groceries that you'll use for a month plus. $80 will pay my internet bill for 3months. So I agree with you.
Well... my friend pirated most of those games and did not experience any of those bugs... wink wink.
He's a bad person, I know... :D
Long live Cpt. Jack!
You should meet my friend. The things he does are deplorable and I don't condone them. They both could relate.
More like Long Live Empress! Because she's the only one who's cracking Denuvo at the moment.
@@IndraD man of culture here
My 'friend' also pirated Arkham Asylum (originally) and didn't encounter any of the things mentioned. I guess those measures didn't work, or it's all an urban myth.
Long life .... GET a JOB , gaming isn't welfare.
I remember when i pirated portal it had so many missing textures and I absolutely loved the story. That I ended up buying the game to experience the game with no missing textures.
Portal has no drm where did you possibly download portal where it has missing textures?
@@zim07 back in the day there were a few heavily compressed versions laying around the net. Depending on your skills, the coder's or if you tried to extract it on a tuesday, the files would be either damaged or have the wrong permissions.
Extra one: dunno if it happened only to me but on euro truck 2 pirate vers your truck will randomly receive an bright pink Dye, and if you purchase another color, the game will dye it back to bright pink while you're driving it
Back in the days, all pirated Euro Truck 2 games had Pink trucks.
the Talos Principle had an elevator that refused to function. Pirates patched it though after they found out about it. Same as the Arkham Asylum measures, they made a fix for it. Both games I bought later. The Talos Principle also didn't have any computer dialog in the pirated version so it made it way less fun and somewhat confusing at times. Definitely worth buying for the dialog being included.
The first time I played Talos Principle was a pirated copy and I had zero issues. Now I have it on the Epic store and Steam so I guess piracy does have its perks lol.
@@xavierabii548 Yeah it helps when you're broke and still want to experience the good stuff. And I feel I we have an ethical obligation to pirate AAA games, but need to try to support independent devs when we can.
@@mitchcoppo I agree 👍🏾 💯 Independent developers definitely need the support more than multimillion dollar corporations.
In the Talos Principle, people who bought the pirated version where unable to use an elevator, which allows the player to progress to the next stage of the game.
👍🏼 for part 2
"bought the pirated version" 💀
You don't buy pirated games. That's the entire purpose of piracy.
@@tomc180 OP literally has no idea what he's talking about lmao
Think u could just noclip tru the wall, so in the end it did nothing...
I had an original copy of the original Civilization installed on my dad's IBM PC in the 90s. I eventually swapped the game for another with a friend but 2-3 weeks later got the itch to play again. The anti-piracy measure was that a rival world leader would denounce you as a usurper and you would have to prove your worthiness by answering a question, with the answer of course being in the manual. I had played the game so much by this point that I had memorised them all! I did later give a deliberate wrong answer to see what would happen. I was overthrown and executed.
Crysis : shoot chickens in pirated game but no cluck sounds
Diablo 3 : shoot chicken arrow with cluck sounds in legitimate game
Yep, Game Dev Tycoon is my most favorite anti-piracy measure. It requires no DRM, no "always online" or any crap like that. Just make sure to distribute your own "cracked" version of the game so people cannot progress further and come online to whine about pirates stealing their in-game money. :)
They even released a modified version of that as a game mode that allowed you to play a harder version of the game where you have to keep up with copy protection in addition to the usual gameplay loop, or else lose all your profits to pirates.
I had an idea for an anti-piracy measure if anyone ever designs a theater impresario sim game: If it is pirated, limit the troupe's repertoire to _The Pirates of Penzance._
There was also original Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis (original ARMA), where the computer AI would start cheating progressively more and more. Sniping you from from a mile away whilst moving. Your helicopter controls being out of order, your gun using more ammunition than what's being fired, etc.
Hmm. Sounds like standard arma to me 😅
snipers "sniping" is just arma. flashpoint was a great game, but it required a lot of change in tactics when compared to other games that came out in that age (mostly lying on the belly in the forrest, among bushes, nervously looking left and right, god forbid meeting enemy armor xD)
The only anti piracy that worked with me, was from Metal Gear Solid 1. When the NPC says the frequency code of Merly was written on the back of the cd case. I looked for a CD case everywhere in the game until I realise:
"Oh! he meant the actual CD case of the game...
... Damn! I don't have that! 😑"
That kinda sucks tho. If your a kid who looses everything cause they had no where to store. Like myself 😅
I had an actual copy of the game, and for years, I had to use the manual to find it, because I couldn't figure out where it was ont he back of the case (I assumed it was a mistake ont he developer's part or something) I felt like a dumbass when I realized where it was... There's a screenshot on the back of the case where snake is talking to Meryl via codec, and the frequency is literally right right there between them...
Ok, but I had my mind blown when I heard Cricket video games are actually a thing
We all were and now you know why that dev was so mad that they pirated the game Lol
The audacity to pirate a game then complain that it doesnt work is mind boggling to me
The funniest part of the Arkham Asylum one is that a pirate asked a dev if it was a bug and they responded with “It’s not a bug in the game’s code, it’s a bug in your moral code.” 😮 😂
The game dev anti piracy thing is ofc the best fit. That just hits home.
Well, to be honest. A huge problem has always been the lack of demos and STEAM is not making it safe enough to try a game before the refund option expires. I wish you could set a stop timer that cancles the game automatically. The other thing I hate about certain games I have purchased but had to get the pirate version of. Are the ones that always need STEAM to be online to start. The WORST part in a game...I don't have internet and have to take my PC to the city to download and update. So I can only ever buy a hard copy or play it once online. So yeah, some devs just don't think of people without internet. At least now I can afford tethering to my cell to get into games, so that's an upside. There are advantages and obvious disadvantages to pirated games, the devs certainly deserve to be paid, if you like what you see.
Hopefully the piracy detection principles / algorithm are dependable, because accidentally trolling actual customers would backfire severely.
I like the Serious Sam scorpion, the drunken mode and the chicken mod best, though i would have like for them to be a bit more mature like the scorpion making surprise appearance, inflicting a drunk debuff if stung while attracting a horde, or the weapons to fire chickens only if you need bullets the most like being down to 10% health, possibly with them harassing you afterwards on top of it.
This way those become more of a laugh, which I believe to be better than just being crude or cruel.
I've seen that happen. The buyer comments in a forum (Sims 4), gets mocked and ridiculed by the devs and players, shows 100% proof they bought the game and the devs still do nothing.
Thankfully they had the last laugh as they refunded the game, downloaded the cracked version, which had already removed the pixelation 'feature', then showed that on the forum before the devs deleted the post.
#1 is just brilliant,to think devs doing that is just sublime!
As long as they get it right. Imagine if it affected a lot of legitimate players.
One of the earliest I can remember was from the 1992 DOS game "Legend of Kyrandia" (a point and click adventure). At various points throughout the game, you would be prompted to enter a word from the game manual. Pirated copies often didn't have the manual, so after 3 incorrect attempts, you'd see an animation of the protagonist Brandon turning to stone. Not only did the game quit, but the whole system rebooted at that point!
last time i pirated a game was probly 15 years ago or more, its much nicer to just have it working and getting updates without any fuss having to recrack it or shit.
I pirated games when I was a kid but luckily didn't experience this. But now I got a job, I am happily buying the games I'd like to play.
i'm a pirate and I love it when devs put something in
I remember that anti piracy thing in Arkham Asylum. I was a poor kid and I pirated games. I managed to get past the grapple hook thing, by using a trainer to enable noclip and just float to the next part.
Also I remember in Assassin's Creed 2 there was a certain mission that would just never show up, and you couldn't progress. Think I replayed the game like three times up to that point, before realizing the issue.
my pirated version of AC2 did get completed tho... my dealer is giving me good stuff
Now I wanna pirate the games just to film the bugs this would be hilarious.
I come from a relatively low-income country, for many people here buying a game at full price would often mean spending 20+ % of your monthly salary, which simply is not going to happen. Especially if you are a kid asking your parents for it, and absolutely not if like me you are the 5th of 5 kids. So yeah, I pirated pretty much all the games I played until I was 19 or so (plus there were people selling pirated games on the street and even under the table in legit stores). Today, I make a very decent amount of money (for my country anyway), and I have bought a copy of pretty much every game I have played (and enjoyed) in the past :)
GTA 4 screwed me over, once I completed the game, it believed i pirated the game, i had the damn DVD inside so I was drunk camera all the time. It was wild.
Ahhh, I'm reminded of the first Witcher, which used a novel (at the time) method of putting key information on a secondary hidden layer of the physical disc such that it could not be read by the software used to make the .iso files. Some of the hidden layer included entire NPCs required to progress past the first town, rendering the pirated version little more than a bloated demo (which was actually fine and the standard protection at the time was SecuRom iirc, which we all hated because it behaved like a rootkit)
The Batman Arkham Asylum anti-piracy measures were so good, it was legitimately the last game I ever got on pirate. I was so impressed I bought the game straight after and never looked back!
Quitter. The real challenge is to break the anti piracy, not the silly game. The silly or actually fun ones, sure you ruefully laugh along and maybe buy the real game. The really annoying ones, to quote Ivan Drago, "I must break you."
The person you call bad is actually our savior in Iran. You don't know how much a 70 dollar game costs in Iran.
Yes, for you, this price is a normal thing, but for us, 70 dollars is equivalent to buying a luxury car!
I love the playful piracy retaliation!!😂
They deadass had footage @ 7:37 of someone pretending to play league of legends with a controller
I remember playing a pirated game. It prob had anti piracy. But i told friends it was bugged af. And none of us bought it. Months later we found out it was antipiracy.
The only one I know from my childhood is Black and White 2 with kids never growing up. I was suprised how I don’t have enough food even tho I doing everything I can to have it, while also not having adults to assign to be farmers. Then I saw a big line of kids running around and I fully understand what happen.
When they showed the GTA "drunk" camera... I said, "So that's what was causing that!"
I love it. If you don't want to pay for it, you get a screwed up version of it.
I've had a problem with a game I actually legally owned. It was Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth and I installed it on my old PC, where it ran smoothly. Years later I then installed it on my new computer and there it suddenly had a "bug" where when I went into the story and had Frodo and the others start going into the mines of Moria, they all just.. died on the spot. Had to google that to find out that it's the anti-piracy thing. I am still not sure why it happened; I played with the original CD. u-u'
Most likely it was an issue with how the os handled the piracy check. Game expects X data when using Y function but OS xyz returns Y+1. Hence game thinks it's pirated.
I once pirated Shadow of Mordor and somewhere in the game (the mission where you get the power to control others) I got stuck, none of the character's movement worked, much less I could pause or enter the character menu. Not to mention the constant boos that started to appear and repeat themselves in a loop.
Coincidentally, the game was on sale, so I bought it and started playing again lol
"Point and Laugh at Pirates" LOL... We point and laugh at the money you spent :D
I think it was smart for the company to make the game playable for pirates but then make certain key aspects unplayable (like the mirrors edge, or cricket games), so it kinda makes you throw in the towel and buy the game
Basically a demo at that point. Btw more games need demos haha
same
@ 6:18 Of course it was Dan Hibiki who pirated it.
His dojo is beyond bankrupt
I think the sims 4 thing got cracked basically instantly, I am not ashamed to say that I pirated the sims 4 VERY early on, and nothing was different, from the real version, other than being better running than the original version. I bought the Sims 4, after deciding I liked the game (this was before the dlc hell it is now), but these days EA are just milking the absolute shit out of the game with massively overpriced DLCs, so today the best way to play Sims 5, is actually to pirate it.