Brawly Likes to Brawl
Member
Still the best:
I heard that one was actually put in by the people that dumped the game.
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Pirating 'The Talos Principle' Will Trap You in an Elevator
- Thread starter Ryo Hazuki
- Start date
I heard that one was actually put in by the people that dumped the game.
That's pretty cute. I wish there were alternate costumes in the legitimate version.
Hot Coldman
Banned
Yeah, I just noticed that myself. Boooo.
That1BlackGuy
Member
charlequin
Banned
Cartridge "backup" devices. You'd rip the cartridge, then play back, essentially, the ROM file with the device serving as the cartridge. Anti-piracy against these devices tended to work by checking against memory addresses and other elements of the physical hardware that weren't strictly duplicated by the simple ripping process.
It's not uncommon at all. Jenn Frank wrote an article about it a couple years ago. It's extremely difficult to write algorithms for these things that are completely reliable, just like it's extremely difficult to write software that does anything and is extremely reliable.
Bomber Bob
Banned
Actually, you can still see if they own the game. See the small mouse symbol that first guy replying has next to his name? That indicates that he owns the game. The guy who made the thread doesn't have it.
I dunno, I like the subtle things that can be mistaken as bugs, especially when people make posts to complain about them like above lol
I think it was Far Cry 4? I didn't read in to it, but I think I remember it having some graphical error.
The only problem was they did it by releasing a day one patch for 'legit' customers, so when people got the game early (but didn't pirate), it still happened.
I don't know if it's been mentioned yet, but the DS version of Dragon Quest V had a -magical- troll. If you were playing on an R4, a boat you ride after a couple hours of gameplay will just keep sailing... and sailing... and sailing... forever.
Messofanego
Banned
Looks like there's even more to this with missing subtitles and dialogue, and of course, they're asking for help on Steam:
LOL
I bet Tain willingly played through the game this way.
BodiesWithoutOrgans
Member
Still the best:
Is this real some say its fake ?
ZanzibarBreeze
Member
My buddy had a ripped version of Colin McRae Rally 2.0, and the game would let you pick a car and a course but would freeze at the loading screen. The ultimate frustration. Served him, I suppose!
abracadaver
Member
thats amazing. I never knew
petran79
Banned
doesnt buying it from Humblestore allow for a non-DRM version that doesnt require installation? Or does it require activation?
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/p/thetalosprinciple_storefront
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/p/thetalosprinciple_storefront
Ryo Hazuki
Member
The game requires Steamworks to run.
Oh that's neat, I never noticed that.
Aaron Strife
Banned
Nah it was added in.
Ahaha, that's amazing! The DS version of Umihara Kawase had an anti-piracy measure where after 10 minutes or so the hookshot would stop gripping to walls and would even snap off! iirc this even applied to the tutorial cutscenes lolol.
AuthenticM
Member
Stereogatari
Banned
Is there a crazy fat guy stuck with you?
CharmingCharlie
Member
I am in two minds about these kind of things. Sure it is kinda cool to "expose" pirates like this. However it can also effect legit owners of the game. I have had experience of it myself with GTA 4. If you pirated GTA 4 you would get a drunk cam kicking in and would be unable to use the computers in the internet cafes. Unfortunately this "protection" would kick in at a drop of a fucking hat and many users with legit copies experienced it.
Naturally the minute you went on a board complaining of drunk cam and non-working computers you were instantly labelled a "pirate". Not for one minute did it occur to anyone that person could be a legit customer and it is the copy protection fucking up because as we all know developers are 100% perfect and everything they do works 100% of the time so that must mean the guy was a pirate.
Naturally the minute you went on a board complaining of drunk cam and non-working computers you were instantly labelled a "pirate". Not for one minute did it occur to anyone that person could be a legit customer and it is the copy protection fucking up because as we all know developers are 100% perfect and everything they do works 100% of the time so that must mean the guy was a pirate.
Messofanego
Banned
Luckily for Steam, the mouse icon makes it pretty clear who owns the game legitimately and who doesn't
thoseAREmySHOES
Member
Still the best:
I don't think this was ever confirmed to be real.
CharmingCharlie
Member
Luckily for Steam, the mouse icon makes it pretty clear who owns the game legitimately and who doesn't
GTA 4 isn't a steam game. I used to be a huge fan of GTA and bought my PC copy retail which doesn't use steam. So naturally because I couldn't "prove" I bought it off steam (because you know everyone buys every damn thing off steam) I must be a pirate.
At the end of the day these bullshit bugs devs put into the game are a form of DRM that hurt paying customers just as much as pirates. Infact it probably hurts paying customers more cos they are stuck with it but pirates can easily release a crackfix to negate it.
Messofanego
Banned
Why would legitimate customers encounter these pirate bugs? Is your example of GTA 4 pirate bugs affecting legit customers something able to generalise for your argument or just a rare instance?
Because SecuROM is a piece of shit.
Ryo Hazuki
Member
I wonder how common it is for these piracy measures to bleed over in to paying customers? In The Talos Principle's case it is only available via Steam, so that's the DRM there. Pretty much ensures that you're not going to get any "anti-piracy bugs" if you're playing legit. It really cannot happen unless you've downloaded the cracked version in this case. It would take a major fuck up for it to be even possible.
CharmingCharlie
Member
Because developers are NOT infallible shit they make breaks or doesn't do exactly what it is supposed to do. Hell half the time we are lucky if the bloody game even works as advertised never mind encountering bullshit bugs INTENTIONALLY put into the game. I really love how some on here think anti-piracy measures are 100% accurate all of the time and that if you are experiencing these measures it must be because you are an evil pirate and not because the anti-piracy measures are fucking up.
I own GTA 4 on retail disc and I have encounted Rockstars anti-piracy mechanisms in my retail purchased copy. It happened that bloody often I went to search for help in trying to solve my issues. I couldn't get a single shred of advice other than "herp derp buy the game you evil pirate"
Could SNES games even fit on a floppy?
freeofgreed
Member
Cool thanks!
That's quite amazing. So if for example I tried to play it on an emulator would these checks kick in? (For the record I'm not actually going to, my backlog is huge enough as it is. Just genuinely curious).
Pops Maellard
Member
How does stuff like this work? As in, how does the game recognize that it's a pirated copy?
Was going to bring up that one. And yes, a "patch patch" was released too, in case you were a pirate that felt offended even by this measure.
If I remember correctly, on the loading screens there were also messages along the lines of "If you buy the game, blah blah"/
KojiKnight
Member
Here's the thing... devs don't HAVE to write code designed to check if a game is pirated or not... They can just do what Game Dev Tycoon did and released the modified game themselves. Release your 'cracked' version day one (the same day most cracks appear) before the scene devs get their version out.
You poison the waters by having your broken version out first which will inevitably get more downloads and hit when your game is most vulnerable to loss of sales (the first few days).
After the issues are reported, you let everyone know that was your anti-piracy to shame the hell out of the pirates and then you reap the positive PR because everyone likes to laugh at dirty pirates.
Lots of ways, amongst the simplest is to just do an MD5 check of your main executable and see if it's been modified. If it doesn't match, turn on hilarious anti-piracy measure X.
You poison the waters by having your broken version out first which will inevitably get more downloads and hit when your game is most vulnerable to loss of sales (the first few days).
After the issues are reported, you let everyone know that was your anti-piracy to shame the hell out of the pirates and then you reap the positive PR because everyone likes to laugh at dirty pirates.
Lots of ways, amongst the simplest is to just do an MD5 check of your main executable and see if it's been modified. If it doesn't match, turn on hilarious anti-piracy measure X.
Usually via file checksums. Run a hashing code over the game binary to generate a semi-unique hash and compare it to a known value that the hash is supposed to be. It can be gotten around either by hacking out the checksum code or by manipulating the binary so it outputs an identical hash, but both of those things are hard to do.
I feel like you shouldn't shame people for acquiring a file that you deliberately distributed, especially since at that point it's no longer illegal.
Zero-Crescent
Member
There are a few that come to mind:
Black Sigil (DS) - The publisher (Graffiti Entertainment) claimed that the game-breaking bugs were an anti-piracy measure, but considering that A) Plenty of people with confirmed legit cartridges were experiencing the bugs, B) The devs themselves had no idea of what Graffiti was referring to (and IIRC the devs mentioned that Graffiti had published an older, buggier build instead of the final build), and C) No signs of Anti-Piracy code could be found by ROM hackers, it's most likely that the publisher was lying.
Titan Quest - This is probably the one that you were thinking of, as I believe the dev has gone on record saying that the anti-piracy measures made the game buggier for pirates, which negatively affected the game's word-of-mouth, as people thought it was buggy, contributing to the game's failure.
Ryo Hazuki
Member
You know what would have been really horrible? Putting in one of those sigil puzzles that didn't have the right pieces to be solved, making it impossible.
KojiKnight
Member
If your only distribution was via websites that intentionally only deliver pirated games... Yes, they should be able to shame them. It's not like they put it on the main page of their website and said "Free $60 game here! Hah you guys are chumps for believing that!"
It's also not illegal for them to do that with the software they own.
Piracy is the unauthorized use or reproduction of software. Distributing the software yourself, even if on a site called the pirate bay, is authorizing use and reproduction, so does not count as piracy.
While not a game itself, a few years ago Gamemaker permanently destroyed the game resources of legitimate users due to false-positives, effectively wiping hours upon hours of work.
charlequin
Banned
Because computers aren't magical? If you want to detect that someone is running software illicitly you can't just deduce that from nothing, you need to define a system by which that detection is performed -- which means carefully identifying elements of the game install or the system that should look like X, but when pirated look like Y instead. The problem with this is that computers have a ton of variance in all kinds of things (different OSes, different updates installed, different filesystems, different hardware, different directory structure, etc. etc. etc....) and all kinds of things you might think will "definitely" look like X could very well fail to do so on a given system.
Certainly it's possible to do better or worse at this. If you're conservative, you can keep false positives very low (although then you won't hit most actual pirates either.) But there's always going to be a risk that you misidentify your illicit customers.
Seven Force
Banned
Chrono Trigger DS has a similar measure. You know the short, trippy animation that plays whenever you do a time warp? If you were playing from a flashcart, the first time you go through the time warp, it loops endlessly.
You're*
Falcs
Banned
Wholey shit!! I played this game at a friend's house when I was a kid and I really liked it. I never knew what it was called and I've thought about it every now and then for the past almost 20 years and wondered what game it was. Now I know what it was!! Thank you! Now if only I could somehow get my hands on it.Not sure if anyone is familiar with the puzzle platformer game 'Puggsy' from Travellers Tales back in 1993. I had it for the MegaDrive. Pretty great game! Anyway, playing it on an emulator will work fine for the first few levels, then you're greeted with this:
Amazing, considering the year it was released. Not quite sure how this would have been triggered back in the day. Either way, cool!
Most could, yes, barring some big RPGs.
IIRC, the single biggest SNES/Super Famicom game (storage-wise) was Tales of Phantasia, at 48 megabits, or 6 megabytes. The smallest ROM size available was 2 megabits, or about 250 kilobytes.
16-bit games, barring those on CD with FMV/redbook audio, are tiny.