Support NeoGAF

Caesar III · Feb 23, 2011

I really liked the piracy handling in Settlers 3 and Cultures:

Settlers 3:
Trees would not grow to max
No new settlers from new houses
Iron smelter produces pigs instead
damage you units make is minimal always
alcohol does not generate mana
no weapons to baracks

Cultures:
you get new villagers non stop. The problem is all of them are girls which do nothing useful really. So after some time you are out of food and all die

JackEtc · Feb 23, 2011

linkboy said:
The Michael Jackson Experience game for the DS would play Vuvuzela's over the music, rendering the game unplayable.

Yeah, this is probably the funniest one.

Animation-Imp · Feb 23, 2011

Sierra used to do nice things in their adventure series.
The one I remember best was Codename Iceman.
There you used the manual to guide you through a submarine section in the middle of the game.
Pre-internet, no manual = no progression.

plagiarize · Feb 23, 2011

there was a C+C game if i remember correctly had a variable. it was a number. every time you ran a pirated copy it lowered that variable.

that variable was how long it waited until it gave the CPU team a nuke. a friend of mine was asking how you stop the other team getting a nuke right away and i had no idea what he was talking about until he showed me.

that was pretty funny.

Loom came with this really nice book that had some backstory and a list of weaves (including many that arent in the game) and it used a red decoder thing.

those weren't always the best though. when i was younger, i had a pirated copy of the original prince of persia. i literally worked out all the potion questions through trial and error. no idea how i had the patience for that.

Adam Prime · Feb 23, 2011

Man I had NO idea cartridges had that copy protection built into them in the NES/SNES era! I learned something new today, that's crazy!

I would love to see developers get creative again with that kind of stuff on the new 3DS and NGP... unfortunately with the internet it seems that there will always be patches for that kind of thing. But the least they can do it make it inconvenient.

PetriP-TNT · Feb 23, 2011

Hanmik said:
Rocket Ranger from Cinemaware back on the C64 and Amiga had a funny Anti Piracy thing:

and that game was fun back then... great graphics and a typical quality Cinemaware production..

In some Amiga strategy game you had to input some seriously hard technical specs from the 500+ page manual.

Rapstah · Feb 23, 2011

Anything that makes it easier to buy and play the game normally than pirating it wins in my book. Steam DRM pretty much nails this if you get into the habit of always being logged on.

eznark · Feb 23, 2011

ThoseDeafMutes said:
I like Stardock's anti-piracy measure. It consists of making quality games and releasing them completely DRM free.

.

neorej · Feb 23, 2011

Almost forgot: Leisure Suit Larry - Love For Sail had an awesome anti-piracy-measure: the game came with a scratch-card which would release certain smells. Whenever Larry would enter a room, the game would tell you to scratch the appropriate square on the card, and take a deep whiff so you could smell what the room smells like.

Yoschi · Feb 23, 2011

Caesar III said:
Cultures:
you get new villagers non stop. The problem is all of them are girls which do nothing useful really. So after some time you are out of food and all die

too many girls xD

danmaku · Feb 23, 2011

Half of the posters didn't read the OP or didn't understand the point of the thread. Can we have less useless DRM/piracy rants and more funny copy protection systems?

Alone in the Dark 2 had a neat variation on the classic "code wheel" system; the package contained a set of special cards needed to solve a puzzle at a certain point in the game.

Hanmik · Feb 23, 2011

I would love for a game to introduce this:

as a picture if you try to play multiplayer with a pirated game..!

Jerk · Feb 23, 2011

All the ones that inconvenience the pirates without screwing me over.

Starwolf_UK · Feb 23, 2011

Favorite as in love the cheeky thing it does?

Jet Force Gemini had you unable to run or jump so you couldn't really get anywhere in that game. I think Banjo Kazooie made Banjo a lot smaller. I recall hearing Rareware had all the copiers and that so they could test and figure such things out.

richisawesome said:
Gah. I had that message on my legit mario all stars + world cart.

My brother threw it at the wall one morning, and then it just displayed that message. Forever.

edit - I seem to remember that text actually being animated, with a shiny effect. haha.

Its probably due to the SRAM being damaged and that being the trigger for bringing that message up.

Sega1991 said:
Earthbound is always the one that sticks in my mind. It's just the biggest middle finger that not only do you encounter way more enemies, but apparently they're more difficult (have more HP, do more damage) and then even if you suffer all the way to the end of the game, it deletes your save at the final boss.

I didn't know about enmies being stronger. Just more of them on screen which means you encounter bigger groups.

Thing is the game had numerous checksum checks on it (I think they're related to the flag checks - parts of the game will crash if flags from prior events are not done, can't remember which flag the final boss checks).

TheSeks · Feb 23, 2011

WEGGLES said:
My favourite is when there is no protection so that I don't run into any issues trying to play the copy I paid for.

</thread> Stop treating everyone like criminals, industry.

Catshade · Feb 23, 2011

ThoseDeafMutes said:
I like Stardock's anti-piracy measure. It consists of making quality games and releasing them completely DRM free.

I guess you:

1. Missed the release of Elemental

2. Never update any of your Stardock games, which effectively ties them to the Impulse client

DryvBy · Feb 23, 2011

tehfryguy said:
In batman AA you couldn't glide.

I thought that was the perfect middle finger.

This was the last game I every downloaded (I'm not a real pirate; I bought the game on PS3 but wasn't going to rebuy it on PC). I wanted to take some screen shots on Xfire of my favorite parts to make wallpapers with. I could glide just fine. I've often wondered how someone got the pirated edition that disabled glide.

Strummerjones · Feb 23, 2011

Drkirby said:
But I don't know of any PS2 game that has Piracy Detection that isn't just "Don't boot game."

There's discussion on psx-scene at the moment about some PS2 Rugby game that I think doesn't work at all in HDloader, but does boot in OPL. However, all the menu options are greyed out and cannot be selected if it is run from hard drive, I think you can only watch replays of old games.

louis89 · Feb 23, 2011

Drkirby said:
Earthbound increases enemy encounter rates and deletes your save at the very end.

Does it do that if you play it on a ROM with an emulator on a PC?

Rollo Lawson · Feb 23, 2011

viciouskillersquirrel said:
They're built into the ROMs on the retail cartridges themselves. Basically, the game checks some set of variables that will always return a certain value if you're playing off an actual card. If the game finds that these values don't check out, the game just screws you over in creative ways.

if that can do that, why cant they just make it 100% unplayable the same way?

Waaghals · Feb 23, 2011

I seem to recall that in some of the older C&C games your whole base would blow up after 60 seconds if you had pirated copy.

Neki · Feb 23, 2011

Rollo Larson said:
if that can do that, why cant they just make it 100% unplayable the same way?

Someone brought up that anti-piracy measures were easily circumvented within the first week, if not day. If you made it outright obvious that you were detecting when it was a illegal copy, then it could easily be fixed immediately. That's why the subtle things like Earthbound and Pokemon serve a better purpose, because they still impede game-play without making it obvious that they know you're playing an illegal copy, and no one will notice for a while, depending on how obvious the changes are.

Drkirby · Feb 23, 2011

Hanmik said:
without this cover (or the internet) your were lost..

I am still not really sure if that was intended to be copy protection, or Kojima just thinking he was awesome for coming up with such a puzzle.

Red · Feb 23, 2011

SonOfABeep said:
Some of these SNES anti-piracy screens are giving me the creeps.

That Super Metroid one was for sure designed to freak someone out who was copying SNES games.

wow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-Ic9i9bWko

I've seen that screen or similar screens come up while playing actual carts on a Super Nintendo. These anti-piracy measures aren't foolproof.

Usually had to blow into or shake the cartridge to get it to work if the anti-piracy text appeared.

I remember I had a real beat-up copy of Super Mario RPG that used to almost always boot into a screen with some dude crying, telling me the cartridge wasn't meant for my SNES. I eventually had to rebuy the game I got so sick of it.

HollywoodHeroes · Feb 23, 2011

Hanmik said:
without this cover (or the internet) your were lost..

I remember renting that game on release from Blockbusters, and at the time they would put ps1 games in a Blockbuster branded case. I had to go all the way back to the store to find out the frequency. Fun times.

Dachande · Feb 23, 2011

DryvBy2 said:
This was the last game I every downloaded (I'm not a real pirate; I bought the game on PS3 but wasn't going to rebuy it on PC). I wanted to take some screen shots on Xfire of my favorite parts to make wallpapers with. I could glide just fine. I've often wondered how someone got the pirated edition that disabled glide.

The group that released it probably make a fix for it after it was discovered.

Cheerilee · Feb 23, 2011

eso76 said:
Rich editions. You know, when games come with an artbook, a decent manual, cd with ost..that's the best anti piracy measure

This. I find the negative kind of anti-piracy distasteful, maybe even disgusting. I'll never understand the people who get off on it.

Dev time should be spent making my game better, not making some asshole's game worse (or worse yet, making my game worse).

Code wheels were kind of cool as a kind of bonus minigame toy, but as anti-piracy they offend me.

Chû Totoro said:
Free online content and support.
Burnout Paradise is the perfect example.

This is also good.

dogmaan · Feb 23, 2011

HollywoodHeroes said:
I remember renting that game on release from Blockbusters, and at the time they would put ps1 games in a Blockbuster branded case. I had to go all the way back to the store to find out the frequency. Fun times.

Really?

There was only like 200 possibilities, back then I just scrolled through them all.

PBalfredo · Feb 23, 2011

louis89 said:
Does it do that if you play it on a ROM with an emulator on a PC?

Not by default but you can input a cheat code into your emulator if you want to see all the wackiness the anti-piracy code does. A lot of information about the anti-piracy measure and the code to invoke it are here

DryvBy · Feb 23, 2011

Dachande said:
The group that released it probably make a fix for it after it was discovered.

Which would again mean... any anti-piracy methods are useless.

The best way to stop piracy, to a point, is serial numbers. Because it's just as effective as any form of DRM.

DrFunk · Feb 23, 2011

SimCity PC:

I remember the original SimCity back in '89 or so had a list of cities and codes printed on red paper to make it too hard to copy on the standard black and white copy machine. Color copies worked, but were expensive back then.

When you didn't enter the correct code, you were smacked with constant disasters

HollywoodHeroes · Feb 23, 2011

dogmaan said:
Really?

There was only like 200 possibilities, back then I just scrolled through them all.

My local Blockbusters was only a 15 minute drive away from me so it was easier to go there and inform them about the situation. That way they could tell other people that rented the game about the frequency too.

Starwolf_UK · Feb 23, 2011

When it comes to crap like "write out this bloody sentance and if you get it wrong be prpared to spend 20 minutes loading or have some fun effect like all the NPCs calling you pirate" thats basically the DRM we have today in terms on inconveniance.

louis89 said:
Does it do that if you play it on a ROM with an emulator on a PC?

Nope as the ROM is a cartridge dump with no modifications. What causes the game not to boot is different SRAM size (trying to get round this breaks the checksum) and when emulated the emulator makes an SRAM that is the correct size. You can use a Game Genie code to get the same effect though.

Funny that you mention it but a lot of the checks are similar in that they don't appear on emulator. Though some do or used to when emulators were less accurate like Jet Force Gemini.

Rapstah · Feb 23, 2011

HollywoodHeroes said:
My local Blockbusters was only a 15 minute drive away from me so it was easier to go there and inform them about the situation. That way they could tell other people that rented the game about the frequency too.

But what a damn spoiler it would be to rent the game and have the frequency clearly written on a taped-on note inside the case, spending all your time up until when you have to call it wondering what it was for.

poppabk · Feb 23, 2011

I remember finding this when I was searching for a fix for the mouse acceleration in ghostbusters. Pirated copies had extremely difficult, if not impossible enemies 15 or so minutes in.
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/g...s.php?topic_id=m-1-50051362&pid=944008&page=0

plagiarize · Feb 23, 2011

DryvBy2 said:
Which would again mean... any anti-piracy methods are useless.

not at all. anyone prepared to wait for all the bugs in the pirated game to be found and fixed is never going to buy it, but piracy hurts most at first. if you can delay the release of the pirated copy of the game you will lose less sales to piracy. that's why a lot of companies only make you deal with securom for the first six months or so of release.

it's about stopping the early leaks and the day 1 piracy that hurts the most.

the longer that the only way to get a working copy of the game is to buy one the better. if it only gets cracked a week or two after launch, that's actually going to make a huge difference.

Chavelo · Feb 23, 2011

:lol at the people complaining about DRM.

Anti-piracy discussion DOES NOT EQUAL DRM discussion. ಠ.ಠ

Umihara Kawase - I think the DS port had your fishing line mess up/had trouble latching to stuff if you had a pirated copy. Also, the SNES port inside the game had an alternate opening with the player falling into a pit or something....

SonOfABeep · Feb 23, 2011

aw that's too bad that Super Metroid Piracy screen didn't actually have that music.

Freaked me out anyways

Syril · Feb 23, 2011

Rapstah said:
But what a damn spoiler it would be to rent the game and have the frequency clearly written on a taped-on note inside the case, spending all your time up until when you have to call it wondering what it was for.

Am I the only one who got that frequency from the manual? It was listed there along with everyone else's. I spent like half the game calling it at various points to see if she would pick up yet.

M3d10n · Feb 23, 2011

Rollo Larson said:
if that can do that, why cant they just make it 100% unplayable the same way?

Simple. A game is a program, and a program is a series of instructions. If the game suddenly stops working, the hacker can run it through a debugger and see which instructions are executed before the game stops working. If those instructions are a simple "if/else" condition that decides which instruction to jump next to based on a value stored in memory or in a register (the result of a piracy check), the hacker can easily replace it so the program jumps to where it should if the value where different.

Also, if the piracy check is a single function that resides somewhere in memory, and all points in the code that do the piracy check always jump to this same address, the hacker can find it and modify it's instructions so it always returns "OK", breaking the protection for the entire game no matter how often the game performs the checks.

So, a coder must make sure the piracy check routine is as hard to find and remove as possible. Making the results of the check "spread" over several other elements of the game long after the check was performed is one of the many ways of doing it.

Diablohead · Feb 23, 2011

Meryl wasn't a copy protection thing, if you didn't contact her for like 20 minutes she would contact you instead, you never needed the box.

I think it was there to just be "cool" like how psycho mantis can read your memory card, how revolver says he can detect an auto-fire controller, and so on.

Kade · Feb 23, 2011

Cloth maps.

Zoe · Feb 23, 2011

Diablohead said:
Meryl wasn't a copy protection thing, if you didn't contact her for like 20 minutes she would contact you instead, you never needed the box.

I dunno, my ex had to give up on his pirated copy cause he couldn't figure it out :lol

LordPhoque · Feb 23, 2011

LM4sure · Feb 23, 2011

DryvBy2 said:
This was the last game I every downloaded (I'm not a real pirate; I bought the game on PS3 but wasn't going to rebuy it on PC). I wanted to take some screen shots on Xfire of my favorite parts to make wallpapers with. I could glide just fine. I've often wondered how someone got the pirated edition that disabled glide.

I think that is still considered pirating if you don't own the pc version. You can't just download every other version of the game if you own one version.

poppabk · Feb 23, 2011

DryvBy2 said:
Which would again mean... any anti-piracy methods are useless.

The best way to stop piracy, to a point, is serial numbers. Because it's just as effective as any form of DRM.

But if you have numerous hooks throughout the game that ruin the experience then you kill day one piracy as it means the cracking group have to find all the hooks or play through the game completely to find any deliberate anti-piracy stuff. Then there is also a bunch of broken copies around on the internet long after a new crack comes out - plus now people don't know for sure if the 5GB of data they are downloading will work.
The aim is to kill pirated copies on release day and for a few days or weeks after.

linkboy · Feb 23, 2011

Can I go with Sony's approach regarding the PS3.

Professor Beef · Feb 24, 2011

Drkirby said:
Oh, I remembered anther one. One of the DS Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicle games would tell you "Thank you for playing the Demo" after a certain point if it detected it was a pirated copy.

A friend of mine tried downloading it right in front of me and actually mocked me for buying the retail version. Then the rest of us had a huge laugh when the "thanks" screen popped up. Boy, was he pissed!

Diablohead said:
Meryl wasn't a copy protection thing, if you didn't contact her for like 20 minutes she would contact you instead, you never needed the box.

I think it was there to just be "cool" like how psycho mantis can read your memory card, how revolver says he can detect an auto-fire controller, and so on.

First off: I had no clue that Meryl would eventually call you. Mind-blown on that one.
Secondly, I once had Ocelot kill me because I was pressing the button too fast during the torture session. I would've been furious if I wasn't flattered.

Seiru · Feb 24, 2011

Sony had this thing called "OtherOS" in the PS3 that kept piracy at bay for a long time.

They patched it out though, I'm not sure why.

Helznicht · Feb 24, 2011

Support NeoGAF

Favorite Anti Piracy Messures

Member

Member

Member

Banned

hates soccer, is Mexican

Member

Member

Banned

ERMYGERD!

Member

Member

Member

Banned

Member

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.

Member

Member

Member

Member

Banned

Member

Member

Corporate Apologist

Member

Member

Member

Member

Girl got arse pubes.

Member

Member

not licensed in your state

Member

Member

Member

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future

Banned

Member

Banned

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Banned

Banned

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future

Member

Banned

Banned

Member

Similar threads