That's actually cool because it means you can't share any screenshots of your game without everyone knowing.
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Pirating 'The Talos Principle' Will Trap You in an Elevator
- Thread starter Ryo Hazuki
- Start date
That's actually cool because it means you can't share any screenshots of your game without everyone knowing.
Fantastapotamus
Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
I love it when devs do that.
Still remember when A FRIEND WHO IS NOT ME pirated....I think it was the Settlers 2 and my I mean his Quarry produced pigs instead of iron.
Still remember when A FRIEND WHO IS NOT ME pirated....I think it was the Settlers 2 and my I mean his Quarry produced pigs instead of iron.
Dead Prince
Banned
Shyamalan twist.
Fried Food
Banned
I've always wondered how the Dev's know how to catch the stolen games
JackLongRod
Banned
I love seeing stuff like this
Seriously, I almost kind of want to know if it's possible to get that to happen on a legit Steam copy.
Arthr2ShdsJcksn
Banned
Pirates once again get more content than the average user, especially since pirates will find a way to circumvent this.
GreatestHits
Member
What always surprises me is when they expect to get help from the devs on their "bug". But they always do, which is excellent, because they get called out for in front of everyone. I especially like it when the dev's response is simply "Send us your serial number/activation code and we'll get right on it".
freeofgreed
Member
Haha this is awesome. I wonder if there's any playthroughs where they beat the game with the scorpion following them the whole time.
Interesting, how did people pirate Snes games back in 1994? Or are we talking about now, in which case how would the developers make it do that would work on modern hardware?
Ryo Hazuki
Member
Still just "early 2015" but it's on track according to the devs, so hopefully a date soon.
abracadaver
Member
How does the game detect if its pirated?
In EB's case, there's 5 layers of copy protection that get passed when you start playing the game:
-Region Check (Are you playing on a PAL/EU console?)
-SRAM Check (Checks if the game has 8KB of SRAM. If this fails, you get stuck.)
-Programming Check (If the game's programming is modified, the game heavily increases the number of random enemies on the screen.)
-Secondary Check (Random stuff mostly including another SRAM Check)
-Final Boss Check (Assuming you passed all of the above checks, if you're still playing on a pirated game, the game freezes up during the Final Boss fight, deletes all save data, and then resets the game.)
EB Zero (Mother 1) has some similar checks in that if you try to load up a pirated game, you get an Anti-Piracy screen and bits get changed in the Save RAM which then bricks the cart.
bigwinnerx
Member
Nice try, pirate.
giancarlo123x
Banned
This is a major improvement. Pirates always win dammit.
Operation Flashpoint had this. After a certain point the game would be unplayably buggy.
It's funny, because this Turkish gaming magazine I was reading at the time knocked down the game's score for being extremely buggy when the bugs they mentioned were all anti-piracy measure things.
GreatestHits
Member
lmfao my thoughts exactly
I like Aphex Twin's views on piracy. There's no such thing. However I AM on GAF so I'd like to say if you pirate games, God will smite you, sooner or later
or you'll just get some niiiiiice DLC for free
toythatkills
Member
It might not have to. I'm sure the devs are perfectly aware of where these pirated games come from, just upload their own version to these places and watch the downloads pour in. By the time anyone realises, it's spread too far to stop.
MadClacker
Member
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!
Amazing, considering the year it was released. Not quite sure how this would have been triggered back in the day. Either way, cool!
toythatkills
Member
They should have spent less time on anti-piracy measures and more time on apostrophes.
There's a vertical slice demo with a benchmark, the full game got nothing but rave reviews, and they did tiered pricing to make it cheaper for poorer economies. No excuses, pirates.
Roughly speaking, they implement a check that looks for tampering with the first layer of DRM. They know what the code and memory are supposed to look like if all is well, so it isn't hard to compare the expected outcome to what's actually happening and look for discrepancies.
They do secondary checks in subtle ways like this so that the initial crack seems like it works until people get further into the game.
Roughly speaking, they implement a check that looks for tampering with the first layer of DRM. They know what the code and memory are supposed to look like if all is well, so it isn't hard to compare the expected outcome to what's actually happening and look for discrepancies.
They do secondary checks in subtle ways like this so that the initial crack seems like it works until people get further into the game.
WhirlwindMonk
Banned
I really like these measures, they're hilarious, but I hate how some devs handle responding to help requests. You really shouldn't be jerks to the people who post about these issues, because unless you know your code is perfect, there's always the chance that someone has a legitimate copy of the game, but your copy protection has a bug in it that activated the anti-piracy measure anyway. Being obnoxious to people who have the issue is just asking for it to come back and bite you when it comes out that you basically gave the middle finger to a bunch of your customers who had legitimate issues.
In my mind, the proper response would be something like this:
"The issue you have encountered is a anti-piracy measure that activates when playing an unauthorized copy of the game. If you have pirated the game, the remedy is to decide if you have enjoyed the demo, and if so, go out and purchase the game from your preferred retailer.
If you are encountering this issue despite owning a legitimate copy, please retrieve your product key using these instructions [link] and contact our customer service department at [link] with that information and we will do our best to resolve your issue and get you playing your game again as soon as possible."
In my mind, the proper response would be something like this:
"The issue you have encountered is a anti-piracy measure that activates when playing an unauthorized copy of the game. If you have pirated the game, the remedy is to decide if you have enjoyed the demo, and if so, go out and purchase the game from your preferred retailer.
If you are encountering this issue despite owning a legitimate copy, please retrieve your product key using these instructions [link] and contact our customer service department at [link] with that information and we will do our best to resolve your issue and get you playing your game again as soon as possible."
real_slime
Banned
Doesn't sound like much fun to me.
steescribbles
Member
I love when video game developers put time and effort into such a small yet effective nuisance for pirates.
The greatest piracy-protection I've seen so far is in Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon which as soon as you trigger a conversation with the fairy, which is unavoidable, and has the following dialog:
After this, key items fail to appear, as well as other wonderful things such as after defeating the last boss, you begin at the start with four lives and no items, and since it autosaves, all your progress is deleted, or in the EU version, the language randomly changes. There is a very interesting and detailed article on Gamasutra written by someone who worked on the game here.
The greatest piracy-protection I've seen so far is in Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon which as soon as you trigger a conversation with the fairy, which is unavoidable, and has the following dialog:
After this, key items fail to appear, as well as other wonderful things such as after defeating the last boss, you begin at the start with four lives and no items, and since it autosaves, all your progress is deleted, or in the EU version, the language randomly changes. There is a very interesting and detailed article on Gamasutra written by someone who worked on the game here.
I don't think I've ever seen a documented case of this happening. Otherwise, "what if" doesn't really come into this.
And really, most devs do exactly what you say anyway, they ask for the product key. Which I think is the funniest way to deal with it, because it's a nasty burn for the 100% of people who don't have one.
witchedwiz
Member
Can i be frank?
Ok i'm in the upper crust both in terms of family tenure and in terms of personal income, but..
I think it's quite basic..
You can't afford what you want? You wait, stack up the dough and buy in due time or at discounted price..
Instead it's now more and more a practice to ignore everything..
I have plenty of friends that are solid gamer but refuse to pay any game more than 15 eur, as a result they pirate games at launch, play it throughly and if the game lives up to their expectations they buy it discounted..
While better than nothing i find it quite shitty as a practice..
Devs should just put sort of easter cockblock egg in pre-release code or stuff like that...
Ok i'm in the upper crust both in terms of family tenure and in terms of personal income, but..
I think it's quite basic..
You can't afford what you want? You wait, stack up the dough and buy in due time or at discounted price..
Instead it's now more and more a practice to ignore everything..
I have plenty of friends that are solid gamer but refuse to pay any game more than 15 eur, as a result they pirate games at launch, play it throughly and if the game lives up to their expectations they buy it discounted..
While better than nothing i find it quite shitty as a practice..
Devs should just put sort of easter cockblock egg in pre-release code or stuff like that...
toythatkills
Member
Look, right, if Sony and Microsoft have taught us anything, it's that there's no place at all for good customer service in the video game industry.
Take your weird out-there concept to an industry that cares about the end user.
WhirlwindMonk
Banned
"It hasn't happened, therefore we don't need to act like it could" is terrible reasoning, especially when dealing with customer service, and even more so when dealing with newly released software. Besides, the vast majority of games don't do this. If it becomes more common, the risk will increase.
And good on the ones that do. It's just the examples that tend to get posted the most are the ones where the devs go on rants calling the "pirate" various impolite names and the like, which always makes me hope that it turns out to be a bug in the legit version so that rude dev gets a bunch of egg on their face.
CosmicGroinPull
Member
This.
There were cart rippers back in the day that would save games to a 3.5" floppy, which you could then copy, trade around, etc.
A couple examples here.
hobblygobbly
Member
Quite a few ways to do it, one way simply being file checksums.
A modified executable (i.e crack) will have a different checksum than the original, the code can check for the difference and then fire a routine to execute instead, like the elevator scenario. The implementation of knowing the difference between the checksums and generating them can have various different implementations as well.
This is easily crackable obviously once it's found out, a crack will just come out that circumvents that check, programmers were just having some fun while not having much work to do so didn't put that much effort in it not being circumventable.
But yeah, many ways to do it, basically with a cracked game there are different types of checks you can do because a cracked game's memory will differ from the original in some ways. As a programmer myself I'd think the easiest way to do it is with checksums. It's the easiest way to know that it has been tampered with and something like will not be caught the first time they crack it, only after the fact.
Bronetta
Ask me about the moon landing or the temperature at which jet fuel burns. You may be surprised at what you learn.
Shyamalan invented the new lightsaber confirmed.
Shpeshal Nick
aka Collingwood
If the game can detect the piracy, why not just have it...you know, not work?
Crimsonclaw111
Member
You wouldn't want to accidentally harm real customers.
Because then the crackers know that there's still something they have to circumvent before releasing the crack, whereas they don't generally play through enough of the game to notice these sneakier measures. The first crack to come out is going to be the most widely distributed and downloaded version, so having that still be protected in some way is a pretty big win for the developer.
Shpeshal Nick
aka Collingwood
But in the OP situation, a real customer could still be affected anyway.
Depends on distribution. It's very possible that this "feature" only exists in copies that were downloaded from torrent trackers. Developers will occasionally upload their own games after all. No false positives that way.
Ryo Hazuki
Member
Looks like there's even more to this with missing subtitles and dialogue, and of course, they're asking for help on Steam:
TheSpoiler
Member
To piggyback off of this, one guy had his copy of Mass Effect stop working on him because they thought it was a pirated copy. A friend of mine bought Alan Wake and got the infamous patch. I know the latter was corrected, but it can still happen, rare as it may be.
Iteration time. Figuring out which part of the code to hack out is faster the closer to the beginning of the game it is. Plus, if a pirate was enjoying the glorified demo he was playing, he might elect to go buy it so he can finish playing the game.
A lot of this stuff is detailed in that Spyro: Year of the Dragon Gamasutra article earlier in the thread, but the idea is to delay the completion of a full crack of the game. Most of a game's sales are in the first weeks or months after release, so the longer a fully cracked version stays off the internet, the less impact piracy can have.
If a game fails to boot, the crackers know their job isn't done, and they'll keep trying to crack the game. If the game boots up and seems to work fine for a while, maybe they'll think they've got it finished and stop working until these later errors come in.
It also lets these early cracked copies serve as demos without giving away the entire product. Maybe some pirates that run into these measures will wind up converting so they can get the rest of the game.
Hot Coldman
Banned
They should have just recycled that one for this. Given the lack of combat in Talos, it would have been even funnier.
Hot Coldman
Banned
Still the best:
Cizeta-Moroder
Banned
If the creators distribute the product for free by themselves, downloading it is hardly piracy in the first place, unless there's an explicit agreement the user must acknowledge.