Creative ways to fight anti-piracy

Developer Greenheart Games at Game Dev Tycoon has been very creative in the fight against piracy. Users who downloaded the hacked version started out completely normally, gradually developing their game studio. Soon funny things began to happen. More and more virtual gamers opted to download the studio's games illegally, diminishing revenues while making a profit impossible. This led to an incredible situation where pirates in the real world complained about virtual pirates in the game on its official forum. Irony! However, Game Dev Tycoon is far from the first game to make pirates look ridiculous. In fact, the history of this practice is almost as long as the history of the gaming industry itself. Let's recap some of the funniest examples.

Michael Jackson The Experience DS

Ah, glorious 2010. Fantastic games like Mass Effect 2, StarCraft II and more are taking over store shelves. That year, South Africa hosted the World Cup, and millions of Westerners began attacking Google in an attempt to find out what, after all, these vuvuzelas are. The Ubisoft team behind Michael Jackon The Experience DS decided to outwit the pirates and found inspiration to do so. If the ROM detected that an illegal version was running, it began to overlap all melodies in the game with vuvuzela sounds. Great Ubisoft, just great.

Operation Flashpoint

Sometimes the simplest anti-pirate methods are also the most effective. The developers of Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis have given pirates the ability to start the game with normal weapons. However, in the process, it turned out that those who downloaded the illegal version of the weapon became less and less accurate and powerful, and the damage inflicted on them increased. Insidious!

Mirror's Edge

Ubisoft is far from the only publisher capable of fighting piracy. If Mirror's Edge, published by EA, detects that you are playing a pirated copy, the game itself will not allow you to accelerate enough to make a long jump. Gracefully!

Batman: Arkham Asylum

If a launched copy of Batman Arkham Asylum turned out to be pirated, Batman's cloak refused to flap properly, preventing players from floating in the air. Not only was it difficult for the pirates to feel like a bat in this case, but the game itself became impassable for them the ability to soar is required there more than once.

GTA 4

Another simple but effective method was used by Rockstar, who decided to punish pirates who wanted to play Grand Theft Auto IV without paying for it. When the game discovered that an illegal version was running, after a few minutes the camera began to jerk randomly from side to side. Two teas for the man, who, in the conditions of such a cell, will be able to give Niko a drink and still complete the mission.

Dragon City

The anti-piracy measure taken by Socialpoint in the case of Dragon City is not as evil as in other paragraphs of this collection, but still quite funny. In the illegal Android version, dragons wore funny costumes. Moreover, all units looked like similar, making the game impossible to play and enjoy. However, guys from technifiser.com did a great job and undressed dragons, making the game with playable mod for high-damage. Every gamer can try on their APK file here and find something useful.

Serious Sam 3

Immediately after receiving the first cannon on the first level, the pirates encountered an incredibly fast immortal red scorpion. Damn! If the thieves managed to count in some way and escape, after several levels the camera would be stuck in the "up and left" position, forcing the players to run in a ridiculous way in a circle.

Earthbound

Perhaps the most ingenious and memorable example of "creative" copy protection is also one of the oldest. Kind people from Starmen.net have posted full information about the anti-piracy measures taken by the creators of EarthBound. A brief retelling? You had to face enemies much, much more often, which made the passage exhausting. If the pirate still managed to reach the end, the game would freeze just before the denouement and erase the save.