Interesting Anti-Piracy Measures

[Macky]

I was playing Sly and The Thievius Raccoonus, and I came across the anti-grab anti-piracy measure while playing on a modded PS2. Share any interesting, obscure and/or anti-piracy measures that are out there.

I know of the Enemy that hunts the player down in Serious Sam 3, and the Spyro one which are the most interesting to me.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

I haven't been able to confirm it as an actual anti-piracy thing, but pirated copies of Alone In The Dark II were notorious for dumping you on to a different a scene than the ship after completing roughly 85% of the game, and I don't recall a way out of that. Maybe it was a bad ending I'm misremembering, but I recall asking about it on forums and people saying they never found that on walkthroughs, only as a result of pirating the game. And if they actually programmed it like that, then that's just evil XD

 

[ciro64]

Spyro 3 ruined my childhood

 

[MasterEn]

Spyro 3 ruined my childhood

how did it do that?

 

[DunkeyKong]

This one unsettled me for some reason

 

[ciro64]

how did it do that?

Here's things the game can do on a pirated copy

• "Uncollect" things you collected before silently and arbitrarily
• Softlock your progress by making a balloon that travels between hubs no longer works
• Teleport you to a future boss, wipe your entire progress and teleport you to the beginning, then give you fly infinite while you pass through the floor

Let me put this into perspective:

Imagine a silent intruder rearranges things in your house, and when you put things back he does it again. And when you go to sleep he moves you to another identical house but in a different city. Then he hires actors identical to your family and friends and they act like they don't know you. Then you step on the ground that looks like it's made of concrete but it's actually paper floating on water. But when you step on it again it already was swapped for real concrete and nobody notices.

Have you gone insane yet?


There's a fairy NPC that alerts the player that the pirated copy might have """"bugs"""" on it.

But guess what??

I was just a kid back then, I DIDN'T KNEW ENGLISH, I DIDN'T UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF PIRACY, I THOUGHT THEY WERE LEGIT BUGS, I WASTED ENTIRE AFTERNOONS TRYING TO BEAT THIS GAME 3 TIMES, I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL KILL THAT FUCKING FAIRY

 

[SLEDGE_DOG]

In Casino Inc., anti-piracy measures will cause employees to constantly ask for raises and customers will puke on the floor and vandalize machines much more than usual.
Anti-piracy is falsely active on all available copies of the of the game, so if you didn't know any better you could easily assume the game is just way too difficult.

 

[Macky]

This one unsettled me for some reason

tbh all errors screens from old consoles creeped me out as a kid and even now as an adult. Pretty sure its linked to childhood, but like as a kid seeing anything out of the ordinary in video games creeped me tf out and even now especially in retro games. I can't explain it, but probably some uncanny valley stuff.

 

[bjork]

I never tried it myself, but I remember reading that pirated copies of Earthbound would increase the encounter rate or something so that it was basically unplayable.

A lot of old computer games used stuff included in the box to try and stop piracy, whether that was a password wheel, or a thing in the game that would say "what is the eighth word on page 6 paragraph 7 of the manual?" Sid Meier's Pirates came with a cool book that had all this information about the different ships you could find in the game, but it also had the routes for the Treasure Fleet and Silver Train. At the start of the game, a sailor would ask you when one of the two would arrive at a specific port, and this meant looking it up in the book unless you memorized it. If you answered it wrong, it makes your game more difficult. I forget if it makes you automatically lose the next swordfight so you're not a promising captain, or maybe it affects overall crew morale for that game, but it was a smart way to make sure you kept that damned manual.

 

[DunkeyKong]

tbh all errors screens from old consoles creeped me out as a kid and even now as an adult. Pretty sure its linked to childhood, but like as a kid seeing anything out of the ordinary in video games creeped me tf out and even now especially in retro games. I can't explain it, but probably some uncanny valley stuff.

Probably that, it was meant to be a warning after all (even made me shit myself sometimes)

 

[RageBurner]

This is well documented, but Earthbound has some pretty wild antipiracy checks if one is playing on a copier or extremely old emulator. Besides outright not booting, it would increase encounter rates and finally

Spoiler

crash and erase your save game if you manage to defeat Pokey with all the checks active

 

[Klonoa7]

Spyro 3 ruined my childhood

The adventure continues…..

I recently watched a video a month ago that described how genius the Year of the Dragon game developers were when it came to anti-piracy measures. It was programmed to glitch when you got to a certain part of the game, dumped you on the first level and wiped your save file.

 

[freebie#47]

Earthbound's anti piracy is my favorite. Turns the game into SUPER HARD MODE...several fans actually ask the creator if he would make a mother 2 hard mode version...he declined. Sucks cause most gamers nowadays love the UBER hardcore games.

Also Remedy's Control has an AP and anti-cheat system that calls you a cheater then kills you instantly. Beware the ANGRY lucky cat.

 

[VampireLord1024VampireLord1024's icon]

I can't name any but I did find these:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1615748100303331330

https://twitter.com/x/status/1756013345834996158

 

[E0N]

It's not that interesting but Pokemon HG/SS will softlock you when you're trying to catch a pokemon. The music keeps on playing while the pokeball spins like crazy. Took a while for the Emulator devs to figure out a workaround.

 

[RageBurner]

It's not that interesting but Pokemon HG/SS will softlock you when you're trying to catch a pokemon. The music keeps on playing while the pokeball spins like crazy. Took a while for the Emulator devs to figure out a workaround.

That's true. That reminded me that Pokémon Black/White and possibly the sequels stopped the player from gaining exp as an AP measure.

 

[E0N]

That's true. That reminded me that Pokémon Black/White and possibly the sequels stopped the player from gaining exp as an AP measure.

Yeah. I think all the NDS era Pokemon games had some kind of anti-piracy measures in them.

 

[destinyduelist]

In Donkey Kong Country 2 Diddy comes out of the TV and shoots you straight between the eyes with zero remorse or guilt
Really though, in Zelda Spirit Tracks you can't control the train which is something I've actually fallen victim to sadly during my childhood
But maybe the craziest one is Secret of Monkey Island where they kinda threaten to hang you

 

[hembruh]

I recently encountered one in Mega Man Battle Network Operation Shooting Star on the DS the other day. if you don't enable the anti piracy code, you can't exit the chip editing screen and when you jack in to the internet every step is a random encounter.

 

[dropsmegamega]

 

[loopy]

Red Alert 2 had one where your base would blow up and all your units die all at once, after like ~30 seconds of starting the game.
When I was a kid I had this happen alot to me eventhough I had a legitimate copy of the game, still not sure why it would happen if my copy was legit.

 

[Tonberry]

King’s Quest 6 has a section where you have to scale a mountain wall by climbing a bunch of tedious stairs and decrypting several strange texts on your way up.
The only way to know which glyphs to press is to look in the manual that came with the game and learn the glyph alphabet that the game uses here.
If you press the wrong glyphs, either nothing happens, or you plummet to your death.
The cliffs of logic, or as the fans call it, the cliffs of copy protection.

 

[Macky]

I was playing Sly and The Thievius Raccoonus, and I came across the anti-grab anti-piracy measure while playing on a modded PS2. Share any interesting, obscure and/or anti-piracy measures that are out there.

I know of the Enemy that hunts the player down in Serious Sam 3, and the Spyro one which are the most interesting to me.

I found a solution to this from this reddit comment. Posted it here for anyone wanting to play Sly via OPL.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Slycooper/comments/s1hw26/comment/jt49xti/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

 

[MasterEn]

Here's things the game can do on a pirated copy

• "Uncollect" things you collected before silently and arbitrarily
• Softlock your progress by making a balloon that travels between hubs no longer works
• Teleport you to a future boss, wipe your entire progress and teleport you to the beginning, then give you fly infinite while you pass through the floor

Let me put this into perspective:

Imagine a silent intruder rearranges things in your house, and when you put things back he does it again. And when you go to sleep he moves you to another identical house but in a different city. Then he hires actors identical to your family and friends and they act like they don't know you. Then you step on the ground that looks like it's made of concrete but it's actually paper floating on water. But when you step on it again it already was swapped for real concrete and nobody notices.

Have you gone insane yet?


There's a fairy NPC that alerts the player that the pirated copy might have """"bugs"""" on it.

But guess what??

I was just a kid back then, I DIDN'T KNEW ENGLISH, I DIDN'T UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF PIRACY, I THOUGHT THEY WERE LEGIT BUGS, I WASTED ENTIRE AFTERNOONS TRYING TO BEAT THIS GAME 3 TIMES, I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL KILL THAT FUCKING FAIRY

oh. that sounds horrible. it would deter someone from wanting to play a game, that's for certain.
i do vaguely recall a fairy character. i think she was annoying in legit copies too. hopefully you've had a chance to play a legit copy. there were some fun mini-game levels in spyro 3.

 

[Macky]

oh. that sounds horrible. it would deter someone from wanting to play a game, that's for certain.
i do vaguely recall a fairy character. i think she was annoying in legit copies too. hopefully you've had a chance to play a legit copy. there were some fun mini-game levels in spyro 3.

Theres a whole video someone made about it.