Interesting Anti-Piracy Measures

[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

Ok, so... it's just part of the game XD

I guess that whoever wrote the magazine walkthrough I was using at the time was like "F this!" and skipped it entirely... after all, by the time you were having that problem, you had already bought the magazine XD

Also "Metal Gear Grace" is just ? as a video title.

 

[Ian Naxieas]

I've been sailing the high seas for many years now, but have never encountered any anti-piracy measures personally. I do know about a couple though.

The Witcher 2 has an interesting one where if you decide to have sex with a lass in a pirated copy, she'll be replaced with this lovely raisin, Marietta Loredo. I also found out that the game will randomly kill you if you pirate it, but that's nothing fun or interesting.

In Serious Sam 3: BFE (eww), the game will throw a super fast and immortal enemy at you. It will never stop following you, but naturally some crazy people have beaten/speedran the game with it always on their tail.

 

[AnonymousCookieMonster]

The thing about anti-piracy measures is that it leaves a sour taste in your mouth. It can quickly leave you with the position of 'screw this, I'm never buying this game because it sucks', ensuring you won't buy it ever, instead of a potential customer later. Being unable to progress or unkillable enemies or other huge bugs just makes people think the game is broken.

I'd rather have an obscure problem saying 'I see what you did there' that is thoughout but doesn't affect actual gameplay, like setting your in-game name and icons to something hilarious and mocking like an image of Thomas the tank engine and named 'BoatyMcBoatFace', or having an inventory item that's useless that you can't get rid of, like an infinite use healing potion that heals for 1 health point (basically useless in battle or out of battle) per use named 'pleaze buy the full game'.

Though forcing you through a custom challenging (yet fair) tutorial level would be acceptable too.

The game dev should show the game is SOOO fun and they get enough out of it that they feel obliged to get a copy rather than bullying them.

 

[Don Patch]

The thing about anti-piracy measures is that it leaves a sour taste in your mouth. It can quickly leave you with the position of 'screw this, I'm never buying this game because it sucks', ensuring you won't buy it ever, instead of a potential customer later. Being unable to progress or unkillable enemies or other huge bugs just makes people think the game is broken.

I'd rather have an obscure problem saying 'I see what you did there' that is thoughout but doesn't affect actual gameplay, like setting your in-game name and icons to something hilarious and mocking like an image of Thomas the tank engine and named 'BoatyMcBoatFace', or having an inventory item that's useless that you can't get rid of, like an infinite use healing potion that heals for 1 health point (basically useless in battle or out of battle) per use named 'pleaze buy the full game'.

Though forcing you through a custom challenging (yet fair) tutorial level would be acceptable too.

The game dev should show the game is SOOO fun and they get enough out of it that they feel obliged to get a copy rather than bullying them.

Great take!