7 ms·
Blue Byte did something along the lines of your suggestion with the copyright protection of Settlers III. When the game detected that the DRM was broken, iron s
by lis 11y ago
Blue Byte did something along the lines of your suggestion with the copyright protection of Settlers III. When the game detected that the DRM was broken, iron smelters would only produce pigs instead of iron.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Settlers_III https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Settlers_III
- viggity 11y agoreminds me of "Game Dev Tycoon", where if it detected it was cracked, the player had a hard time progressing because their virtual company kept getting ripped off by crackers. http://gameological.com/2013/05/inventory-9-games-with-creative-drm-copy-protection/ http://gameological.com/2013/05/inventory-9-games-with-creat... (it is the first one)
- hellbanner 11y agoMore specifically, the player's simualated video game company goes bankrupt, "due to piracy", according to the game. More details & discussion from Game Dev Tycoon's developer blog: http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-pirates-play-a-game-development-simulator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/ http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-...
- Symbiote 11y agoFor a much older example, Sim City gave continual disasters after about 10 minutes if the version was detected as pirated. This was 1990 or so.
- stcredzero 11y agoNot bad, but even that reads like a bit of an FU from the devs. ("Pig Iron?") The best thing to do is to make it definitely seem like it was a bug introduced by the crack. (Maybe James Bond villains giving their secret projects suggestive code names and telling their entire plan isn't unrealistic?)
- jldugger 11y agoWell, if you want to convert a pirate user into a sale, you need to convince them that the bug isn't present in the retail copy. So you're balancing making it hard for crackers to detect, and easy enough for players to encounter that shift behavior.
- stcredzero 11y agoSo have a web search that finds people talking about the fake bug, then take appropriate action.
- kderbe 11y agoIt's important not to disguise any anti-piracy measures as bugs, because pirates (or even reviewers playing pirated copies) will loudly proclaim that the game is buggy, and discourage legitimate buyers. This may have contributed to the closing of at least one development studio (Iron Lore, developer of Titan Quest)[1]. [1] http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?42663-Venting-my-frustrations-with-PC-game-dev http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?42663...
- eps 11y agoThis must be specific to the games, because they do tend to be buggy on their own. With non-gaming software the situation is completely different. When a cracked version craps out the prevailing sentiment is always that it was a bad crack. Always.
- stcredzero 11y agoIt's important not to disguise any anti-piracy measures as bugs, because pirates (or even reviewers playing pirated copies) will loudly proclaim that the game is buggy, and discourage legitimate buyers. I'm wondering why there isn't a service that lets you search for people encountering your crack-penalty. A really sneaky company would disguise itself as a hacker group, then offer a copy of the game that doesn't have that "bug." (But has another one.)