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Along the same lines I loved the Serious Sam solution to piracy. They let you play but spawned an invincible enemy occasionally to ruin the experience. https:

Along the same lines I loved the Serious Sam solution to piracy. They let you play but spawned an invincible enemy occasionally to ruin the experience. https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2011/12/08/how-to-get-rid-of-the-invincible-scorpion-in-serious-sam-3/ https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2011/12/08/how-to-get-rid-of-th...

nottorp 4y ago
How buggy was it? I remember in Settlers 2 or something (before Ubisoft ruined it) the iron smelter was producing pigs in pirated versions. However, it wasn't extremely good at detecting them leading to pissed off legit players.
- duffyjp 4y ago
  No idea, my first encounter with Serious Sam was a cheap Steam bundle so it never happened to me. They're really fun over the top games and hearing about that "feature" it made so much sense. The developers definitely prioritize fun over taking things seriously (no pun intended).
  - nottorp 4y ago
    Oh I've played all the Serious Sams :) It's about the only modern 3d shooter series I can still stomach. Battlefield of Honor of Duty and derivatives take themselves too seriously and are too much for hypercompetitive dudebros.
- KeplerBoy 4y ago
  This is a neat little reference to pig iron, probably the only kind of iron one could produce with a settlers style smelting operation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_iron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_iron
Negitivefrags 4y ago
C&C Generals had a thing where if you had multiple clients with the same CD key in a multiplayer game everything would be fine for a while, but 10 minutes into the game all the buildings of the people who duplciate keys would explode. This happened a few times at LAN parties to my friends, some of whome gave each other the game by copying the install directory across. Took us a while to work out what the hell was happening.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Which is interesting because Starcraft had a specific "Spawn Install" so you could have two people play multiplayer from the same license. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spawn_installation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spawn_installation
  - t-writescode 4y ago
    I wish this were more common. This is how games should be made and played, imo.
margorczynski 4y ago
Don't really get the idea behind fighting cheating in SP games - you just destroy the game for yourself. In MP on the other hand you destroy it for others. Maybe some kind of telemetry + ML analysis could help here as the current methods seem to have holes in them that get found out eventually.
- xvinci 4y ago
  Piracy is not Cheating (or rather it is, but a different kind: cheating the developer out of his money):)
stordoff 4y ago
These sort of protections are fine until they trigger on legitimate installations. Red Alert 2 has a copy protection mechanism that destroyed all of your buildings a minute into the game, but it is notorious for triggering on legitimate installations of the game. I've seen it happen in the original release (even on a fresh Windows install when I was attempting to resolve this issue), The First Decade rerelease, and the Origin release.
drexlspivey 4y ago
The creator of Game Dev Tycoon, a game where you play as a small indie studio owner, created a patched version of the game and released it in piratebay. In this version after a while you would get an event that your latest game creation was cracked and uploaded to a pirate site and as a result your revenues would tank and you would go bankrupt.

nottorp 4y ago

How buggy was it? I remember in Settlers 2 or something (before Ubisoft ruined it) the iron smelter was producing pigs in pirated versions. However, it wasn't extremely good at detecting them leading to pissed off legit players.

duffyjp 4y ago
No idea, my first encounter with Serious Sam was a cheap Steam bundle so it never happened to me. They're really fun over the top games and hearing about that "feature" it made so much sense. The developers definitely prioritize fun over taking things seriously (no pun intended).
- nottorp 4y ago
  Oh I've played all the Serious Sams :) It's about the only modern 3d shooter series I can still stomach. Battlefield of Honor of Duty and derivatives take themselves too seriously and are too much for hypercompetitive dudebros.
KeplerBoy 4y ago
This is a neat little reference to pig iron, probably the only kind of iron one could produce with a settlers style smelting operation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_iron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_iron

Negitivefrags 4y ago

C&C Generals had a thing where if you had multiple clients with the same CD key in a multiplayer game everything would be fine for a while, but 10 minutes into the game all the buildings of the people who duplciate keys would explode. This happened a few times at LAN parties to my friends, some of whome gave each other the game by copying the install directory across. Took us a while to work out what the hell was happening.

bombcar 4y ago
Which is interesting because Starcraft had a specific "Spawn Install" so you could have two people play multiplayer from the same license. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spawn_installation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spawn_installation
- t-writescode 4y ago
  I wish this were more common. This is how games should be made and played, imo.

margorczynski 4y ago

Don't really get the idea behind fighting cheating in SP games - you just destroy the game for yourself. In MP on the other hand you destroy it for others. Maybe some kind of telemetry + ML analysis could help here as the current methods seem to have holes in them that get found out eventually.

xvinci 4y ago
Piracy is not Cheating (or rather it is, but a different kind: cheating the developer out of his money):)

stordoff 4y ago

These sort of protections are fine until they trigger on legitimate installations. Red Alert 2 has a copy protection mechanism that destroyed all of your buildings a minute into the game, but it is notorious for triggering on legitimate installations of the game. I've seen it happen in the original release (even on a fresh Windows install when I was attempting to resolve this issue), The First Decade rerelease, and the Origin release.

drexlspivey 4y ago

The creator of Game Dev Tycoon, a game where you play as a small indie studio owner, created a patched version of the game and released it in piratebay. In this version after a while you would get an event that your latest game creation was cracked and uploaded to a pirate site and as a result your revenues would tank and you would go bankrupt.