4 ms·

Devs make cracked game impossible to win

39 points by bigsassy 12y ago

adt2bt 12y ago
This is so ironically genius. I love it. Kudos to the GDS Developers!
8_hours_ago 12y ago
Here is the original source with more details: 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-...
robert_nsu 12y ago
I remember hearing about Rocksteady doing something similar with Batman: Arkham Asylum.
- drivingmenuts 12y ago
  If I recall, in Arkham Asylum, it was impossible to win the big boss fight, but there was no messaging about it - it just happened.
  - fphhotchips 12y ago
    You may be thinking of another game. In Arkham Asylum, they disabled the glide function ([1]), you definitely knew about that before the final boss. Now, EarthBound had a hook like that one [2], where the game would first make it much more annoying to get through the game (by churning out extra random encounters), and then when you get partway through the final boss the game will freeze and delete your save game. [1] http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=95030 http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=95030 [2] http://earthboundcentral.com/2011/05/earthbounds-copy-protection/ http://earthboundcentral.com/2011/05/earthbounds-copy-protec...
- tzakrajs 12y ago
  Serious Sam 3 and the evil scorpion, now that shit is hilarious and must be delightful for the developers to think about.
cLeEOGPw 12y ago
Although amusing at first, if this practice would become widespread everyone would just wait for cracked release of proper version from respectable cracker team. This game is in unique position though because it is itself about making games.
- erroneousfunk 12y ago
  I don't think it's meant to be a one-size-fits-all technique for ending game piracy. It is amusing though.
AlyssaRowan 12y ago
Since the dawn of time (well, the 1980s) copy protections have had booby-trap/fail pits. Some of those fail routines have been remarkably creative (and occasionally ridiculously destructive). Delayed flags with adverse consequences, subtly changing CAD points or musical note timings or slowly corrupting user data if a dongle has bad wiring. Deliberate hardware damage, from the C64 disk drive happily being made to chew on its own heads to (arguably) setting counterfeit USB serial interface chips to a PID of 0. I've even seen one which quietly dropped to desktop with a virus when tripped (in fact this was the origin of that particular bootsector virus, which achieved an unexpectedly wide spread on its platform, and its own payload had a generation counter attached so you wouldn't notice for quite a while). This one is curiously poetic. Very meta. But still a logic bomb. Don't booby-trap your code. It's incredibly unethical and stupid. Logic bombs misfire. Frequently.
- roghummal 12y ago
  I agree with you. However, in this case they didn't booby-trap the real product. They released a special "pirate edition" torrent with the "piracy logic". I'd consider it a kind of "collector's edition" ;)
rdc12 12y ago
My immediate thought was about this interesting sounding book [1] http://www.amazon.com/Surreptitious-Software-Obfuscation-Watermarking-Tamperproofing/dp/0321549252 http://www.amazon.com/Surreptitious-Software-Obfuscation-Wat...

39 points by bigsassy 12y ago

This is so ironically genius. I love it. Kudos to the GDS Developers!

Here is the original source with more details: 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-...

robert_nsu 12y ago

I remember hearing about Rocksteady doing something similar with Batman: Arkham Asylum.

drivingmenuts 12y ago
If I recall, in Arkham Asylum, it was impossible to win the big boss fight, but there was no messaging about it - it just happened.
- fphhotchips 12y ago
  You may be thinking of another game. In Arkham Asylum, they disabled the glide function ([1]), you definitely knew about that before the final boss. Now, EarthBound had a hook like that one [2], where the game would first make it much more annoying to get through the game (by churning out extra random encounters), and then when you get partway through the final boss the game will freeze and delete your save game. [1] http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=95030 http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=95030 [2] http://earthboundcentral.com/2011/05/earthbounds-copy-protection/ http://earthboundcentral.com/2011/05/earthbounds-copy-protec...
tzakrajs 12y ago
Serious Sam 3 and the evil scorpion, now that shit is hilarious and must be delightful for the developers to think about.

cLeEOGPw 12y ago

Although amusing at first, if this practice would become widespread everyone would just wait for cracked release of proper version from respectable cracker team. This game is in unique position though because it is itself about making games.

erroneousfunk 12y ago
I don't think it's meant to be a one-size-fits-all technique for ending game piracy. It is amusing though.

AlyssaRowan 12y ago

Since the dawn of time (well, the 1980s) copy protections have had booby-trap/fail pits. Some of those fail routines have been remarkably creative (and occasionally ridiculously destructive). Delayed flags with adverse consequences, subtly changing CAD points or musical note timings or slowly corrupting user data if a dongle has bad wiring. Deliberate hardware damage, from the C64 disk drive happily being made to chew on its own heads to (arguably) setting counterfeit USB serial interface chips to a PID of 0. I've even seen one which quietly dropped to desktop with a virus when tripped (in fact this was the origin of that particular bootsector virus, which achieved an unexpectedly wide spread on its platform, and its own payload had a generation counter attached so you wouldn't notice for quite a while). This one is curiously poetic. Very meta. But still a logic bomb. Don't booby-trap your code. It's incredibly unethical and stupid. Logic bombs misfire. Frequently.

roghummal 12y ago
I agree with you. However, in this case they didn't booby-trap the real product. They released a special "pirate edition" torrent with the "piracy logic". I'd consider it a kind of "collector's edition" ;)

rdc12 12y ago

My immediate thought was about this interesting sounding book [1] http://www.amazon.com/Surreptitious-Software-Obfuscation-Watermarking-Tamperproofing/dp/0321549252 http://www.amazon.com/Surreptitious-Software-Obfuscation-Wat...