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[[File:copyprotection-
▲[[File:copyprotection-stratego_3297.png|link=Stratego|right|Code wheel? F***, I downloaded the game!]]
Even from the early days, the ease of making a perfect copy of software was a concern for gamemakers. Nintendo's experience with the Disk System add-on for the [[Nintendo Entertainment System|Family Computer]] went so badly due to unlicensed copying (called "[[Pirate|Piracy]]") that the company shied away from discs even long after all the other consoles had abandoned cartridges. They did flirt with optical media starting with the GameCube all the way to the Wii U, but reverted to solid-state cartridges not necessarily out of piracy concerns, but due to optical media being too clunky and fragile for a portable console such as the Switch.▼
So from a fairly early time,
▲Even from the early days, the ease of making a perfect copy of software was a concern for gamemakers. Nintendo's experience with the Disk System add-on for the [[Nintendo Entertainment System|Family Computer]] went so badly due to unlicensed copying (called "[[Pirate|Piracy]]") that the company shied away from discs even long after all the other consoles had abandoned cartridges.
One early method, called "key disc" protection, required that the game access its original disc during
▲So from a fairly early time, gamemakers employed a variety of mechanisms to prevent unlicensed copying. Many of these were poorly implemented, and tended to either be prone to locking a player out of playing a legal copy, being trivial to circumvent, or being so annoying that players chose to play something else.
▲One early method, called "key disc" protection, required that the game access its original disc during loading -- metadata not normally preserved when a disk was duplicated was required to play the game. This was prone to failure, made games unplayable on newer machines (as this out-of-band data could not always be found by new hardware), and prevented the player from using a (perfectly legal) personal "backup" copy. Given that floppy disks had a typically short operational lifespan, this also had bad effects for long-term survival. Even a few CD-ROM based games used this method, intentionally introducing errors to the disk, then refusing to run if the error-correction mechanism did less work than expected.
The most expensive early system was to require that a piece of specialized ''hardware'' be attached to the machine, but this was hardly ever used outside of server-grade software. Some modern productivity software (in the $500+ range) uses a USB dongle key with decoding information built-in.
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A more reliable (but also more intrusive) method was to require some piece of information from the game's manual to play. This could require the player to look up a code (or look up "the third word on page seven of the manual"), or, much better, solve a puzzle using clues from the [[Feelies]]. Some very early games even used this to save disk space by putting most of the expository text in hardcopy, sort of like a ''Choose Your Own Adventure'' book (complete with "red herring" exposition to discourage you from peeking at parts you aren't supposed to read yet).
The simpler forms of this could be beaten with a photocopier. A few games tried to make this, too, infeasible. The ''[[Carmen Sandiego]]'' games, for instance, could request information from anywhere within the almanac-sized book that came with the game, which was often the current year's ''World Almanac and Book of Facts'', which was also sold separately. ''[[
With the rise of the CD-ROM and the fall of printed manuals, this sort of copy protection faded away. For the years until CD duplication became cheap, the medium itself was considered good enough copy protection.
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The internet was probably the final nail in the coffin for most of these schemes, with all the secret codes now being accessible with just a few mouse clicks. Even in times when DOS (or Win 95 exclusive DOS mode, for that matter) didn't allow the player to switch and look at a solution in a plain text file, it still could be printed, or easily bypassed via DOS multitask extensions and programs like Game Wizard.
But now, things have come full circle again. Much software now uses internet-based copy protection, which players without a permanent connection might <s>find annoying</s> be [[Driven to Suicide]] over. For starters, you shouldn't even bother to buy such games if you don't already own a cable modem. Which then creates entirely new problems - you can only hook four computers up to most cable modems,<ref>
On the other hand, companies love this option to pieces. Games with an on-line component can implement such a mechanism "for free" within their own authentication structure. Of course, in the event that the company goes under, no one will ever be able to play their games ever again. Or, even if they're still in business, there's the question of exactly how many people need to keep playing an older game before the economics of appeasing fans of old titles comes into play. But the companies don't care so much about that. In fact, some probably like the idea of simply turning off the activation server for ''Mega Quest'' and thereby forcing all their users to buy ''Mega Quest 2''.
Modern games simply fail to run if not authenticated. Earlier games tended to let you play a small part of the game, or play at a massive disadvantage, even if copy protection failed. In ''[[
In theory, the only way to have fine-grained control over what end-users can or cannot do with software is to physically separate it from them via a client/server arrangement. In this setup, the client only serves as a front-
The only thing that cannot be defeated is charging a monthly fee, and that really only works for massively multiplayer online games and other stuff that runs off of a central server. And sometimes even that isn't immune, especially when a popular game has private player-run servers start popping up, often implemented through reverse engineering of packets transmitted and received by the game client. This has the side effect of preserving multiplayer-only games which were otherwise made unplayable whenever the central servers for them go defunct.
See also [[Digital Piracy Is Evil]], [[DRM]].
{{examples}}
== Feelies ==
* In the original ''[[The
** Also in the original ''Bard's Tale'', whenever you leveled up, the Review Board would ask you to name a street in the city. The map that came with the game had the streets ''misspelled'' - the Grand Plaza was labeled "GRAN PLAZ", and Hawk Scabard was labeled "HAWK SCABBARD". You had to use the map's spelling to pass; if you didn't have the map, you could never get past first level.
** The third game of the trilogy, ''Thief Of Fate'', had dimension-hopping as a crucial plot point. In order to travel from the main world to one of the seven other dimensions, the player had to not only cast the correct spell (see above), but then input the correct number from a three-layer card stock disc included with the game, similar to the Disney example given in this trope's description.
* The ''[[Carmen Sandiego]]'' games each shipped with a large tome: a copy of that year's ''World Almanac and Book of Facts'', a history book or Fodor's guide, from which information could be requested. Several problems occurred with this: although it was intended to get kids interested in using an almanac, it wouldn't help if the book was lost at school, or if some schools used a ''newer'' edition of Fodor's (which meant that none of the hints corresponded to the correct pages, meaning going up in rank was impossible).
* ''Hired Guns'' for the Amiga. The programmer responsible summed it up best himself: "One week I came up with a cunning plan. I figured anyone who cracked the game would take out the manual protection, play the game a bit and leave it at that. [https://web.archive.org/web/20140321071630/http://www.angusm.demon.co.uk/AGDB/DBA1/BloodWy.html But I included a routine that detects if the game has been altered, it then does nothing until you make a certain amount of saves at which point it messes up your save files, just when you're getting into the game.]"
* [[Infocom]] tended to be among the cleverest in their integration of copy protection: for the most part, the game was simply unwinnable without the clues which the [[Feelies]] provided:
** In ''[[
** A curious bit of copy protection was in Infocom's only romance game: ''Plundered Hearts''. The feelies in the game consist of facsimiles of the heroine's starting equipment, one of which is a banknote. The note shows the game's villain posing dramatically... but would you believe he's showing the solution to a puzzle? Grab his hat, try to grab the book he's carrying and press on the same part of the globe where he is and presto! Secret door!
* Introversion Software's ''[[Uplink]]'' featured a code table printed in glossy black ink on black card, which could generally only be read where the light reflected off the ink. However, this was also turned on its head when the developers later admitted it was designed to be a nostalgic nod to old-school games, and it was admittedly useless as copy protection (seeing as the game was massively profitable anyway). They later posted a PDF containing the entire table [https://web.archive.org/web/20131103024840/http://www.introversion.co.uk/uplink/faq-general.html on their site], saying it was not intended as a means of copy protection.
* Several Level 9 games used a method called "Lenslok". Using a graphical pattern, a passphrase was rendered unreadable. A color filter provided with the game, similar to those in the Milton Bradley ''[[Jeopardy
* The ''[[Metal Gear]]'' solid has always featured copy protection measures:
** The NES ''Metal Gear'' also had some rooms that couldn't be completed without the game manual. That is, unless you used a certain bug to skip parts of the game...
** ''[[Metal Gear]] 2'' used "[https://web.archive.org/web/20120222235157/http://www.msxnet.org/gtinter/Operate2.htm
** ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' had a character, early in the game, who "forgot" a vital communication frequency and mention that "it's on the back of the CD case," referring to one of the images on the back of the game's plastic case. If you rented the game, moving beyond that point was impossible. Better yet, Snake has a CD case in his in-game inventory. Many, many gamers tried to figure out how they were supposed to look at the back of that case. When they couldn't figure out the solution to the "puzzle", they turned to [[
*** Hilariously, the 2008 Essentials box set included all three [[
* Almost all of [[Sierra]]'s point-and-click adventure games had copy protection in their manuals, meaning that those who used illegal copies of the game (or who just plain lost their manual) couldn't progress any further:
** ''[[
*** However, the introductory walkthrough in the game's manual offers step-by-step instructions, making this section trivial for legitimate first-time players.
** ''Conquests of Camelot: The Search For The Grail'' also used this system - you had to look in the manual to solve various riddles throughout the game (but you learned some interesting mythology in the process).
** ''The Even More Incredible Machine'' required you to look into the instruction manual to input a code on a randomly decided page each time you opened it. However, during the game's intro, if you clicked to get past it at ''just'' the right time (specifically, when it switches from the second screen back to the first) it would almost always request the code on the first page of the book, requiring you to remember only one code.
** ''[[Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist]]'' requires that you look up recipes in the enclosed "home health manual" and create the prescriptions to solve certain puzzles. Only problem is, when the game was re-released in the Sierra Originals version, only a truncated version of the manual was included in the CD booklet, and one of the required recipes was left out entirely. Oops! Al Lowe, the game creator, has since put the entire doc on his [http://www.allowe.com/ website].
** A certain line of the ''[[King's Quest]] Collection'', which included games I-VI, had a misprint in it, leading to a player most likely getting the spell wrong until they noticed that the misprinted manual decided to rhyme "thither" with [[Department of Redundancy Department|"thither"]] instead of "hither". The VGA remakes with the copyright stripped out that allow the player to just work the entire spell with a single command actually make the game vastly easier.
** ''[[King's Quest III]]'': A very large part of the game revolved around copying lengthy, exact instructions for magical spells from the game manual. Getting the instructions wrong would end the game with a bad ending. The correct phrasing was to simply type over the exact sentence in the manual, although words like "the" and "a" could be omitted. This was ''in addition'' to the disk check at the beginning of the game (that all Sierra games had at the time).
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* ''[[The Spellcasting Series]]'' used various methods of feelies throughout the trilogy, including inputting information from included registration forms, or maps that were required for navigation in certain areas. The most inspired method was in 201, which included a set of sheet music you needed to [[Magic Music|play the moodhorn]] properly.
* ''Star Trek 5'' included a Klingon dictionary in its manual, which had to be used to advance past certain points.
* ''[[The Secret of Monkey Island]]'' used a code wheel called "Dial-a-Pirate", whereupon loading the game, the user had to rotate the wheel to match the upper and lower halves of a series of pirate faces and then return the given date revealed by the wheel. ''[[Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge]]'' used a similar "Mix'n Mojo" code wheel, which involved lining up reagents in a voodoo spell. This was also used in the old SSI Gold Box Games (Pool of Radiance, etc) and their Translation Wheels.
* ''[[
* ''[[Zak McKracken and
* Nintendo got in on the act when it released ''[[
** Remember the bit above about Nintendo games being on ''ROM cartridges'', all but uncopyable by the typical users of the time? Nintendo apparently didn't.
** When the game was released on Nintendo Wii Virtual Console, the letter is included in digital form with an image of a letter and a bucket of water at the bottom. When the player clicks on one of the images, the letter dips into the bucket and the code is revealed.
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* ''Starflight II'' asked you to look up a code on a code wheel every time you left the starbase. If you entered it wrong you could still play the game, but a few hours in, your starship would be pulled over by the Space Police. The accused you of software theft and gave you one more chance to enter the right code; failing caused them to blow up your ship.
** The original Starflight had the code wheel. Starflight 2 had a fold out star map and a viewer to isolate 3 inch sections of the map. The game would then ask you the number of certain colored stars in the 3 in section once you placed the viewer at certain coordinates.
* Infogrames' original ''[[Alone in
* In ''Vette!'', you are a given a question whose answer is in the manual. If you incorrectly answer three times, the game allows you to play, but with severely crippled gameplay (
* ''F/A-18 Hornet'' had you answer a question from its rather large flight manual before starting a mission.
* The Elder Scrolls: Arena, the first game of the series, requires you to answer questions about spells in the known Spellbook part of the manual before leaving the first dungeon. Recently, Bethesda allowed the game to be downloaded for
* Professor Layton and Pandora's Box (or the Diabolical Box in some countries) came with a train ticket needed to find the location of where the last half of the game takes place. It required a code to be deciphered and the answer had to be inputted into the game.
** More [[Feelies]] than this trope: the ticket was also shown in the game when it got to that puzzle. The puzzle required folding it, so it was a bit of a pain to envision how it folded from just the picture and without the physical ticket, but by no means impossible.
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* Particularly before the advent of CDs and DVDs, console systems traditionally used media that could not be easily obtained or created - if at all - by the public:
* Eight-bit to 32-bit consoles including the Game Boy, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, (Super) Nintendo Entertainment System and Nintendo 64 used proprietary cartridges that were relatively expensive. But by the time of the Game Boy Advance, third parties introduced compatible cartridges for playing homemade GBA games (which could also be used for pirated games, wink wink nudge nudge).
** That's not all. The North American NES made use of a "
** Depending on which sources you believe, the primary intent of the lock-out chip wasn't copy protection. Instead, the system was designed to allow Nintendo to keep tight control over who could release games for the platform and extract heavy licensing fees from third party developers. This was also the mechanism Nintendo used to enforce their infamous [[Censorship Bureau|censorship and quality control regime]], keeping out the [[Custer's Revenge|porn games]] and low quality software that [[The Great Video Game Crash of 1983|caused recurring PR nightmares for Atari.]] The copy protection was just a nice side effect...
** Some unlicensed games work around the lockout system either by using special cartridges that piggyback on another game
** While the top-loading NES omitted the chips, a similar, albeit more sophisticated system was used on the Super NES and Nintendo 64. Bootleg games still thrived on the Super NES, though not as much as it was in the NES days (it also helps that the use of complex enhancement chips such as the Super FX meant that bootlegging the likes of ''[[Star Fox]]'' would be nigh impossible), and there were reportedly only a few bootleg cartridges for the N64 until recently when the CIC for it was reverse-engineered. There were however backup devices such as the Doctor V64 which used a legitimate N64 cartridge for authentication and loaded games off commodity CDs. While it was ostensibly marketed as an inexpensive development tool to test games on actual hardware, with a number of developers, notably [[Iguana Entertainment]], using Doctor V64s for developing their N64 games due to a shortage of official development kits from Nintendo, the V64 could easily be modified to run backups, and many resellers sold their V64s pre-modded. Unsurprisingly, Nintendo took umbrage and filed legal action to halt the sale of the V64.
** The Game Boy is an interesting example, as it was designed more as a passive ''trademark protection'' scheme that relied more on their merry band of lawyers than actively shutting out any bootlegs, the theory being that bootleggers and developers of unlicensed games wouldn't dare display the '''Nintendo®''' logo lest be sued for trademark infringement, which was more easily enforceable in certain jurisdictions (This is also why some bootleg multicarts for the Game Boy simply have "GAME" embossed on the cart to dodge trademarks). If a copy of the logo was found on the cartridge ROM, the game loads, but using it as it is would make them an easy target for litigation. There is however a workaround taking advantage of a peculiarity on how the logo is checked and displayed: the Game Boy reads the boot logo twice--once to display it, and another to check if it matches the one on the boot ROM. Through this, unlicensed developers were able to subvert Nintendo's trademark protection by displaying their own logo on startup as a form of [[Plausible Deniability]], then load the Nintendo logo to pass the internal boot check.<ref>[http://fuji.drillspirits.net/?post=87 Neo Fuji: "go go logo"]</ref> Ironically enough, [[Argonaut Games]] demonstrated this to Nintendo, and rather than sue Argonaut for breaking their protection scheme, they invited them to develop 3D games. And the rest, as they say, [[Star Fox|is history]].
* The Sega Dreamcast could use a proprietary disc format called GD-ROM, which was essentially a dual-layer (1.3 GB) version of the CD-ROM format (multiple-layer discs would not become common until DVD); the system could load games off CDs, too, though, and many games could be fit on a standard CD or the game itself compressed to fit.▼
** In a similar vein to Nintendo, Sega used a similar trademark enforcement system on the [[Sega Genesis|Genesis]], aptly named "TradeMark Security System." The TMSS checks for the "SEGA" wordmark in various memory locations for a cartridge to boot, and if an unlicensed game has the necessary strings in the ROM, Sega can sue them for trademark infringement. This was however challenged in 1992 by Accolade when they were involved in a lawsuit concerning the use of Sega's trademarks on some of their games. The courts ruled in Accolade's favour, as the judges concluded that the required TMSS code took up 35 bytes while the rest of the game was wholly original content, and that Accolade's reverse-engineering to achieve compatibility with Sega hardware was a reasonable invocation of fair use.
** It wasn't ''meant'' to be able to load games off of CDs, they just screwed up royally while implementing the code for "multimedia enhanced CDs" in their music CD player firmware. The result: a no-mod-required method of playing copied discs.▼
** The [[Famicom Disk System]] also relied more on trademark enforcement than actual hardware or software-level protection. The disks, which were little more than a semi-custom variant of Mitsumi's Quick Disk, had '''NINTENDO''' molded at the bottom part of the disk, with the '''I''' and second '''N''' activating a switch which authenticated the game. [[Paper-Thin Disguise]]s ensued as with most pirated games, with the trademark being minced to "NINFENDO", "NINTEN", "NINJENDO", "INTEND" or even just "I N". Eventually, bootleggers simply just left indentations on the disk without the need to mold the Nintendo name or intentionally misspell it at all, making this scheme useless.
▲* The [[Sega Dreamcast]]
▲** It wasn't ''meant'' to be able to load games off of CDs, they just screwed up royally while implementing the code for "multimedia enhanced CDs" in their music CD player firmware. The result: a no-mod-required method of playing copied discs. Both the commercial emulator [[Bleem!|Bleemcast]] and the Utopia boot disk took advantage of this exploit.
*** Technically, Dreamcast piracy wasn't quite as simple as copying the GD-ROM, which regular PC drives could not read. Dreamcast piracy involved first ripping the GD-ROM using special hardware (often the Dreamcast itself via hardware plugged into the modem slot), then some tricky work involving a boot track and multiple burn sessions for the CD-R. Once created, though, that CD-R could be easily copied and used on any Dreamcast.
* The Sony PlayStation read a tracking pattern pressed onto the lead-in of official CDs, which cannot be reproduced normally. The PlayStation 2 uses a similar system. They will both refuse to read any disc that doesn't have a valid pattern.
** The
*** The final evolution of this "swap trick" was the production of kits containing stickers to hold down the "lid open" sensors (so the console would not try to perform the security test again when the lid was opened to swap the discs), and boot discs that would pass the copy protection check, then stop the disc from spinning and wait patiently until the start button was pressed (so the user could swap in another disc at their leisure).
*** Before the PS3s dropped backward compatibility altogether, this bit Sony on the ass - they had a hell of a time trying to read PS2 discs, to the point where most of the last-gen library was bugged out or failed entirely while playing on a [[
▲*** More "Security Through Obscurity" (or maybe just Everything is Cooler in Black) than anything else. The black coating wasn't technically ''necessary''; a number of games were released on bog-standard silver CDs. However, the black undersides did make a lot of people (apparently including the previous commenter) think that the discs were more special than they actually were.
*** And then Sony removed the OtherOS function from the PS3 back in April 2010 citing fears of ''security'', though piracy concerns were cited as the reason for its removal. Generally, people weren't pleased and even brought on lawsuits. And to rub salt into the wound, the removal of OtherOS further motivated hackers to bust the PS3 wide open.<ref>[https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-ps3-security-in-tatters Hackers leave PS3 security in tatters]</ref>
▲*** Before the PS3s dropped backward compatibility altogether, this bit Sony on the ass - they had a hell of a time trying to read PS2 discs, to the point where most of the last-gen library was bugged out or failed entirely while playing on a [[PS 3]].
** Contrary to popular belief, discs for game consoles do not spin in reverse. But Gamecube and Wii discs do use a slight variant of the DVD sector-level encoding. Unfortunately for Nintendo, Wii pirates disregarded the physical aspects of the copy protection and instead decided to attack the console's firmware, which had quite a few holes. Not to mention that the Wii is backwards-compatible with the GameCube, and as such homebrew for the latter will work for the Wii to some extent, albeit not taking advantage of the Wii's enhanced features. In addition, third-party video game accessory manufacturer Datel somehow managed to press discs which boot on an unmodified GameCube or Wii by adding sectors that would at least nominally satisfy the challenge-response authentication the GameCube or Wii is looking for with authentic discs. Datel also used the title ID from ''NHL Hitz 20-02'' for their unlicensed software, which led to Nintendo banning it on subsequent hardware revisions, which consequently led to ''NHL Hitz 20-02'' being unplayable, though it's a small price to pay considering it's just a throwaway annual sports title.
▲* The Nintendo Gamecube uses a proprietary 8cm DVD based on the miniDVD.
* Sony has been fighting a long standing war against the Homebrew scene in the name of copy protection on the PSP. The Homebrew scene finds an exploit to allow
** The 3.56 firmware update to the [[
▲* Sony has been fighting a long standing war against the Homebrew scene in the name of copy protection on the PSP. The Homebrew scene finds an exploit to allow un-official software, Sony releases yet another patch (that they usually make mandatory in order to play the newest games) to fix it, and the cycle continues. One particular patch that was designed solely to fix an exploit that would require a user to load a specific game in order to "unlock" their PSP, succeeded in introducing an exploit that allowed users to unlock their [[PSP|PSPs]] without any game whatsoever.
* ''[[
▲** The 3.56 firmware update to the [[PS 3]] marks the start of Sony's attempt to do the same thing (in addition to fixing the embarrassingly large security hole discovered not 2 months before the patch's release). How did it fare? Well, on the first release of the patch, it only succeeded in curbing (briefly) Call of Duty Modern Warfare hacks. It got cracked in under 24 hours, and that's NOT the worst news. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G40zYK-DbgY It would not work on Slim PS3s that had an upgraded hard drive], something that you are legally allowed to do. The second release of the patch only fixed the hard drive issue.
▲* ''[[Earthbound]]'' memorably has a vast array of copy protection mechanisms of surprising intricacy and thoroughness. For its first layer, it has a checksum that could detect whether the game was running from a copied cartridge or being booted from a cartridge-copying device <ref>Emulating the game does not set it off unless you're using a ''really'' shitty emulator.</ref>; if the mechanism did not check out, the game threw up an antipiracy warning screen at the beginning and did not play any further. If the protection was cracked, a checksum mechanism would detect the change, and the game spawned [[Zerg Rush|many more enemies than usual]] - some even in places they didn't belong! - in an attempt to discourage further playing. If the player persevered through this or cracked this second layer, however, an even nastier surprise awaited: the game would freeze and severely glitch after the first part of the [[Final Boss]] fight against Giygas... and when you reset, you would find ''all your saves deleted!''.
** These copy protection schemes sometimes trigger on legit cartridges, likely due to wear and tear over time. Although unrelated to copy protection, the same wear and tear can cause the game to run entirely in black and white as well.
** The English NES prototype of its predecessor ''[[MOTHER]]'', [[Fan Nickname|dubbed]] ''EarthBound Zero'' by the fans, also had similar copy protection, but it's more mundane and far less cruel in its implementation. Instead of making the game impossible and scrubbing your save games at the end, it runs a checksum at certain points to test whether the game is pirated; if it is determined it is, it stops the game and throws up a screen saying that the game is an unauthorized copy and will not continue, and bricks the ROM/cart. This measure was part of a major headache in getting the ROM to work properly when it was first discovered and dumped in 1998, and owners of the actual physical prototypes are understandably concerned that the condition of the prototypes may set it off anyway. This protection wasn't in the Japanese version, nor does it exist in ''[[Compilation Rerelease|MOTHER 1+2]]'' which is built upon the prototype data.
* Several [[Capcom]] games also employed similar mechanisms as copy protection: if they detected a pirate copy, they generally made some early boss unbeatable by giving them infinite health. Known examples include ''Demon's Crest''.
** Another example would be the [[Mega Drive]] game ''Puggsy'', which would, several levels in, try to access the cart's SRAM (battery backup save memory). If it ''succeeded'', it threw up a message telling you to stop playing this silly copy and buy the game. Puggsy doesn't have on-cart save, but copiers and emulators enable it by default.
** ''[[
** When the ROM boots up, ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles|The Manhattan Project]]'' checks to see if the copyright text and/or icon has been modified (a common practice among pirates) - if it returns positive, the damage the players give out is reduced, the damage they ''take'' is increased, and a boss around 3/4 of the way through the game is modified to have infinite health, making the game [[Unwinnable]] for anyone masochistic enough to keep playing after the first few levels.
** Similarly, back in the SNES era if you played a copy of the [[No Export for You]] ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'' on a UK machine via an adapter, it would work fine, but wouldn't show the ending. It's not known if this was deliberate or not. The only way around it back then was to get a US/Japanese console, or have your UK machine chipped to run at
* ''[[The Journeyman Project]]'', at three points in the game, asks you to enter a code from the "Temporal Protectorate Handbook" (aka manual). Unfortunately, if you got this game bundled with a new computer, it most likely didn't come with the manual, and unless you were clever and looked up the codes on the Internet, you would have to brute-force the code to continue.
** Fortunately, if you remember what type of code it is (a numeric sequence), it's actually pretty easy to brute-force it, since the game automatically stops you the moment you input an incorrect character, meaning you only have to go through around 90 sequences (tops) before getting at the correct code, as opposed to over a million.
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*** Your glass-topped drive won't help unless you can ''also'' read fine print spinning at a minimum of 200 RPM.
* ''[[Steel Beasts]] Pro PE'' has hardware-based DRM in the form of a USB key. This key must be plugged in while running the simulation! (And it's not the only example...)
== Software ==
* Valve Software's [[Steam]] is its online download and updating system, used to distribute Valve's games, first-party mods and <s>some select</s> quite a few other titles they have contracted in. It's usually cited as "DRM done right" by those who believe such a thing is possible. However, at the time of its original release, late 2004, DRM was nowhere near as common as it is now, and many players, who purchased the retail boxed copy, were understandably annoyed that they would have to install a separate program that runs in the background in order to prove that they weren't thieves. In addition, initially they had to connect to the Internet every time they wished to play the single-player game. Valve eventually removed this, and by now retail sales of their games have been dwarfed by digital sales, meaning most of their players already have Steam anyway. It is worth noting, however, that Steam is one of a handful of DRM systems to deliberately prevent players from reselling or giving away their used games.
** To be fair, Steam also avoids a common issue with copy protection
*** Although the fact that Steam only allows one computer logged in to an account at one given time means that you can't have a game downloading on one PC while playing another game on another PC. It's quite common for gaming enthusiasts (or computer enthusiasts in general) to own two (or sometimes more) gaming rigs.
*** And oh, apparently the client would refuse to go into offline mode unless you're already logged in (the offline mode button that appears when you're unable to connect to the server is apparently broken). This will surely ruin the vacations of people who're uninformed of this limitation and forgot to put Steam into offline mode on their laptop before leaving home for a destination where getting an internet connection is very difficult.
** Steam's DRM also provides a useful service to online gamers: Since every game is tied to its owner, once a user is banned from a server, they are banned for good unless they are willing to buy another whole copy of the game. And since most of Valve's games are multiplayer...
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** Did we mention that, despite having a perfectly good copy protection system built in to Steam, most third party publishers keep their own, more intrusive systems in the version of their games that they sell on Steam anyway? At least the store warns you about this... ''most'' of the time.
*** However, there are now very easy ways to get a non-steam copy of all their games.
* Recently, copy protection has resulted in controversy because some gamers and journalists have complained that copy protection systems can make some games unplayable and can even make the computer unusable. For example, the copy protection software known as "StarForce" was boycotted by some gamers due to these issues. Some of StarForce's nastier side-effects included reduced system security due to the
** About routinely swapping out hardware - hardcore gamers do that as well. [[Rich Bitch|There are people who swap out video cards as soon as a newer card hit the market]].
** ''[http://www.galciv2.com/ Galactic Civilizations 2]'' by Star''dock'' Systems features "No CD copy protection"; once you install the game, you never have to verify it again. They felt that ease of use was worth the increased risk. The trick is that Stardock provides lots of free patches and content updates; If they find out your copy is being pirated, you don't get those anymore. Star''Force'', mentioned above, was so impressed by this system that they posted a link to a webpage where one could download pirated versions of ''Galactic Civilizations 2''. The backlash from gamers was so intense that they quickly removed the link.
** Speaking of Starforce, they've updated their copy protection
** The launch of ''[[
*** All of this extra security didn't stop a pirated version of the game appearing three weeks after the game was released.
**** And ever better yet, ''[[Spore]]'', which also used SecuROM, was cracked a good
** The Starforce copy protection on ''[[Cold Fear]]'' was so bad that it locked up a large percentage of legitimate copies, and Ubisoft ''had to distribute a scene no-cd crack'' for paying customers to be able to play the game. They released their own no-cd patch later, but it was essentially the same as the scene patch.
** Likewise, the Starforce copy protection on legitimate copies of ''[[Rogue Trooper]]'' is absurdly prone to false positives, but the publishers/developers never bothered to fix the problem because not enough people bought the game for them to care anyway.
* In similar vein to StarForce, Denuvo became the bane for PC gamers due to numerous allegations of it adding significant overhead to games it came protected with, like high CPU usage and excessive wear and tear on storage media especially SSDs. Denuvo of course denied such claims, though some evidence suggests that the protection was detrimental to performance.<ref>[https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/282924-denuvo-really-does-cripple-pc-gaming-performance Denuvo Really Does Cripple PC Gaming Performance]</ref> Other outlets dispute this however, as test results with a cracked copy of ''[[Assassin's Creed Origins]]'' that had its protection (painstakenly) gutted out weren't as dramatic as expected. On top of this and activation woes, Voksi, a Bulgarian hacker who released cracks for several Denuvo-protected games, was arrested following complaints by the company, and 3DM, a Chinese warez group, reportedly threw in the towel due to how initially hard it was to circumvent it.
* ''[[Mortal Kombat]]: Armageddon'' had copy protection which caused the game to boot up and then go into ''Cabela's Big Game Hunter''.
* Some games like ''[[Mechwarrior]]'', ''[[
* Microsoft Reader's activation scheme lets you read the same book on five machines. The problem is that it doesn't realize when you have reformatted the drive or gotten rid of the machine. So when you run out your activations, you're screwed. Luckily, the encryption is [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop|easy to break]].
** Apple has something similar going on. You have to 'authorize' a new machine in order to use the iTunes Store, or play your downloaded tracks, or... something. Whatever it is, you only get five of them - and if you didn't hit 'deauthorize' before that old hard drive died, that's your own fault.
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** Unfortunately they were forced to in ''[[Fallout]] 3''. However, the copy protection only denies you running the Fallout Launcher, you can still launch the game from the game's directory.
* In the Macintosh [[World Builder]] game ''[[Enchanted Scepters]]'', if you're playing a pirated copy, the game will randomly teleport you to the Arena, where you have to fight a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and will probably die. It also displays the message "The pirates laugh 'Har, har, har!'".
* ''[[Rogue (
* The PC version of ''[[
* Command And Conquer Red Alert 2 had a particularly creative version. A pirated copy of the game would load up completely normally, and the actual gameplay itself would also operate normally. For about three minutes, until all of your units and buildings would simultaneously explode using the nuclear weapon animation, causing you to lose. It was pretty funny.
* A very recent version of copy protection: a pirated copy of Croteam's ''[[Serious Sam]] 3'' will spawn an immortal giant pink scorpion thanks to the DRM software which comes with the game. This scorpion is unnaturally fast, armed to the nines, and will kill an unsuspecting player in seconds. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e91q5BtlxK0 see for yourself].
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** ''[[Final Fantasy]]: Crystal Chronicles: Ring Of Fates'' ([[Colon Cancer|awfully long title]]) also detected pirated copies. This caused the game to end after a while, with a "Thanks for playing!" message, which certainly confused many pirates. Why not have a "Stop playing this game now, you dirty pirate!" message?
*** This game was allowed as a demo in many stores. The same message would play in the demos. The method of the Copy Protection was that the game would have around a 30-45% chance of a random check to see if the game was a proper game... each time you changed rooms in the dungeons. The demos were only given a certain amount of game memory and that did not include the key to stop the Copy Protection from activating. This truely was a great AP due to the way it confused so many Pirates.
** ''[[
** ''[[Love Plus|Love Plus+ ]]'' made it impossible to get past the first part of the game IN ADDITION to making it impossible to gain hearts in the main part of the game, effectively making the game unplayable on flashcarts. Apparently, [[Does This Remind You of Anything?|if you're too cheap to pay for your virtual girlfriends,]] they will dump you.
** ''[[Ghost Trick]]'' made all the text blank if you use a flashcart.
** If you play a purported copy of ''Michael Jackson: The Experience'', the notes don't appear (it's an ''[[Elite Beat Agents]]'' clone by the way), ''and'' it plays [[FIFA World Cup|vuvuzelas]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZwFxAi76iI over the music].
** Other games that included protection: ''[[
* Recently, controversy surrounding the copy protection of the PC version of ''[[Mass Effect]]'' sprang up. Here's the short version: You're only allowed three activations on a single computer until you have to buy another copy. You don't get back an activation and changing your hardware settings takes one up.
** There was also going to be a validation process that checked up on you every 10 days or the game would not run, but the immense backlash caused that to be abandoned and the developers will only implement the three-install limit. How thoughtful!
*** [[Mass Effect 2]] does not use this DRM at all, for those who want to buy this game. [https://web.archive.org/web/20110102205421/http://meforums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=710074&forum=144 It uses a disc check and doesn't require online authentication.]
* Starship sim sequel ''Frontier: Elite II'' had an interesting version of this. Periodically, the player would be challenged by the in-game Space Police, and asked to find (for example) the fifth letter in the third word in line 17 on page 158 of ''his spaceship's'' manual. Three wrong responses in a row and you're arrested by [[Author Avatar|Chief Inspector Braben]],<ref>David Braben was the game's lead programmer</ref>
* In the classic adventure game ''[[Indiana Jones and
* ''[[Operation Flashpoint]]'' is notable for being the first game to use the FADE copyright system, which slowly degraded the quality of gameplay (for example, decreasing the accuracy of the player's weapons) if piracy was detected. The same applies for ''[[ARMA:
** FADE also exists on ''[[ARMA:
* Another Czech game, the first ''[[Mafia]]'', also used the FADE system : The farther you got in an illegal copy of the game, the more choppy it ran, forcing the player to continually lower the graphics quality. It didn't stop ''[[Determinator|some people]]'' from beating the game, though.
* ''[[Day of the Tentacle]]'' required the players to configure a machine based on an image printed on a certain page of the manual. Thing is, similar images were printed on every page, and the player needed a certain number in-game to look it up. Ironically, you can now download the manual for free from several sites.
** This copy protection apparently only exists on the floppy disk version; it's nowhere to be seen on the CD version. DOTT's predecessor, ''[[Maniac Mansion]]'', also had copy protection as an in-game puzzle, but the version available for play within DOTT omits it by making it impossible to close the steel security door, which remains open throughout the game.
*** When DOTT was released, copying a CD was virtually unheard of.
{{quote|
* The ''[[Ultima]]'' games were particularly prone to this, forcing players to look up the [[Feelies]] for information from "Beyond the Portal" before being granted the right to save, leave the starting town, and so on.
* An early-'90s Spider-Man computer game asked the player several trivia questions before starting. The answers were supposed to be looked up in the manual, but they were also available in any of the Spidey comics of the time.
* As mentioned above, the original ''[[Railroad Tycoon]]'' had you identify a railway engine at the start of the game. If you chose the wrong name, the game would confiscate all but two of your trains and make you unable to run more normally (though - perhaps due to a bug - clicking at the bottom of the train list actually allows you to view the lost train and buy it back by replacing its engine).
* ''F-19 Stealth Fighter'': if you failed to identify the plane the game showed you, the game forced you to go on a "training mission" with preset equipment instead of allowing you to choose your mission, plane or ammunition.
** Microprose were well known for this. ''[[Sid
* ''Pirates! Gold'', meanwhile, would sometimes ask you to identify a famous pirate you encountered by his flag. Answer wrong and your ship loses all cannons. It was still possible to win the ensuing battle if you had enough crew to board the enemy ship, though. Also, since the copy-protection scheme only kicked in sometimes and other times the game would tell you the name rather than ask for it, with patience it was possible to reconstruct the list from scratch.
* The aforementioned [[
** Or, you know, you could spend all afternoon at your friend's place doing it by hand. And once color photocopiers became prevalent, the scheme fell flat on its face.
* At first glance, the computer game ''Master of Orion'' used a simple "What spaceship is this?" manual copy protection. However, if the game executable was modified to remove the protection altogether, [[Magnificent Bastard|the game would detect the alteration of its code and become so difficult as to be virtually unplayable!]]<ref>This is probably due to the copy protection itself actually setting some key variables that are initialized to such absurd values, not unlike the Slylandro Probe and Starbase [[Game Breaking Bug|thing]] that attempts to convince players to go to the Starbase first.</ref>
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* Many old arcade games have "suicide batteries" that are believed to be used for this purpose. When the battery runs out, the game's graphics glitch, the sound goes away, or the game itself stops working.
** Of course, [[Lost Technology|once replacement batteries stopped being made]], it became a rush for emulation experts to ''save'' these games from oblivion.
** Many operators believe that the suicide batteries are actually used for another purpose: [[Self-Destruct Mechanism|planned obsolescence]]. The idea being that once the battery dies, the operator will be forced to buy the next version of the game (often, the deal is sweetened with a trade-in discount for the new version of the game), or pay through his nose for "repairs". Hence it's common to see this and [[Capcom Sequel Stagnation]] go hand in hand. In fact, these are now used in a different way: Given that many new arcade machines run off hard drives or GD-
** Some arcade games also required "Licensing modules", which are a separate ROM board that holds only the decryption key of the game. Many newer games, since they're run on machines based on PC hardware, requires a USB dongle to run. And of course the USB dongle could hold an expiry date instead of the game, adding to the planned obsolescence method mentioned above.
* The old [[Gold Box]] ''[[Dungeons
* Unintentional example: ''[[
* The [[
* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in the [[Fictional Video Game]] ''[[Only You Can Save Mankind]]'', in the novel of the same name by Terry Pratchett:
** "Someone in America or somewhere thought it was dead clever to make the game ask you little questions like "What's the first word on line 23 of page 19 of the manual" and then reset the machine if you didn't answer them right, so they'd obviously never heard of Wobbler's dad's office photocopier."
** "Basically, there were two sides to the world. There was the entire computer games software industry engaged in a tremendous effort to stamp out piracy, and there was Wobbler. Currently, Wobbler was in front."
* ''[[
* Parodied in ''[[Homestar Runner|Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People]]: 8-Bit Is Enough''. One puzzle involves Strong Bad opening the way to the world of the adventure game Peasant's Quest using a giant code wheel, to satisfy the voice of the "copy protector" who wants him to use the manual and special red cellophane glasses with said wheel in order to solve his "riddle" (a random trivia question). Strong Bad has neither, so he's forced to solve the problem in a slightly different fashion.
* In the first ''[[Civilization]]'' game, there would be two instances in the early parts of the game where you had to look up a [[Tech Tree|civilization advance]] in the manual: you were shown a picture of a random one, then given a large set of multiple-choice answers of which two advances were its direct prerequisites. (The in-game justification was that "A usurper claims you are not the rightful king!") If you were wrong, you lost all the military units you had outside of your cities.
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*** Indeed. It would ask you things like "Which Advance requires knowledge of Steam Engine and Bridge Building?" Uh... geee... could it be railroad? Ya think?
* ''[[Halo]]'' for the PC seemed to have some sort of copy protection in place; if the game was obtained illegally, players could still play the game normally without problems, but if they tried to play the online multiplayer, they wouldn't be connected and got a message saying the CD key is invalid.
** Using CD Keys to prevent online play used to be quite common among PC Gaming, and it dates back as far as ''[[
*** And it seems to be coming back; several Games For Windows Live games do this. So does World in Conflict.
* ''[[Lemmings]] 2'' had a sly example; when installed off non-original floppies all would seem to proceed okay, but you wouldn't be able to advance past the first level for any of the tribes.
* ''[[Myst]] III: Exile'''s copy protection system required you to insert Disc One at least once per run (either when starting a new game, or loading an old one), then pressed an error right into the disc that made that disc uncopyable.
** That copy protection is called SafeDisc. EA loves it. Unfortunately, all the forcing of the drive to read a bad sector can't be good for the lens...
* ''[[Command
** Actually, you can't play C&C 3: Tiberium Wars in LAN mode with the same serial key either.
* Some users complain that the 2008 ''[[Prince of Persia]]'' on the PC will ping an unknown server every 75 seconds. The most common guess is that [[Ubisoft]] is tracking your CD key and looking for duplicates.
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* The [[Interactive Fiction]] game ''[[The Lurking Horror]]'' deserves special mention of its copy protection. Getting anywhere in the game required you to log into an in-game computer; the necessary information was included with the [[Feelies]]. However, while the password was clearly marked, the [[Guide Dang It|login was not]] (and, to complicate matters, was not on the same page as the password).
* Famous line from ''[[Captain Comic]]'': "Captain, I'm afraid you have made a terrible mistake. You failed to obtain a certain object you should have had from the start of your adventure. Since this object is not very expensive, you should go and obtain it before you venture any further." It shows up quite some time into the game.
* The 1988 Microprose game ''[[Red Storm Rising]]'' would give you the profile view of a ship and ask you to identify it; all the requisite information was in the manual. Of course, if you're as big enough of a naval geek... [[Someday This Will Come in Handy|guns in back, smokestack, missile pack]], [
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20140825202414/http://www.gamerevolution.com/goodie/movies/dont_copy_that_floppy This video] (quoted in the page picture) gives a cheesy rap song about why people shouldn't use floppies to copy games, followed up by several developers that explain how games are made and how they won't make certain games anymore if more people copy their products instead of buying them since they feel less sales = people did not like product. The boy trying to copy doesn't see why the whole thing is a big deal, saying "everyone is doing it" and "one copy won't hurt them." The girl convinces the boy to change his ways by the video's end. Of course, things have not changed since then.
** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUCyvw4w_yk A sequel] recently came out, and while it's musically more advanced , the message is still not as clear as the creators intended. Case in point: [http://sati1984.tumblr.com/post/202537346/this-video-alone-is-going-to-increase-the-rate-of this YouTube comment] and [http://www.retrothing.com/2009/09/stunning-sequel-to-dont-copy-that-floppy.html this Retro Thing article], the latter providing an excellent analysis of the video.
* Maxis' ''[[The Sims]] 3'' has recently been leaked on line several weeks early, giving many players a sneak peek at the game's functionality. EA caught wind of this pretty quickly, saying that the leaked version was missing half the game's content and was glitched to hell, and instead of hunting down every single person who's downloaded the game and preventing them from accessing the game altogether, has settled on telling them they're running an unauthorized version and pleading them to buy the full version to get extra content. Which is surprisingly fair, considering this is ''EA'' we're talking about here.
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** Also, thanks to the SecuROM situation, EA decided to scale back this games' copy protection to the traditional CD check and serial number that the earlier games used.
*** [[Ruined FOREVER|Unfortunately, the direct download version of the game still sports SecuROM copy protection, limiting users to 5 installations per copy.]]
* All these modern examples pale in comparison to a form of copy protection employed by several publishers during the Commodore 64 era. We'll spare you the boring and confusing details, but it involved placing a deliberate error on the disk, which, being that it was an error, could not be reproduced by the current copy software. However, this also caused the disk drive's head to knock repeatedly against a stopper every time it tried to load the program. Over time, this would cause the head to become misaligned and be unable to read ''anything'' anymore until the drive was repaired. That's right, a copy protection scheme that caused legitimate customers (and legitimate customers only, as this required pirates to hack the software and eliminate the need to read the
* ''The Island of Dr. Brain'' forced you to consult the manual, called the Encyclo-Almanac-Tionary-Ography, to input the coordinates necessary for finding his island. This counted as the first puzzle in the game, and you receive a gold plaque just for completing it.
* ''[[Spyro the Dragon|Spyro: Year of the Dragon]]'', if you are playing a cracked copy, has Zoe the Fairy appearing at the latter part of Sunrise Spring telling you that your copy is hacked and may be an illegal copy, which will lead you to experience "problems" you would not experience on a legal copy. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZinR10DC3-Q\]
** The game also features a "save file erasure" thing similar to ''[[
* ''[[DJMAX]] Trilogy'' comes with a USB dongle that must be plugged into your computer to run the game. It also contains your profile, which has your usernames, unlocks, etc., so a fortunate side effect is that you can carry your unlocks across multiple machines. On the downside, lose the dongle and you're screwed.
** Inverted unintentionally in ''DJ MAX Portable Black Square'', in which songs will skip when played via UMD due to memory management issues, but won't when played via an ISO on a memory stick.
* ''[[Titan Quest]]'' has "mysterious" crashes on bootleg copies due to ''properly working'' sneaky
** The conclusion: any
* On the Amiga, there was a game ''[[The Killing Game Show]]''. This game was broken and copied early in its life, but the original protected disk would alter the system timing during bootup. The broken copy did not alter the timing, resulting in a game that became [[Unwinnable]] without removing the "timer". (It is not known if any cracked version ever fixed this.)
* The German game ''[[Drakensang]]'' (Das Schwarze Auge/ Black Eye) had at least three instances of copy protection and you were punished for then buying the original because you had to start anew, as the problems were saved in the savegames (there was supposed to be a patch for that, but it's unknown if it ever got made). First you have to go to a NPC that doesn't spawn. This can be corrected by using an SQL editor. Then there is a vital door, that's just not clickable. And last but not least there is supposed to be a door that usually leads to another vital part of the game, but in case of a pirates version leads into a cell with no exit. And no, nobody ever said anything about this beforehand, leading to a mass of "buy the game already" and almost as much "I already OWN it" :=)
* The diskette version of ''[[System Shock]]'' stored more data on disk number one then normal copying tools would allow it to hold; attempting a basic clone would fail. Still quite easy to copy once you worked it out.
* [[Origin]]'s ''[[
** Another Origin property, the [[Wing Commander (
* The Dreamcast game ''[[Ooga Booga]]'' had an interesting
* The PC version of ''[[Batman: Arkham Asylum]]'' has one of these in the form of a deliberate glitch which disables Batman's cape glide ability, rendering the game [[Unwinnable]]. The developers say this.
{{quote|
** Now that the (legit) PC version is out, however, [http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/Clarke/don-t-buy-batman-aa-for-pc-148791.phtml it quickly turned out that] the publishers have apparently forgot to take out these delibrate bugs for legit retail releases, and thus the PC port would very likely to go the way of ''[[Titan Quest]]''. Oops.
* ''[[
** Must be noted that local multiplayer is still possible, just that two people in the same room have to play each other through the official network.
* The ''[[
* The Amiga game ''[[Elvira Games|Elvira: Mistress of the Dark]]'' had you hunting for six keys hidden in the castle, and one was hidden in a dark passage, requiring you to have Elvira cook up "Glowing Pride" to find it. However, you couldn't find any recipes inside the game; all of them were in the manual. In other words, you could play most of the game on a pirate version, but to complete it you needed the original version. (At least, until [[
* Not strictly
** There was a Super NES game that ''accidentally'' implemented copy protection: the game program had a bug which, by sheer dumb luck, caused it to depend on extremely precise timing of the SNES cartridge - play it on a copier or emulator, and the slight timing change would crash the game.
*** Would that be a [[Good Bad Bug]]?
* Some games on the original [[
* ''[[Robot Odyssey]]'', an Electrical-Engineering-based adventure game by the Learning Company utilized copy protection by checking the 5.25" disk for a "flaky bit". If the bit was not found, the player's ability to solder connections in the robots of the main game was disabled, rendering the game [[Unwinnable
* On certain emulators ''Hamtaro Ham-Ham Heartbreak'' would not go past the character-naming screen.
* ''La Abadía del Crimen'', a 1987 adventure game by Spanish publisher Opera Soft, based on Umberto Eco's ''[[
* ''[[Touhou]]'' games always avert this, and most fangames follow suit. However, the fangame ''Touhou Unreal Mahjong'' requires a serial key for online multiplayer, which supposedly allows one user account per serial key as opposed to the usual one computer per serial key, so that the same key can be used as many times as you want as long as you still play on the same user account. The game is completely playable in single-player mode without a serial key.
* ''[[Mario
* [[Ubisoft]]'s recently proposed ''Online Services Platform'' [[Internet Backdraft|have caused such controversy]] that it deserves a mention. Already confirmed by review versions of PC ''[[
** Additionally, in ''Assassin's Creed 2,'' the DRM is very poorly implemented. People who pirate the game report that it's an excellent porting job and runs as you would expect it to on any given level of hardware. People who buy it often report that the game's performance is dodgy at best, with inexplicable drops at random times in frames per second.
** All of their confidence in spite of the fact that - quite predictably now - it's already been leaked few days before the release.
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** ''[[Might and Magic]]'' fans have had a bit of a fun time, too, with the latest installment ''Might and Magic Heroes VI''. Ubisoft's copy protection came in the form of the Dynasty system, which rewards players with leveling items and buffs as they progress through the game. The kicker: Dynasty progress is stored in the online "Conflux". There's an offline mode, but games saved to the Conflux obviously can't be loaded offline. Players with a steady internet connection naturally figured they might as well take advantage of the Dynasty bonuses... and were treated to a series of Conflux outages during prime play-times (including a few weekends and ''the week after Christmas'') for a while after the game's release.
** All the backlash has led to ''[[Rayman Origins]]'' [[And the Fandom Rejoiced|not containing any DRM]]. Just to tell the infamy of the debacle, the game's Steam page explicitly mentions the '''lack''' of DRM.
* [[Electronic Arts]] tried the same thing as Ubisoft with ''[[Command
** It should be noted that several companies, including Ubisoft, have previously tried to convince Microsoft and Sony to let them release console games that would require the player to be connected to Xbox Live or the Playstation Network at all times, irrespective of whether the game has any online elements. And despite the fact that such a mechanism would probably be far easier to implement on a console than on Windows, both Microsoft and Sony have smacked down such requests each and every time, on the grounds that they don't want to be responsible for the fallout that would inevitably happen. Let's reiterate: Sony, who ''love'' locking up everything harder than Fort Knox, using proprietary solutions wherever they can, and who have in the years attracted a lot of hatred due to their [
*** That certainly didn't stop [[Capcom]] of all things [http://www.capcom-unity.com/ask_capcom/go/thread/view/7371/23158177/Why_does_Final_Fight_Double_Impact_require_me_to_be_in_PSN pulling off that dirty trick on the consoles]. At least the [http://www.giantbomb.com/news/bionic-commando-rearmed-2-psn-requires-an-internet-connection/2895/ Second time] they did it, they said it required a PSN login right on the description. (And it still only affects the [[
**** [https://web.archive.org/web/20110607032039/http://wii.ign.com/articles/117/1172319p2.html That type of copy protection actually is allowed by Microsoft and Sony], but only on download
** Ubisoft tried to guard against the first ''[[Assassin's Creed
* ''SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 3'' forces you to pay 20$ to play online on pirated '''or''' second hand copies. And it didn't take long to crack it, which makes this PSP copy protection irritating as it was preceded a month before by...
* ...the initial Japanese release of ''[[Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep]]''. Why? At the time of the game's release, no one fully cracked the 6.20 firmware, which the game requires. The game was released in early January; it took until early March for a major cracking progress. Yeah.
* ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]: The Battle For Middle Earth'' contained a rather unique form of anti-piracy. About ten minutes in, if the game decided our copy was pirated, your entire army would self destruct resulting in a game over. Caused some problems because bugs resulted in the game doing this to even legal copies sometimes.
* ''Bonetown'', an [[H
* [[Spirit Tracks]] had this when you got on the train. The controls for it wouldn't show up so you would end up crashing into another train over and over again in the tutorial section. This was patched.
* Hackers had a field day when it came to ''[[Shin Megami Tensei
** The above "save data erasure" assumes that the game even saves correctly (notably, on a LOT of cards, the game automatically stops saving halfway and states "save failed", and then deletes the failed save data when you attempt to load it), which turns out to be the least of your issues when you realize that the "random encounters" are actually required to stand a remote chance of making it through one round of a boss battle (Tool Assisted Superplay notwithstanding). [[Nintendo Hard|Not that anyone who plays]] [[Shin Megami Tensei
* ''Mirror's Edge'' on PC had copy protection in the form of a game-breaking bug that tripped in the third stage, slowing Faith to literally a snails pace, rendering it impossible to jump the requisite gap to continue with the game. A second fix was made to address this.
* Pro Tools, an audio-editing suite currently used by the majority of the music industry, has gone back to the "piece of hardware" method. You can pirate the software all you like... But unless you have an "MBox" plugged into your computer, the program will start to load, put up an error window that says something on the order of "ha ha ha", and close again. Used versions of the MBox 1 go for something like $200 on the secondary market; MBox ''3''s are worse. Oh, and, let's not even ''start'' on the "iLok" dongle.
** Though, if someone in the music industry is committing piracy, well, [[Hypocrite|they have alot to answer for.]]
*** What does [[Hyperbole and
* ''[[
* The ''[[Ef:
** To start off, you need a valid serial key to install either of the games. After it's entered, the installer begins extracting files from the DVD to the install directory while encrypting them at the same time. This encryption is to prevent the game from running should the files be copied to another machine after an installation and a start up attempted there. This does not stop people from installing the game using the same key and DVD on multiple computers, but it makes them take the extra step of finding a key they can use.
** What the copy protection was supposed to do was prevent people outside of Japan from being able to play either of the games. In addition to the above encryption and the fact that the computer clock must be set to Japanese Standard Time, a Japanese version of Windows XP or above was required to even get the game to run at all.
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* Fictional example: In ''[[User Unfriendly]]'' by Vivian Vande Velde, the protagonists are playing a pirated copy of Virtual Reality RPG ''Rasmussem''. Unfortunately for them, [[Talking Is a Free Action|discussing the game]] in front of an NPC initiates an infinite loop in the relevant AI which can only be terminated by a customer service representative.
* The DOS game ''Al-Qadim: The Genie's Curse'' featured copy-protection in the form of a question whose answer you needed to look up on a page in the manual in order to start playing. Not only does it give you the page of the manual and what number word it is, it also gives you the heading of that section of the manual and the first letter of the word. Unfortunately, one of the copy-protection questions used an answer that was directly related to the heading and extremely easy to guess: "On page 19, under the heading Sound, enter the ninth word: (first letter is m)" [[What an Idiot!|(unsurprisingly, the answer is "music")]]. If you answered the question wrong it would simply let you try again with a different question as many times as you wanted, so even if you lost the manual it was easy to just cycle through the questions until you got one you knew or could figure out the answer to (not to mention having the first letter of the words made brute force guesswork much easier).
* ''X3: Reunion'' shipped with StarForce, [[Obvious Beta|along with a lot of bugs]]. The players and developers both hated it, and it was removed in a later patch (along with, if memory serves, instructions on how to completely eradicate StarForce from one's system. The standalone expansion ''X3: Terran Conflict'' shipped with a different DRM package, but it was also ditched in a patch. Egosoft's position is they hate
* Similarly, both ''Supreme Commander'' and its expansion came with a disk-check but it was removed after a couple of patches.
** The copy protection was required by their publisher, THQ, during the short period in between the European and North American launches. Neither the developers nor the community liked the mere presence of the DRM, and it was promptly patched out; in the first patch for the expansion in fact.
* ''[[Oregon Trail]] II'' normally has to load the oregon.dat file from the CD drive, but this can be easily circumvented by copying the file to the hard drive and instructing the INI to load it from there.
** This is actually true for most if not all [[Edutainment Game
*** Except there were indeed pirates who did release children's games, but that is mostly a niche subject compared to other genres.
* Most modern CD/DVD-ROM games require the original disc, not a copy, to be present in the drive for the game to run. Such as the aformentioned Safedisc system. Not surprisingly, most of these games have illegal no-CD cracks, although they can be flaky at times.
* ''Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project'' would make enemies tougher and the bosses invincible if the copyright code was modified.
* Here's one that's both software and hardware at once. A form of copy protection for music CDs involved making the data initially read by a PC (but, theoretically, not a CD player) intentionally corrupted, which would prevent a PC from copying or even playing the CD. Which would have been brilliant, if not for the fact that you could use a Sharpie marker to physically prevent a PC from reading the corrupted part, forcing it to start on a working part, allowing you to play your CD on the computer.
** That's [
* Game manuals for [[Nintendo 3DS]] games include this lovely bit of text: "''{{color|red|Important! Read the Nintendo 3DS operations manual before setup or use of your system.}} This product contains technical protection measures. Use of an unauthorized device or any unauthorized technical modification to your Nintendo 3DS system, '''will''' render this game '''and/or system''' unplayable.''" <ref>Bolded text is not present in DS, DSi, or WII manuals.</ref> Yes, Nintendo is putting it right there in the manual that if you attempt to modify your 3DS, they will attempt to brick it via firmware updates. The catch? At least one method of delivering these updates cannot be disabled, and (in theory, at least) all firmware updates must be accepted by the 3DS.
** [http://gbatemp.net/t284730-3ds-bricking-rumor It may or may not be true.]
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* [http://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=23336&start=0 KeySIGN], a traffic-management software that creates road signs, has a dongle attached to ensure the licence is installed on a particular machine. (AFAIK, this is based on info from the link).
** Actually, most software used for engineering/science work will have a type of copy protection; usually it is online activation, unless we're talking about very high-end stuff you can't buy except through a contract.
* [
* ''[[Sin]]'' encrypted the music files, to prevent them from being played outside of the game.
* The first ''[[Happiness! (visual novel)|Happiness!]]'' [[Visual Novel]] (not the sequel ''Happiness! Re:Lucks'') used a variant of StarForce that required entering an encryption key. It was the only [[Visual Novel]] to use StarForce to date.
* The ''[[
* The sheer contempt for DRM has even caused some companies to consider the lack of it a selling point.
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== Non-software variations ==
* In the early days of [[Silent Films]], piracy ran rampant. Projectionists would often "lend" prints to pirates for duplication. The pirates would replace original title cards with their own title cards and claim copyright if they were caught. To combat this, studios painted stencils of the studio logo onto the scenery in every shot so they could verify that they were the legitimate copyright holders.
* It is a common practice among the publishers of paper maps to add "copyright traps" to their maps in order to identify competitors who steal their cartography instead of doing their own.
** The most common of these are [[w:Trap street|"trap streets"]] -- a deliberate misrepresentation of a street, usually in such a way that does not impede navigation (like non-existent bends and curves, an incorrect name, or depicting the street as being a different size from reality. The number of these can be surprisingly large -- one publisher claimed in 2005 that their map of London had "about 100" trap streets on it.
**
*** When Gousha still made maps, the state map of Minnesota included a huge non-existent bay along the north shore of Lake Superior between Duluth and Grand Marais. (It was obviously fake. Highway 61 ran over the 10-mile opening of the bay rather than skirting around its fictional shoreline.) No matter how many people complained, they never corrected the error.
** Amusingly, United States courts have ruled that copyright traps are not, themselves, copyrightable, because to let them be so could a produce a [[Logic Bomb]] situation where an error in listing facts (which themselves are not copyrightable) might result in copying a "false fact" which itself would violate copyright.
* Similarly, dictionaries, encyclopedias and other reference works may include [[w:Fictitious entry|fictitious entries]] intended as copyright traps. For instance, in 2005 the ''The New Oxford American Dictionary'' included an entry for the non-existent word "esquivalience", defined as "the willful avoidance of one's official responsibilities", as an explicit copyright trap.
* [[VCR|Betamax and VHS]] used security services like [[w:Macrovision|Macrovision]] to prevent piracy for movies and shows. Copying a Betamax or VHS tape would make the copy unwatchable by scrambling the screen. In modern VCRs (since 1997) and all DVD recorders, they have a chip-in to detect that it's copy-protected and would stop the recording, And leaves you with an error screen that reads things like ''Recording Error!: This program is not allowed to be recorded!'' The first movie to have a copy-protected home video release was the crime drama ''[[w:The Cotton Club (film)|The Cotton Club]]''.
* Copy-Protection on [[Laserdisc]], [[DVD]], and [[Blu-Ray]] had been quite common for many movies and shows to prevent viewers from making bootleg copies.
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Videogame Culture]]
[[Category:Copy Protection]]
[[Category:
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