Jump to content

Copy Protection: Difference between revisions

Copy Protection (view source)

Revision as of 07:26, 8 April 2014

329 bytes removed ,  10 years ago
m
Mass update links
VisualWikitext
m (categories and general cleanup)
m (Mass update links)
Line 40:
* ''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. [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 ''[[Leather Goddesses of Phobos (Video Game)|Leather Goddesses of Phobos]]'', the copy protection feelie was the ''map through the obligatory maze''. Considering that the maze was pretty much instantly deadly if you didn't do the right things in the right places, this was rather irritating when the map invariably got lost.
** 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 [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 (TV)|Jeopardy!]]'' games, could be placed against the screen to render the text legible, but this failed with exceptionally small or large monitors.
* 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 "[http://www.msxnet.org/gtinter/Operate2.htm# P23 tap codes]" at certain points in the game, and the Colonel would instruct you to look at the manual for information on how to interpret tap codes. This was a frequency you needed to continue, and while brute-forcing it was possible, it was far more annoying than brute-forcing Meryl's frequency in the sequel due to the MSX's criminal slowdown and Snake's insistence on starting every conversation with "THIS IS SOLID SNAKE. YOUR REPLY, PLEASE...". Even more annoyingly, the version included in ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 3: Subsistence'' (the first release of the game in English) did not come with tap codes in the manual. Konami eventually provided a downloadable online manual with the tap code chart in. The European version of the ''Subsistence'' manual also omits the tap code chart, but does tell you the frequency, albeit without any context as to when it's required.
** ''[[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 [[Game FAQs]]. The remake ''The Twin Snakes'' eliminated this particular problem by having the character say that the code is on the back of "the package", since there's no package item. The only other option for players was to try every radio frequency in sequential order until they reached the correct one.
*** Hilariously, the 2008 Essentials box set included all three [[PSPlay Station 2]] Compatible ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' games in DVD Cases, including the original with new artwork in the style of the original "longbox" Playstation cases. Brilliant, ..Except for the fact that there's no screenshots of the game on the back, even the one needed to progress in the game! It's not in the manual either!
* 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:
** ''[[Codename Iceman|Codename: ICEMAN]]'': The game begins as the main character is on vacation in Tahiti. A nearby volleyball player drowns in the surf and the player must rescue him and perform CPR. Obnoxiously, the game didn't tell you that it wanted you to look in the manual and type off the instructions verbatim.
*** 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).
Line 74:
* ''[[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.
* ''[[Wizardry (Video Game)|Wizardry]] II'' had a small booklet of "spells" composed of four-letter nonsense words. The player at times had to consult this booklet and enter the third word of a spell. Unfortunately, the booklet was black text on dark red paper, making it difficult even for those with proper eyesight to read.
* ''[[Zak McKracken and Thethe Alien Mindbenders]]'' required the player to enter exit visa codes before traveling between countries, which are given in the manual. Inputting an invalid code more than four times results in a [[Nonstandard Game Over]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ0UPj3BiKY wherein you are placed in a "pirate jail"].
* Nintendo got in on the act when it released ''[[Star TropicsStarTropics]]'' for the NES: At a later point in the game, it asks for a code that you can get by dipping the included map in water. Needless to say, this was a major inconvenience for people who rented the game or bought it used.
** 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.
Line 107:
** Sony also tried to combat piracy for the PS1 by making the discs' undersides black, causing them to be transparent only to the infrared laser used in CD drives, and more difficult to copy correctly since at the time of the console's release, consumers could not buy CD-Rs like this. Unfortunately for Sony, pretty soon blank discs with black undersides became available, and this part of their copy-protection scheme failed.
*** 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.
*** 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 [[PSPlay Station 3]].
*** And then Sony removed the OtherOS function from the PS3 back in April 2010, citing fears of ''security'' (or rather, ''piracy''. When the console is booted into Linux, it could now be used to run copied versions of discs). Generally, people weren't pleased and even brought on lawsuits.
* The Nintendo Gamecube uses a proprietary 8cm DVD based on the miniDVD.
** 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.
* 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 [[PSPlay Station 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.
Line 118:
* 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.
** ''[[MegamanMega Man Battle Network]]: Operate Shooting Star'', a remake of the first game, prevented you from editing your folder, and initiated a battle with three Mets, the weakest enemy in the game, with every single step you took while on the Internet.
** 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 60Hz instead of 50Hz.
Line 144:
** ''[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 nowdays--so if you buy a game with the old Starforce, like ''[[Second Sight]]'', you need to download a patch off the company's web site in order to play the game.
** The launch of ''[[Bio ShockBioshock]]'' was screwed up, plain and simple, when the single-player offline game shipped with SecuROM [[Copy Protection]] that allowed installation twice, ever, before the customer had to contact support. In its wake came crashing authentication servers, the customer support of the publisher and of its parent company each referring people to the other, said support demanding photos of the CD and the manual, people in smaller countries being asked to phone the same support - i.e., to make international calls in a foreign language, PR representatives assuaging the public by falsely stating that properly uninstalling the game would give the right to another installation, finding out that installing on another account or making what SecuROM deems to be a significant hardware change counts, the protection disrupting other programs if they look like the sort that might be used for cracking, the demo coming with SecuROM - without activation - when it acknowledgedly has no reason to do so, and [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|halitosis]]. It would've been nice to tell about the limit beforehand, too. Others are cool with that and just dislike having unannounced, nonconsensual, unremovable data on their computers. Some parts of SecuROM don't like being told to leave.
*** 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 4-5 days '''before''' release.
Line 150:
** 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.
* ''[[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]]'', ''[[War CraftWarcraft]]'' and ''[[Marathon (Video Game)Trilogy|Marathon]]'' had special, network-client-only "spawn" installations that you could make many or an unlimited number of on other machines from just one copy and run without the disks (sometimes full versions and/or demos would automatically run in "spawn" mode when you don't pass the copy protection). These needed a full installation on another machine to act as a server, and would sometimes connect only to servers run by the full install from the same copy. Similarly, ''[[Diablo II]]'' allowed you to install a "multiplayer Version" with which you could play online, without the cd, but disabled the single-player segment of the game.
* 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.
Line 159:
** 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 (Videovideo Gamegame)|Rogue]]'': If you're playing a pirated copy, the monsters do six times more damage than normal, and when you die (as you almost certainly will before the third level), the tombstone says "Rest in Peace: Software Pirate, killed by Copy Protection Mafia". This can even happen on legal copies, possibly due to bit rot.
* The PC version of ''[[Sonic Adventure (Video Game)|Sonic Adventure]] DX'' released in Europe had an absurd copy protection system which, each time you ran the game, required you to insert both of the two discs the game shipped on, and then performed a full, intensive scan of ''every file on the disc''. On systems that were new at the time this would take about a minute for the entire process, but if you were using a system which only just met the minimum requirements, it could take ''ten minutes''.
* 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].
Line 169:
** ''[[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.
** ''[[Chrono Trigger (Video Game)|Chrono Trigger]]'' allowed you to play until you first traveled back in time, which then stuck you in an eternal loop in the warp sequence. This was also present in the original SNES version.
** ''[[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: ''[[Dragon Quest V (Video Game)|Dragon Quest V]]'', ''[[Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars]]'' and other major titles.
* 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. [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>, who would give you a lecture on how stolen starships are a major disincentive for starship manufacturers to make new starships; your ship is confiscated, you're sent to prison and [[Nonstandard Game Over|"with luck, you'll get a job cleaning the toilets when you get out"]].
* In the classic adventure game ''[[Indiana Jones and Thethe Last Crusade: The (VideoGraphic Game)Adventure|Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade]]'' Marcus would ask Indy to translate some symbols for him, which would need to be looked up in the manual. Failing to do so would let the game continue as normal - until a crucial point where Indy, at Donovan's place, would fail to translate a tablet concerning the Holy Grail (Indy mistakenly translates it as "Holy Grain"), prompting Donovan to say "Seems you're just an illegitimate copy of the man I thought you were."
* ''[[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: (VideoArmed Game)Assault|ARMA]] : Armed Assault'', its [[Spiritual Successor]]. The best copy protection for ''ARMA'' was of course the fact that [[They Just Didn't Care|it didn't run under Vista.]]
** FADE also exists on ''[[ARMA: (VideoArmed Game)Assault|ARMA]] II''. [[Rule of Funny|Your accuracy slowly gets worse until you literally can't shoot the side of a barn]], it impedes your movement, blurs your screen, and it eventually turns you into an animal. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDKguXtrSxU Here's a video.]
* 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.
Line 201:
** 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 and Dragons]]'' computer games by SSI requires the use of the included a thick manual not only to log into the game ("In the manual section on page 45, paragraph 2, line 10 - what is word 6?"), but also to understand the plot (you have to refer to the journal part). In the [[Sarcasm Mode|brilliant move]] by the company for its Anniversary set, they included the spin wheels for some of the games' copy-protection, but forgot to put in the manuals for ''Gateway and Treasure of the Savage Frontieer'', rendering those two games unplayable.
* Unintentional example: ''[[Deus Ex (Video Game)|Deus Ex]]'' had a scene transition triggered by a certain audio clip. Pirated versions would often leave out much of the audio to save space, making the scene transition never take place, and making it impossible to continue the game. Additionally, there was also a batch of defective disks with corrupted audio files. Thanks Ion Storm!
* The [[Battle TechBattleTech]] PC game, ''The Crescent Hawks' Inception'', had two series of copy protection: one early on in the game, when you had to look up (or memorize) different Battlemech components to continue training at the Academy in your ersatz [[Doomed Hometown]], and one very near the end, where you had to look up some stuff on a star chart in order to get your father's ''Phoenix Hawk'' Land-Air Mech (AKA VF-1J Valkyrie, but that's another trope). Woe betide you if you lost the star chart.
* [[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."
* ''[[Commander Keen (Video Game)|Commander Keen]] 6: Aliens Ate My Babysitter'' required you to identify a random enemy by name before you could play it. The enemies were never identified in-game, requiring you to have an instruction manual on-hand.
* 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.
Line 217:
* ''[[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 and Conquer]]: [[Command and Conquer Red Alert 3]]'' uses DRM and counts your game installations. Also, for the first time of the history of ''[[Command and Conquer]]'', two players can't ''even'' play in LAN mode with the same license (while before, the game using two CDs allowed it). Curse you, EA!
** 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.
Line 244:
* 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 ''[[Strike Commander (Video Game)|Strike Commander]]'' came with instructions to copy the disks and put them in the cupboard in case something happened to your originals.
** Another Origin property, the [[Wing Commander (Videovideo Gamegame)|Wing Commander]] series, required for the first few games information included in the [[Feelies]] or manual to start playing the game. When they were reworked for the ''Kilrathi Saga'' collection, the check was eliminated.
* The Dreamcast game ''[[Ooga Booga]]'' had an interesting [[Copy Protection]] mechanism: If it detected that you were playing a burned copy, instead of starting the game it would show an in-game pirate character that would dance when you pressed any button on the controller. The group who released the pirated ISO left this in, but made it continue to the actual game when the player pressed Start.
* 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| "It's not a bug in the game's code, it's a bug in your moral code."}}
** 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.
* ''[[Starcraft]] II'' has no have localized multiplayer, in a effort to create "[[Blatant Lies|a more social gaming experience]]", or somesuch.
** 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 ''[[DragonballDragon Ball]]'' video game trilogy known as "Legacy of Goku" (And the spiritual sequel, ''GT: Transformation'') had its form of copy protection wherein a message popped up at a certain point saying "this game cannot be played on this hardware" and wouldn't go away, should it detect that it isn't a legit copy (Although there are rumours of some retail copies having this problem as well). Perhaps stupid is the fact that [[What an Idiot!|later versions of the emulator Visual Boy Advance decided to emulate this form of copy protection]], making playing the games on that emulator ''extremely'' difficult.
* 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 [[Game FAQs]] was invented.)
* Not strictly [[Copy Protection]], but more like ''incredibly'' failtastic programming: Capcom's ''[[MegamanMega Man Battle Network]] 4: [[One Game for Thethe Price of Two|Blue Moon]]'' has issues the Red Sun version doesn't exhibit which make the game virtually unplayable on anything except the original Gameboy Advance hardware. One unavoidable section of the game causes the entire game to slow to a near halt (the music remains normal, however) if you open the menu or encounter enemies. The game will eventually bring itself back to normal speed, but this glitch turns what should easily be a 15 minute at most scenario into something that can take up to an entire day to complete.
** 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 [[Play Station]], such as ''[[Legend of Dragoon]]'' and ''[[Vandal Hearts]] 2'', would detect if you had a mod-chip (which lets you play imported or copied games) in your system, and then the game would not play and a message to call a place to report the problem would come up on screen. What it boiled down to was that people who had mod chips and COULD pirate the games but DIDN'T could not play the games they bought legitimately. It was probably in an attempt to get people to abandon their mod chip consoles, guess what they abandoned instead?
* ''[[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 Byby Design|unwinnable]]. However, the copy protection was never disclosed in the manual and the flaky bit had a tendency to "settle" over time, meaning that many users found their legitimate games impossible to play past the third level.
* 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 ''[[The Name of the Rose (Literature)|The Name of the Rose]]'', required the player to assist to daily matins. In the original game, a recorded version of ''Ave María'' would play during these sequences. However, if the game detected a pirate copy was running, the song would be replaced by an echoing voice saying "Pirata, Pirata, Pirata" and locking up the computer.
* ''[[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 and Luigi Bowsers Inside Story]]'' locks up at the file select screen. That was quickly patched, though. It also had a couple, lesser known ones: The tutorial battle with Bowser will go on forever because Bowser won't attack and Toadsworth won't do a tutorial which is required to progress (even if you say no to his offer). A second one occurs with another tutorial battle with a Goombule which won't progress because Starlow won't do a tutorial.
* [[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 ''[[Assassin's Creed II (Video Game)|Assassin's Creed II]]'' and ''[[The Settlers]] VII'' and planned for use into just about every Ubisoft PC release from now on, it basically requires you to remain online during play, and if shall even a slightest connectivity hitch to occur, ''you would be booted off from a game and lose any unsaved progress''. ''Assassin's Creed 2'' and ''Splinter Cell Conviction'' have since had the always-online requirement removed; the games must now "only" access the Internet each time they start up.
** 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.
Line 275:
* [[Electronic Arts]] tried the same thing as Ubisoft with ''[[Command and Conquer]] 4: Tiberian Twilight''. While it didn't bring up as much bad press as it was in Ubisoft's case, there were some people complaining about nonetheless, ''[http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/03/26/0653202/EA-Editor-Criticizes-Command-amp-Conquer-4-DRM and that includes one of EA's own employees]''.
** 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 [[wikipedia:Sony BMG CD copy protection scandal|boneheaded antipiracy measures]], [[Everyone Has Standards|have rejected Ubisoft's project]]. You'd think this would be an eye opener in and of itself for Ubisoft...
*** 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 [[PSPlay Station 3]])
**** [http://wii.ign.com/articles/117/1172319p2.html That type of copy protection actually is allowed by Microsoft and Sony], but only on download titles -- even then, however, the game has to go through a more rigorous validation process than usual, which is why most game developers don't do it. However, Ubisoft (among others) have repeatedly demanded to be allowed to implement this type of protection on ''disc-based'' games, which is silly when you consider that a significant amount of people still go without internet connections on their consoles. Fortunately, both Microsoft and Sony both have more sense than the developers in question, and still refuse to allow them to do so.
** Ubisoft tried to guard against the first ''[[Assassin's Creed I (Videovideo Gamegame)|Assassin's Creed I]]'' being leaked by deliberately introducing a performance-degrading bug into the code, to be removed only when the game was sent to be mass-produced. Unfortunately, they didn't actually tell anyone, so when the bugged version was inevitably leaked, it considerably hurt their sales because the pirates spread through word of mouth to potential legitimate buyers that the game had [[Porting Disaster|terrible performance even on high-end computers.]]
* ''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.
* ''[[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 Game-game]] by western gamers, has been noted for being "Uncrackable" despite using only Securom. The big problem? The Securom was rather archaic and was quietly subverted once the Retail Version was released (aka the physical copy) rather then the Direct Download version
* [[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 Strange Journey (Video Game)|Shin Megami Tensei Strange Journey]]''. Any pirated copies of the game would erase any saved data upon restarting, as well as not including any random encounter enemies whatsoever.
** 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 (Franchise)|these games]] [[Nintendo Hard|hasn't figured that out before getting this one.]]
* ''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 Aa Half|the poor alot]] have to answer for?? But no, most people ''in'' the music industry are probably good to go. It's the people trying to ''get into'' the music industry--Indie labels, home-studio owners, [[Jonathan Coulton]]--who would be running into this problem.
* ''[[Worms (Video Game)|Worms]]'' came with a code sheet printed in glossy black ink on matte black paper.
* The ''[[Ef: aA Fairy Tale of Thethe Two.|Ef: a fairy tale of the two]]'' duology from minori is one of the few visual novels with any sort of copy protection. Strangely, the objective wasn't to stop pirates. Explanation below.
** 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.
Line 313:
* ''[[Sin]]'' encrypted the music files, to prevent them from being played outside of the game.
* The first ''[[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 ''[[Doctor Who (TV)|Doctor Who]]'' adventure games are free via the BBC website to UK residents. Everybody else is required to pay. In order to prevent unauthorized users, they use two forms of "protection". First, the BBC website will check whether your IP is local before allowing you to download the game - and even if you manage to get around this via a proxy (or have someone else send you the game), it will "phone home" when you attempt to install it to check it again.
* The sheer contempt for DRM has even caused some companies to consider the lack of it a selling point.
 
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/886577"
Cookies help us deliver our services. By using our services, you agree to our use of cookies.
More information