Arkham Asylum Pirates Get a Gimpy Batman
- Thread starter John Funk
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I am aware of a game that was flooded by complaints about the game being badly bugged and crashing after they had ran afoul of similar DRM.yourbeliefs said:
The company did not point out they had snagged on a drm to avoid them fixing it... the net result that people reading the forums didn't pay attention to the dates of complaints being before the release date, and the negative word of mouth about how buggy it was pretty much destroyed the game before it was released.
Now that's DRM I can live with! Why the hell hasn't every company adopted something like this? I guarantee it would crush pirating in record time.
Imagine you pirate a movie like say...The Sixth Sense. Within the first 5 minutes of the movie it cuts away to a black screen that says "BRUCE WILLIS IS ALREADY DEAD!" That would most definitely put a large damper on many pirates. This is a brilliant idea that actually makes sense; I'd back this concept all the way to congress if the situation ever arises.
Imagine you pirate a movie like say...The Sixth Sense. Within the first 5 minutes of the movie it cuts away to a black screen that says "BRUCE WILLIS IS ALREADY DEAD!" That would most definitely put a large damper on many pirates. This is a brilliant idea that actually makes sense; I'd back this concept all the way to congress if the situation ever arises.
Points for creativity but they're not the first company to try such things (Operation Flashpoint's loading screen advertises its 'performance degrading' anti piracy measures, and that's 8 years old now) and it doesn't take pirates long to find a way around such things. Anyone who downloaded a copy of Batman Arkham Asylum would merely have had to wait a day or so before a new crack became available so that they could carry on playing, and presumably this doesn't apply to the Xbox 360 version at all because a crack wouldn't be required. So all in all this was arguably a waste of the developers' time because they should have been coming up with something truly innovative that wouldn't be cracked in 15 minutes by some 16 year old. What's wrong with printing manuals full of code with glossy black text on a matte black background to prevent photocopying or scanning and then occasionally asking the gamer for the first letter of the third word of the second sentence of paragraph five on page 20?
Wow, this is just awesome. I hope more developers use stuff like this. Rocksteady has just made my day are now on my list of favorite developers.
Actually, I can see this backfiring rather incredibly. Some buggy installation problem or something and next thing you know you've got everyone with a messed up copy of the game, with them all being called pirates.
The idea is not strictly speaking new, little gifts being left for pirates has been around since the days of the Commodore 64 (causing things like scrolling text lecturing against piracy). However I think that the more companies do this, the more inevitably your going to see a massive backfire when something inevitably gets messed up.
The idea is not strictly speaking new, little gifts being left for pirates has been around since the days of the Commodore 64 (causing things like scrolling text lecturing against piracy). However I think that the more companies do this, the more inevitably your going to see a massive backfire when something inevitably gets messed up.
You should check out FADE. It's a similar type of DRM used in Operation Flashpoint (the original games) and in the ArmA series. It slowly degrades accuracy, makes random radio calls, hampers movement, and eventually turns the player into a seagull if a pirated version is used.Last of the Chinchillas said:
EDIT: I don't believe that the version of FADE the protects ArmA 2 has been cracked quite yet. I know it wil lbe done eventually, but it's one of the more difficult DRMs to crack since it uses calls to specific, inconspicuous, registry keys as well as in-game triggers and a security key.
I mentioned FADE on a previous post because I did not see anyone else really give it credit (since it was doing things like this 8 years ago).LimaBravo said:
FADE was cracked eventually, and the ArmA 2 version will also be cracked eventually. However, I have my doubts as to whether or not the current version of FADE has been cracked, yet. I base this on the number of people that have claimed to have gotten NASTY viruses from their pirated versions of ArmA 2.
FADE is not perfect, but from my standpoint, it is one of the least intrusive and most iron-clad DRMs out there.
Iron Lore was the company, I think. I know of that because they also made DoW: Soulstorm. I think Iron Lore shouldn't have the game actually crash, and instead let the player KNOWS that the game think it has been pirated.Windknight said:
On the Relicnews forum, there was much sympathy when Iron Lore went under...but that sympathy turned into utter rage when Soulstorm came out (considered the worst game in the Dawn of War series). Instead of people blaming piracy for Iron Lore's downfall, they blamed Iron Lore itself for creating lame games.
Yes. Oh, the irony...elricik said:
As someone else mentioned, it doesn't matter so much if it gets cracked, they have a few more respect points in my books now ;p
Ye, wasn't expecting this from Eidos of all people though.