Cool copy protection schemes

[Anathrax]

We hate DRM. It's a stupid thing to "protect" their games from oh no! pirating. Sometimes a developer gets really brilliant and does something that actually punishes the pirate. As I hear, Serious Sam 3 has a giant red immortal scorpion. What are your favorite?

 

[Dragonclaw]

I like that Game Dev Tycoon strategy that lets pirates play for a while, then they start going bankrupt due to "extensive videogame piracy" of their in-game work.

 

[DoPo]

Apparently, Batman Arkham Asylym had a "bug" in the cracked version - Batman could jump just a little bit less or something, which meant there are places you can't reach, which makes the game unbeatable. Or so I've heard it advertised - I think an actual properly cracked version suffered no problems.

There was Red Alert 2, too (and also Generals, if I remember correctly) - if you start an illegal copy, you can play but in about a minute after the game start, all your buildings blow up and all your units die. Which is cool in theory but in practice it was just annoying - it meant any time I'd reinstall my OS I had to remember to reinstall RA2, otherwise if I played a game, I'd realise I had to install it again, and I'd need to wait for 5-10 minutes wasting time. Also, again, a properly cracked game actually has no problems.

 

[Anathrax]

I remember one I had with my copy of Spyro 3. Since we had no where else to get games we had to get pirated versions(still payed for it <.<). Eggs would reset, Sparx would stick at a maxiumum of 2 hits, the other chars would bug out, some extra rounds wouldn't load. The only hint to it was Zoe's line whom I do not listen to at all.

 

[TheColdHeart]

Didn't the Dark Souls developers do something where they added really strong enemies into early player's games to stop/hamper their progress.

After a quick search...
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/113217-Early-Dark-Souls-Players-Get-a-Nasty-Surprise

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

In Batman Arkham Asylum they made it so that Batman couldn't gliding using his cape. So you can basically play the game for a few hours before you hit one section that you can't get past. Basically makes the cracked version like a long demo, which is cool in my book.

 

[Tom_green_day]

Is this by any chance inspired by the recent IGN article? ;D Fallout:New Vegas has this one where it freezes regularly. Strange, I bought my game new.

 

[yamy]

Not a DRM feature per se, but I remember reading an article about a Japanese person who uploaded hentai games onto a file sharing site - except all the games also came packaged with a virus that would infect whoever installed them and - this is the crazy part- steals every available information from the machine - from name, age, occupation to bank account details and their profiles on social networking sites. These then got uploaded onto a name and shame website that anyone can access until/unless the person pay the hacker off.

Several high profile people's lives got utterly ruined because of this (one of them was a headmaster of a school. I think).

 

[momijirabbit]

In Garry's Mod the game will crash when it starts up if you didn't purchase it.

 

[Mr.PlanetEater]

Almost every Adventure Game I can think of from the 1990s had some form of copy-protection in the manual. However ircr one of the King's Quest games got really dickish with it. Still it was kind of neat to have games where reading the manual was more than something you do when extremely bored.

 

[Fenra]

There was that invincible super tough enemy in serious sam, that made me laugh

Also not intended but when people cracked DS2 and crashed at chapter 7 then went on the forums to complain, they all outed them selves as pirates

 

[NoPants2win]

StarTropics had a letter you had to soak with water. I think it should get bonus points because it also discouraged used game sales.

 

[Snotnarok]

I thought Serious Sam 3 had the best thing, super fast pink scorpion enemy that was unkillable and nasty. I think it actually increased piracy rates because people had to see it......when you can find it on youtube.

 

[EHKOS]

There was this game called Hawx 2 that was so unlikable pirates never to this day have made a crack for it.