Croteam Traps The Talos Principle Pirates in an Elevator

roseofbattle

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Apr 18, 2011
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Croteam Traps The Talos Principle Pirates in an Elevator

The developers who added an invincible scorpion in Serious Sam 3: BFE have trapped pirates in an elevator in The Talos Principle.

People who played pirated copies of Croteam [http://escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/the%20talos%20principle]'s anti-piracy measure. Once unlocking the second floor of the tower in the game, the elevators will get stuck.

Someone posted in the Steam discussion forums for The Talos Principle yesterday about an elevator no longer functioning correctly in the game. A reply to the post pointed out that this is Croteam's anti-piracy measure: "Congratulations you must be the first one to show to the internet world what Croteam did this time to punish pirates :)"

Publisher Devolver Digital later tweeted [https://twitter.com/devolverdigital/status/549281267406348288] a link to a NeoGAF thread about it, acknowledging Croteam's ploy and said, "Well played, Croteam. Well played."

Developers have found ways of annoying pirates or making pirated versions of their games unplayable. Croteam added an The Sims 4 only shows up as a pixilated blur in pirated copies. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114580-Serious-Sam-3-DRM-Will-Kill-You-Bad]

Not all developers punish pirates, however. 11 Bit Studios distributed Steam keys for This War of Mine [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/138664-11-Bit-Studios-Handles-Piracy-of-This-War-of-Mine-with-Free-Copies] after discovering a popular torrent of the game.

According to a NeoGAF post, at least the latest pirate for The Talos Principle doesn't seem bothered. [http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=145080034&postcount=32]

Source: Devolver Digital (Twitter) [https://twitter.com/devolverdigital/status/549281267406348288]


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Veldel

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That's hilarious I hope it also plays annoying elevator music.


See this is how you fight piracy with legit shinagins and not punishing your actual customers
 

K12

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I really like this kind of anti-piracy measure. It's funny and punishes pirates rather than DRM which just punishes legitimate buyers.

I can't help but worry about deliberately putting bugs in a game though. Is there a danger that this could happen in non-pirated versions too?
 

Lightspeaker

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K12 said:
I really like this kind of anti-piracy measure. It's funny and punishes pirates rather than DRM which just punishes legitimate buyers.

I can't help but worry about deliberately putting bugs in a game though. Is there a danger that this could happen in non-pirated versions too?

Yes, it can. Of course if the DRM is fairly innocuous that might not be a huge problem...Alan Wake, I believe, had a DRM thing which gave you a pirate patch with a skull and crossbones on it; rendering it incredibly obvious in screenshots if you'd pirated the game or not.

Others have more of a problem. The two main ones I heard about was people having issues with GTA 4 making the game unplayable due to some kind of "drunk mode" DRM; and one particular version of Spyro the Dragon with really painful DRM which could be triggered by a simple scratched disk.


On the absolutely worst end of the scale a couple of years ago Game Maker Studio's DRM went crazy and wiped out probably hundreds or even thousands of hours of work by legitimate users by automatically permanently editing created assets to be little skull and crossbones symbols:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121127/14455221158/game-maker-studio-drm-misfires-permanently-replaces-created-game-resources-with-pirate-symbols.shtml
 

dochmbi

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These problems get fixed very quickly by the release groups. In fact I wonder why someone would release an improperly cracked version in the first place.
 

Deathfish15

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Anyone else read the headline and think that they really trapped real pirates in a real elevator? I'm disappointed in this article's lacking of deliverance.

But it's still funny that this happens. The scorpion of Serious Sam was far better though.
 

Hairless Mammoth

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Lightspeaker said:
K12 said:
I really like this kind of anti-piracy measure. It's funny and punishes pirates rather than DRM which just punishes legitimate buyers.

I can't help but worry about deliberately putting bugs in a game though. Is there a danger that this could happen in non-pirated versions too?

Yes, it can. Of course if the DRM is fairly innocuous that might not be a huge problem...Alan Wake, I believe, had a DRM thing which gave you a pirate patch with a skull and crossbones on it; rendering it incredibly obvious in screenshots if you'd pirated the game or not.

Others have more of a problem. The two main ones I heard about was people having issues with GTA 4 making the game unplayable due to some kind of "drunk mode" DRM; and one particular version of Spyro the Dragon with really painful DRM which could be triggered by a simple scratched disk.


On the absolutely worst end of the scale a couple of years ago Game Maker Studio's DRM went crazy and wiped out probably hundreds or even thousands of hours of work by legitimate users by automatically permanently editing created assets to be little skull and crossbones symbols:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121127/14455221158/game-maker-studio-drm-misfires-permanently-replaces-created-game-resources-with-pirate-symbols.shtml
There's also old cartridges with similar anti-piracy features that can hit legitimate users if the cart is old or there's bad contact in the slot. I think Earthbound is one of them, so remember, kids, to occasionally put some electrical contact protectant on your retro collections. Oxidation can make you a "pirate."
dochmbi said:
These problems get fixed very quickly by the release groups. In fact I wonder why someone would release an improperly cracked version in the first place.
They probably didn't notice the issue until after releasing the crack. Devs usually put this kind of anti-piracy measure far enough into the games that pirates won't notice until they complain and end up inadvertently admitting to stealing the games.
 

Arnoxthe1

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Dec 25, 2010
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To be fair, I think they really are asking for too much money for this game ($40) due to the fact that they hardly spent any real time or resources to make the game. And the replay value is not really there at all either. And to add insult to injury, they only dropped the price $5 for the winter sale. I, being a Croteam fan, was forced instead to finally buy the much cheaper Orange Box.

Drop the price to $30, guys. Minimum.
 

Hevach

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Dec 18, 2013
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K12 said:
I really like this kind of anti-piracy measure. It's funny and punishes pirates rather than DRM which just punishes legitimate buyers.

I can't help but worry about deliberately putting bugs in a game though. Is there a danger that this could happen in non-pirated versions too?
It can and does. It comes down to how they determine legitimate vs. cracked. Assassins Creed's FOV thing was built into the game and corrected by a release day patch. Because the servers were so broken that day, it was possible for the game to connect but not be able to get the update, in which case it just let you in with the broken FOV. I think I remember something similar happening with an EA game, maybe it was the pixelation thing from Sims?

A few years ago, Gary's Mod rigged it so pirated copies gave the error "unable to shade polygon normals" and crashed, giving an error code with your steam ID embedded. If you posted this error, you were banned and your account was reported to Steam in attempt to get your account banned. They caught thousands of pirates, but also sought steam bans against dozens of legitimate users who were affected by an out of date DLL.

Dark Souls probably still has the worst example with their Black Phantoms that invaded the games of anyone who was playing before the release date. The game wasn't even on Pirate Bay yet, the only people who had it at all had paid for it at stores that mixed up the street date.
 

pearcinator

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Indie games should be $20 tops.

This game being $40 means I won't be buying it until it goes on sale. I want to play this game but I can buy other, much larger, AAA games for less. So it will be waiting in my wishlist on Steam until it significantly drops in price.
 

Metalrocks

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pearcinator said:
Indie games should be $20 tops.

This game being $40 means I won't be buying it until it goes on sale. I want to play this game but I can buy other, much larger, AAA games for less. So it will be waiting in my wishlist on Steam until it significantly drops in price.
trust me. its worth the asking price. you will spend a long time playing it. i have nearly 30 hours and thats my first playthrough.

@topic
thats great to hear. also saw that in the steam forum. its obvious its pirated because he doesnt have the mouse symbol next to his name.
 

Saulkar

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K12 said:
I really like this kind of anti-piracy measure. It's funny and punishes pirates rather than DRM which just punishes legitimate buyers.

I can't help but worry about deliberately putting bugs in a game though. Is there a danger that this could happen in non-pirated versions too?
Deathfish15 said:
Anyone else read the headline and think that they really trapped real pirates in a real elevator? I'm disappointed in this article's lacking of deliverance.

But it's still funny that this happens. The scorpion of Serious Sam was far better though.
That goddamn scorpion! I have a legitimate copy that I bought off steam and that stupid scorpion would randomly appear, forcing me to use the console to kill it. It worked only about half the time, the other half the game crashed and BSOD. What the flying fuck?! After flashing my O.S. boot-drive firmware (the game was installed on a separate drive) did the problem finally disappear. I never asked for help because I feared for my Steam Account if they ever made the connection and were hasty about dealing with it. I did not know if they would ban me or not or could recognise I was running a legit copy.
 

Strazdas

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May 28, 2011
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cue the thousands of legitimate costumers where DRM malfunctioned and they got stuck. because, you know, that happened every other time this type of DRM was used. Even Microsoft Genuine windows checker is faulty. according to ArsTechnia as high as 18% of legitimate windows buyers have windows DRM created problems.

Remmeber when GTA4 deleted your save files because "hur dur we failed to connect to GFWL servers"?

dochmbi said:
These problems get fixed very quickly by the release groups. In fact I wonder why someone would release an improperly cracked version in the first place.
in a rush to release it they didnt bother to playtest it, thats why.

Hairless Mammoth said:
They probably didn't notice the issue until after releasing the crack. Devs usually put this kind of anti-piracy measure far enough into the games that pirates won't notice until they complain and end up inadvertently admitting to stealing the games.
unless, of course, the complainer is the one that bought the game. because DRM often malfunctions. Also the screenshot is from steam forums, you can see whether a person owns the game there or not.

Metalrocks said:
trust me. its worth the asking price. you will spend a long time playing it. i have nearly 30 hours and thats my first playthrough.
Its not about the lenght but about enjoyment. and since i just bought Tomb Rider for 4 euros.....
 

FalloutJack

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Nov 20, 2008
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Aaand it's probably already broken. I mean, it's creative and all, but they really should notice the pattern of where pirates take this sort of thing as like a challenge, and then they take it down and brag about it somewhere. It's clever, but is it effective?
 

SergejH

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Jan 22, 2009
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I always ROFL when someone mention Ubisoft and that FoV, because when anyone READ what is written on games steam page in red square with bold letters, then you will know, that they actually said maybe week before release, that FoV slider will be added @ day 1 patch... And thats probably most sad thing about it, that even most people, who preordered, didnt know about that. So PLEASE people, if you want to preorder games, at least read what is in red square!!!!
 

mrbah

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Sep 16, 2014
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I really like anti piracy measures that turn the game into a longer demo instead.
sure, it will eventually be cracked, butsome pirates will wonder if at this point they should download the patch for their game or just buy the game instead, reminds me of what mirror's edge did.
 

waj9876

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Jan 14, 2012
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I really dislike DRM on principle. Because in situations like these, we really don't know if it was a legitimate pirate, or if the DRM just fucked up and now some innocent person is getting banned. They don't really check into this sort of thing with any level of seriousness.

I remember some game company got a lot of hate because they kept banning legitimate players because their DRM was fucked up, and did nothing about it.