Pirated Copies of Arkham Asylum Doom Batman to Gassy Death

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DaMadFiddler
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Pirated Copies of Arkham Asylum Doom Batman to Gassy Death

Post by DaMadFiddler »

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/09/10/eidos ... m-pirates/
Joystiq wrote:Well, this is just hysterical. Posting on the Batman: Arkham Asylum PC forums, user "Cheshirec_the_cat" complained that Batman's glide wasn't working in a certain section of the game, leading to his death by poisonous gas. Before long, Eidos moderator Keir informed him that he had actually stumbled on an intentional glitch in the game that only affects those that pirated their copy, saying "It's not a bug in the game's code, it's a bug in your moral code."

Sure, more unscrupulous members of the gaming community will discover a workaround eventually, but let's just savor the moment, shall we?
This is how you deal with piracy... not by locking a game down with activation codes and product registration, but by making bootlegging hilariously obnoxious. I was talking with Quzar and Impetus a couple years back about how to handle copy protection for any possible commercial Screamcast releases, and my suggestion was to make pirated copies (self-detected by some technical means either of them could explain much better than I) work, but do something profoundly annoying, such as remap all the controls every few minutes, or mix around the controller port assignments, or periodically flip the screen image.
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Re: Pirated Copies of Arkham Asylum Doom Batman to Gassy Death

Post by Chilly Willy »

Many apps do that deliberately. The category of apps distributed free that don't fully work unless you pay are known as "Crippleware". That's really all this is - unofficial Crippleware applied to a game. It's a good idea - it allows a person to play the game enough to decide if they wish to buy it or not.
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Re: Pirated Copies of Arkham Asylum Doom Batman to Gassy Death

Post by Nico0020 »

wow. quite interesting. I don't think I have ever heard of a game doing this before. I don't usually play PC games, so I don't usually pirate PC games lol. But I am curious a bit about the piracy situation. I remember Half Life 2 when it was released literally had no way to pirate it correct? Was that bypassed eventually? As I remember steam used to piss people off who wanted to do like counter strike LANs with few copies of the game. Also, when Sega released the PC version of Phantasy Star Universe for the states, it did have well.....any copy protection AFAIK. No serial numbers or anything. Is piracy hurting PC games that much?
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Re: Pirated Copies of Arkham Asylum Doom Batman to Gassy Death

Post by Quzar »

Nico0020 wrote:No serial numbers or anything. Is piracy hurting PC games that much?
That's a somewhat new trend that has gotten popular in the past 2 years or so. After some bad backlash from overreaching protection schemes (like after napster with audio CDs) and a few successful test cases the new trend has been to release PC games at a vastly reduced price point with no protection. Some numbers released for titles done in this style show that there's a lot more money in it. Less profit per piece but more sold. A few that I've tried also do something along the lines of requiring a lot of confirmation/activation/require that you buy via their online store in order to take advantage of updates, community additions, and online multiplayer.
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Re: Pirated Copies of Arkham Asylum Doom Batman to Gassy Death

Post by Lartrak »

Half-Life 2 used to be impossible to make playable without steam. There are pirate workarounds for the singleplayer now though. I don't know about LAN play, etc.

Personally, I was totally unwilling to buy Half-Life 2 until it was able to be played without steam. Once I found out somehow had made a workaround hack, I bought it.
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Re: Pirated Copies of Arkham Asylum Doom Batman to Gassy Death

Post by Chilly Willy »

Actually, Half Life 2 (single player mode) was pirated almost instantly as it was such a royal pain in the ass to install. I bought HL2, but used the pirated version because I couldn't get Steam working on the system I had at the time.
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Re: Pirated Copies of Arkham Asylum Doom Batman to Gassy Death

Post by Dreamcast4life »

I know some hackers that fixed that problem. However it's cool for people who have no idea what they are doing and get a piracy copy that forces them to die.
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Re: Pirated Copies of Arkham Asylum Doom Batman to Gassy Death

Post by Stryfe »

Not the "Oh Noes Itz the Evilz Piracy" topic...

I think it's hilarious that they do something like this to a copied game. Now if they could only cause a chain reaction like hacker fixes the code for the first death, but that triggers death two to happen elsewhere.

In all reality how much money is lost to digital piracy? I guess it depends on if the person who uses pirated software/games would buy them, had they not otherwise been available to pirate. How can a company lose potential profit if the pirate copy users weren't going to buy it regardless?

Eventually..., every copy protection method gets cracked. The only exception I've ever heard of where someone couldn't would be a Dreamcast product called "Bleemcast".
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Re: Pirated Copies of Arkham Asylum Doom Batman to Gassy Death

Post by Jeeba Jabba »

Stryfe wrote: The only exception I've ever heard of where someone couldn't would be a Dreamcast product called "Bleemcast".
Rand used to be a moderator of our Bleemcast forum here.
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Re: Pirated Copies of Arkham Asylum Doom Batman to Gassy Death

Post by Specially Cork »

I'd hate to spend $0.00 on a videogame only to find out I wouldn't be able to complete it unless I waited a couple of days for somebody to find a fix for it. It would certainly turn me away from piracy.
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Re: Pirated Copies of Arkham Asylum Doom Batman to Gassy Death

Post by not just souLLy now »

Was probably only done as a PR thing anyway, to keep coverage of Batman up after it's initial release, a pretty good move probably since no doubt Kotaku and Joystiq would have had an article on it.
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