If you could add an anti-piracy measure to a game to prevent it from being played if it were pirated, what would it be? Something that makes game play either impossible, or extremely motherf**king hard.
In EarthBound, I would make it so you get no turns in battle. The enemies just keep wailing on you, and you don't get a chance to attack.
In the Street Fighter games, I would make the enemies super-mega-ultra-giga-holycrap cheap.
What about all of you?
Wait...what? I don't understand this...Add an anti-piracy measure by making the game harder..?
This was pretty much done in 80s computer games, the ones that required you to type a letter from a specific page of the manual or something like that. If you failed, the game could stealthily continue and fail in an important part of it, or cause other anomalies that would deviate from the normal game experience.
So entering a number from the manual before you start the game every time is more of a form anti-piracy than annoying?
Yeah, cos word gets around and it did work in quite a few ways. It developed the reputation that games without manuals weren't worth nearly as much, or at least it did over here in England with old computers. BUT, that was in the days when so many games were so crap that you barely knew controls or even what to do. That changed with NES of course when Nintendo introduced their approval policy.
If I could choose an anti piracy measure it wouldn't be DRM crap like we see on PC, I would just do the sensible thing and develop an un-copyable media. Worked well in the cart days (but they could've used encryption) and works mostly for blu-ray and used to for cube. The number of xbox pirates are staggering, most of those leaks come from within the industry too! Like from testers, it's really bad.
I wouldn't have the console need to be online all the time, but I think they should do really quick updates really often. Not these day long affairs like Sony have. At least chuck some free themes in with them, they take a morning to make at most.
Perhaps individually registering games to get the latter half of content would be a good idea. Something has to be done about piracy and after market sales and nothing so far is working. Companies release PC versions a month later which helps, but by then the 360 versions have leaked so that's pretty pointless too.
I hate to say it, but file sharing is the root of it all and it's not a good thing. I don't see it carrying on forever so get what you can while you can, there's a major case in the courts against the pirate bay right now which could see the downfall of it all if the bay loses.
I would basically do what Steam does. Gabe Newell, the president of Valve, said something really interesting about piracy at the DICE conference. In
this article from Kotaku (http://kotaku.com/5156238/gabe-newells-dice-keynote-left-4-dead-sales-valve-comic-books), they report that:
Quote from: KotakuHe says that people aren't pirating because they're cheapskates, they're pirating because it's a better service. No regional delays, no DRM, instant downloading, that kind of thing.
Which Steam is aiming to match. They're not trying to stamp out piracy, they're trying to catch up.
The anti-piracy seems to do more harm than good. As a PC gamer I can attest to that. Pirates have no problem circumventing the DRM and regular consumers end up being left out in the cold when the DRM inevitably malfunctions and ruins their game. Steam has nailed the perfect balance between reliability and security.
I meant in the game itself.
Did anyone even read my examples?
Steam does employ DRM in its games. It's just that they do it so well you don't even notice. The Steam model is the best thing going right now.
Don't castrate your topic guy, you've got a good thing going! :)
Thing is, Gabe said nothing new - piracy offering a better service, that's been said and clarified alot by Sony before but people are quick to forget it. It's nice that Nintendo actually respond to that though in ways like the DSi.
I can't see a good example of how to get by it with DRM, all those methods really piss people off. Having shelf life on software, or downloading a digital games with a subscription service etc.
I don't think a different business model will help the problem, I think the best way is to employ a registration system and maybe you have to update it yourself via an e-mail code every week. It would be a bit of a nuisance though.
With regards to actual gameplay mechanics, I'm not sure it's even doable is it? If it was street fighter you'd have to have a way of ruining the multiplayer. Like scrambling all the controls or something. Changing the start to screen to street fighter 4: pirateship edition ;)
Microsoft have a good anti-piracy thing with the banning of live accounts if you have a modded system (that they can detect), seeing as live is the best thing about xbox and is not worth missing out on really.
Steam is very successful and represents what all games should do really, it's possible even on console and is inevitable that the industry will move this way eventually. Thing is, people in sales are so shit scared of it (as it threatens all they work for) that they will do everything they can to stay away from it and make up all sorts of bullshit reasons why it's a bad idea. I've heard people say "PC users don't like steam cos they're forced to install an entity on their PC" - how wrong can you be?
Sorry Blue, back to topic! I'd make it so that in Halo if you pirated it every shot would make your armour fall off like in Makaimura! Next shot dead bones! (with the sound effect too :P )
OK, then.
In the MegaMan NES games, there would be triple enemies, at triple the speed, and you only have one point of health, and there is no way to heal.
In FAMILY BASIC, no matter what you typed, it would not run any program, no matter how masterfully coded it is.
I would have some Yakuza or other grim guys beat the main character to death. That would show those pirates. ;)
I remember a C64 game back then... I don't remember the title, though... It came with a paper whell and the game told you how to turn the wheel and then you had to enter whichever letters you could see in some holes on said wheel. It was nifty.
I remember Leisure Suit Larry's 'children protection' scheme: it asked a bunch of 'adult' questions. If you failed more than two, it dismissed you as a child.
Also I remember how to skip them: push Ctrl + Alt + X :P
I remember someone seeing the perfect dialogue for the anti-piracy in EarthBound on a Youtube video during the final battle. It was along the lines of:
"You're pirating this game aren't you? Well well well, looks like someone doesn't know what it takes to make one of these games, and that makes Giygas very mad. Your save file will be just another meal to him. Have fun in Onett, sucker!"
That would have been awesome.
Someone should hack the game to display that.
Also, in b4 MOTHER 4ever
haha, Ryu's win quote in street fighter could "you must buy the game to stand a chance" :P
Quote from: L___E___T on February 21, 2009, 08:45:17 am
haha, Ryu's win quote in street fighter could "you must buy the game to stand a chance" :P
YES
Also, in Brawl, the following buttons would disappear so you can't access them:
-Solo
-Group
What blue protoman said in his first post about earthbound actually happened.
edit- Whoops, didn't add the url- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmyoV1bkXNI
I don't think you read my example.
OMG that Earthbound anti piracy thing is evil!
Quote from: Blue Protoman on February 22, 2009, 07:50:54 am
I don't think you read my example.
Eh... I just meant that Earthbound had anti-piracy measures.
I know it does. I saw the video before, and a friend of mine on another forum told me.
Man, that would really suck! Especially if you didn't know the game was pirated.