GBAtemp Exclusive What is your favorite anti-piracy message?

Yes, it's XBlaze. Image source: https://imgur.com/QH6S6os

 

Nintendy ole "update includes stability improvements to enhance the overall experience." is the best.

 

the perfect ending is when the prince and princess are married, the genie is freed, the islands have stopped fighting and the princess's parents are back alive. and it only gives you one chance to complete each task fail to do something and you kiss it goodbye there's no going back.

 

The Sims 4 would trigger a "censor bug" in early cracked versions of the game. In legit copies, when your Sim takes a shower, a blurred mosaic appears in order to censor sensible parts of the body, however, for cracked versions, this blur would take the entire screen, making the game completly unplayable and hard to view.

Sims 4 "mosaic bug" turns out to be surprise anti-piracy measure | PC Gamer

 

My favourite is:

 

"Do Not Make Illegal Copies of This Disc"

lol

 

You wouldnt download your neighbours wife .

 

I’m so sorry for all the puppies I have killed and will continue to kill

 

My how time flies.
How long has it been now, 11 years?

 

I think my favorite anti-piracy method that's ever been used was the one Insomniac Games used in Spyro: Year of the Dragon on PSOne. By preparing checks to kick in after the typical "disc wobble" check passed, if any of them detected the game running as a pirated copy, Zoe would inform you about your nefarious deed in Sunrise Spring as you approached the balloon to travel to the next world... and then, things would get screwy.

Eggs would start being deducted from your collectibles, Gems would disappear from the overworld, the other playable characters would have to be purchased from Moneybags over and over again, even after they were freed... and then, if you could put up with all of that, by the time you got to the Sorceress battle, the game would reset your entire game save and wipe all your progress.

I have to give credit to Insomniac: That's some devious coding. It's one of two reasons why I held them in such high esteem for so long (The other being their development, refinement, and usage of the Active Challenge Tuning mechanics introduced in Year of the Dragon and then implemented in pretty much every Insomniac game afterwards, from Ratchet & Clank to the rest of their portfolio in some fashion or another.)

 

This isn't a screen, but it's funny.
It makes the language of the game Borginian (fictional launguage in the ace attorney world) but nothing else, so if you really tried, you COULD beat the game.

 

Hmmm my favorite anti piracy message.....
"Atmosphere is better, sxos is bad b/c of stolen Nintendo Code"

 

The game IS impossible to complete, once you get to the final battle, the boss is invulnerable, and you get one hit KO'd the moment the boss hits you, but that's not all. You'd get instantly thrown out of the battle, back into World 1 with ALL your progress deleted. While you can get the game very close to 100%, there's no actual way of finishing it. A youtuber managed to inject real-time "fixes" for the strong AP without outright removing the AP, but it still required lots of savestates.

 

Idk how much of a thing the Settlers game series was outside of Germany, but Settlers 3 cracked version without fixed triggers had you your forge produce pigs instead of iron, making it virtually impossible to advance in the game. Amusing to see the complaints about it in the official game's forums back then.

 

Changing Zeldas hairstyle? You sure got those pirates good Nintendo

 

I think it's funny when they leave messages that say we're bankrupting them or costing them money.
If I download your game millions of times, are you going to be put in debt?

 

I cant remember the game but it had a thing where it checked if you were on a pirated copy and some invincible ultra monster just came out of nowhere and would destroy the player

 

Mine has to be:



Which was on the Wii, However, workarounds for it have been found long ago and it's extremely unlikely to get it nowadays. I like how it's straight to the point, no sympathy for the player, no "Check the operations manual for more details", like nintendo saying 'we caught you red handed'.

 

To be fair, the whole 'check the manual for more details' was just a way to divert blame. Either the manual spelled out what the screen also said (the copy of the game is illegal) or it wasn't even there.

 

Oh yeah, I remember that. King's Quest V also had a few places where the player's action could randomly fail, for example you'd need to throw a rope up to a rock to climb up, but he'd sometimes miss. And you'd need to check the instruction booklet for a certain word to give his magic wand enough power to fix it.

Oddly, I had a legitimate store-bought copy of that game and never saw the AP until many years later when I pirated it to replay it.