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by stcredzero 3733 days ago
Not bad, but even that reads like a bit of an FU from the devs. ("Pig Iron?") The best thing to do is to make it definitely seem like it was a bug introduced by the crack. (Maybe James Bond villains giving their secret projects suggestive code names and telling their entire plan isn't unrealistic?)
3 comments
kderbe 3733 days ago
It's important not to disguise any anti-piracy measures as bugs, because pirates (or even reviewers playing pirated copies) will loudly proclaim that the game is buggy, and discourage legitimate buyers. This may have contributed to the closing of at least one development studio (Iron Lore, developer of Titan Quest)[1].

[1] http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?42663...

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eps 3733 days ago
This must be specific to the games, because they do tend to be buggy on their own.

With non-gaming software the situation is completely different. When a cracked version craps out the prevailing sentiment is always that it was a bad crack. Always.

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stcredzero 3733 days ago
It's important not to disguise any anti-piracy measures as bugs, because pirates (or even reviewers playing pirated copies) will loudly proclaim that the game is buggy, and discourage legitimate buyers.

I'm wondering why there isn't a service that lets you search for people encountering your crack-penalty. A really sneaky company would disguise itself as a hacker group, then offer a copy of the game that doesn't have that "bug." (But has another one.)

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sleepychu 3732 days ago
Green Heart Games did basically that. http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-...
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jldugger 3733 days ago
Well, if you want to convert a pirate user into a sale, you need to convince them that the bug isn't present in the retail copy.

So you're balancing making it hard for crackers to detect, and easy enough for players to encounter that shift behavior.

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stcredzero 3733 days ago
So have a web search that finds people talking about the fake bug, then take appropriate action.
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Kephael 3733 days ago
Bohemia Interactive have their games "degrade" if they detect they are pirated. Weapons become increasingly inaccurate and your character turns into a bird.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FADE

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