The Strangest Anti-Piracy in Games – Diamondbolt

You wouldn’t download a car.

CORRECTIONS: (thanks to comments!)
– Earthbound’s anti piracy doesn’t make the enemies stronger, it just heavily increases their spawn in rate to reduce the performance of the game.
– Batman: Arkham Asylum only disables gliding, but at one point in the game has a random grapple point that sends you outside the map if you lock onto it.

MUSIC:
“Electric Fountain” – Tekken 6
“Thanks a Lot” – Mario Party DS
“Loading Screen” – Grand Theft Auto IV
“Humilau City Gym” – Pokémon Black & White 2
“Menu Theme” – Dark Souls
“Tutorial Time” – Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story
“Pick of the Litter” – Skullgirls
“S.S. Anne” – Pokémon FireRed & LeafGreen
“To a New Adventure!” – Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story
“The Lost Underworld” – Earthbound
“Home Sweetr Home” – Earthbound

FOOTAGE SOURCES:
• “Anti-Piracy Measures in Grand Theft Auto IV (GTAIV)” – LasermanSteam

• “The Sims 4 Piracy Glitch” – Steve_At_Hypothermia –

• “JSAB – Anti-Piracy Screen” – BlixerTheGamer

• “Spyro Anti Piracy (Secret)” – MKWCTS
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• “Earthbound – Giygas battle (full)” – Ness

• “Spyro Had One of the Coolest Anti-Piracy Measures Ever | Tech Rules” –TechRules

• Anti-Piracy Measures in Video Games – Did You Know Gaming extra Feat. Greg (Pokemon + more) “ – DidYouKnowGaming

• “Pokemon FireRed “Buy It or Die”: What Really Happens” – beatstar two

• “How to fix Unable to shade polygon normal” – Andrew Mensky

• “Original The Secret of Monkey Island Copy Protection Card Dial-A-Pirate” – ManyToys

• “Pirate THIS! Episode 4 – Batman Arkham Asylum” – Mproductions GAMING

• “Batman Arkham Asylum Glitch” –gagarinata

• “Pirate THIS! Episode 3 – Mirrors Edge” – Mproductions GAMING

• “Serious Sam 3 BFE – Immortal Fast Scorpion DRM” – Martin Vida

• “Glitch in Red Alert 2” – TSham4

• “Fun with chickens in Crysis Warhead.” – Majorohminus

• Mario Party DS Anti Piracy Screen (HD) (Extended)” –Joey Perleoni

• “Spyro 3 Anti-Piracy Code 100% Playthrough Attempt” – Proto

• “The History of DRM & Copy Protection in Computer Games” – LGR

• “Copy Protection in the 1980s | Retro Dream” – Retro Dream

• “Zak McKracken – Pirate Jail” – PC Gamer

• “Classic Copy Protection Systems” – GouldFish On Games

• “How To Remove Pirate Eye Patch In Quantum Break” – Fulltime Man

• “Cross Days Walkthrough- Episode 2 [eng sub]” – kazameltis

• “7 Weird Ways Games Tried to Stop People Playing Them” – outsidexbox

• “Dark Souls Advanced PvP 101” – sub

• “Spirit Tracks – Anti-Piracy” – PPLToast

• “Pokemon Black No Exp Playthrough: Intro – You are a (Software) Pirate!” – BigKlingy

• How to Easily Setup an R4 Card for Nintendo DS/3DS – Gameboy Hub

• Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver Anti-Piracy Measure – SoulBlazyrR 2 –

• “Nintendogs – Anti Piracy Screen”- bsifqsc

• “Resident Evil Village PC DRM: Cracked Code Really Does Run Better” – Digital Foundry

• “Anti-Piracy Screen” – Super Mario 64 Beta Archive

• “Sonic The Hedgehog (1991) “Secret Anti-Piracy Screen”” – Друг

• “Unfair deaths in Darksouls II” – Silverflame Studio

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500 Comments

  1. There was one he didn’t mention. I don’t remember what the name of the game was called, but it was this old Spanish game for the Commodore 64 or something like that. When you would pirate the game, it would continuously shout “pirate!” At you in Spanish getting slower and slower until you turned the game off. If someone could remind me of the title that would be great

  2. Oh God, Cross Days. The only thing more infamous than THAT series is Bible Black.

  3. That sonic sprite you have in the thumbnail was a misunderstanding. Because I was meant to be a joke from the devs with a friendly message and using his nickname. The JP version makes it less scary.

  4. I'd like to point out that the DRM Arachnoid in Serious Sam 3: BFE is now a gamemode addon on Steam Workshop.
    Look up DRM Scorpions. It's a treat. It turns the game into this frantic horror, and the enemy is a skittering hot-pink blob with an arm-rifle.

  5. Oh man, I was given an R4 by a friend when DS games were still king of handhelds. I didn't know about the anti-piracy things, and I had a version of Pokemon HeartGold! xD I definitely used a ton of codes then, but mostly the shiny Pokemon and infinite amount of items. I admittedly sometimes miss when I'd use some sort of hack service to create my own Pokemon. Wonder Guard Spiritomb…Who could still get hit by Fire type moves…

    I ended up ridding of (or at least stopped using) the R4 though for a few reasons: 1. I hate the theme I requested from him back then (don't ask, I don't wanna get into that…But it was an old phase that may had lasted only a year), 2. The memory stick broke and I'm pretty sure I couldn't remove it, and 3. My DS broke and I had pretty much stopped using AR codes for my games as it was.

  6. i can remember that if you install the bits and pieces mod onto undertale, flowey will show up, scold you in a "i thought you knew better" sort of way, then show annoying dog sleeping with a lullaby. you can bypass it by deleting a few files from the mod tho.

  7. Zoe: "I'm sorry, Spyro, but you seem to be playing a hacked version of this game. This may be an illegal copy. Since this copy has been modified-"

    Spyro: "I DON'T CARE!!!"

  8. in somecallmejohnnys video for super metroid he mentioned one of his physical copies had its anti piracy activated for a reason i forgot where samus dies immediately

  9. I heard that game dev tycoon game's anti-piracy measure was later added to the game as a sort of impossible difficulty mode, even for those who actually bought the game, possibly to allow non-pirates to mess around with this anti-piracy measure without needing to pirate the actual game

  10. I feel like having your private information leaked is a little worse than your video game save file being deleted

  11. Indoorlands also has one where it just deletes your data after shutting down the game. Buying the games gives you your data back so im not sure if this is just a glitch.

  12. When I was a kid my cousin bought me Pokemon Sapphire for the GBA, turns out it was bootlegged as every save slot deleted itself everytime I rebooted the game.

  13. from what i heard about the firered one, it was put in there by whoever dumbed the files to troll people pirating the game, and was not put in by nintendo/the pokemon company

  14. It's worth noting that Spyro 3 had anti-crack protection in addition to anti-piracy. It's the anti-crack protection that causes loss of progress and glitches.

  15. You wouldn't steal a car, but if your mate offered to burn you a copy… 🔥

  16. My understanding is that the fake installer told you what it was gonna do in the EULA. But since nobody reads those, especially not when pirating games…

  17. You wouldn't steel a steal car steal pirate VHS car wouldn't pay car. Piracy

  18. How do games know if they're pirated? Couldn't you just pirate the clean version of the game?

  19. Honestly I think getting roms for games are okay only if you buy the game yourself or if the game is like super old and the only way to buy them is an overpriced ebay deal, anything else though is scummy as fuck

  20. That you wouldn't steal a car thing pirated the music in it

  21. “Dud yur nor that pirasee iz uh chriume?”

  22. School Days isn't memed for being a bad anime, it is pretty infamous for reverse character development and the protagonist getting hated for cheating and treating the girls badly. The reason it is meme'd is for its final episode being so unexpectedly violent that the japanese tv channels decided to pull the airing and instead show footage of a boat on a river for 30 minutes. It was later rebroadcasted heavily censored during the night. Since then people like to say "Nice Boat!" in response to censorship or other occasions. Aside from that, the game also had a minigame where chibi versions of sekai and kotonoha were going at each other with their prefered yandere weapons. This also got memed, parodied and referenced alot.

  23. That's good that people can properly patch the game so everyone can easily pirate it and play

  24. 2:52 I also like how it opens with the word "Boss", so I then read the rest of it in Revolver Ocelot's voice.

  25. I thought Spyro's thing also detected if you were running the mod chip, not just an illegal copy, am I incorrect?

  26. Those who make anti-piracy PSAs don’t understand how gamers or teenagers think, or the social construct of “coolness” that exist between middle or high school students.

  27. I'm searching through the comments and I can't find one I remember from my youth. Settlers 3 – when you're playing pirated version of the game, every single iron ingot you're going to produce is turning into a pig the moment it touches the ground. And since with no iron there's no tools or weapons, you can't really play the game.

  28. I was so mad when my earthbound save file got deleted out of nowhere because it took me so long to get to the end. But now I know it was anti piracy, on a real copy of the game :/

  29. Just remember people of YouTube that if you pirate music Lars Ulrich and his vast legal team will hunt you down and sue you for literally everything you have.

  30. Can't believe he forgot the piracy prevention of Cuphead, really unnerving and definitely deserved to be added to the list

  31. I love how only a small portion of the pirate base ever dealt with these anti-piracy softblocks as they were quickly circumvented once found. Yet to this day some people are still convinced it actually put a dent into piracy which just makes me lmao

  32. 8:30 I would argue this one could prompt a class action lawsuit by the people that got doxxed.

  33. Aww man you forgot MGS1 lol, it was a subtle anti-piracy, but it was a great one in that if you had an illegal copy and got to the arms president Baker after the ocelot fight, he tells you that Meryls codec frequency is on the back of the CD case, a few player’s thought he meant the MO disc he hands you for the L2 equipment button but he really meant the back of CD case you bought the game in.

  34. 9:23 twitter users when their darling celebrity of the week said a word that kind of sounds like a slur 8 years ago

  35. I found a simple work around for red alert 2 anti piracy trick, simple restart of the computer

    Blame my dad for make a copy of the game i was just a kid at the time

  36. The problem with the Anti-Piracy ad, it made Piracy look badass

  37. That brief clip near the beginning of the video of Nintendo 64 bowser shooting photorealistic fire and being revealed as a cutout… nightmares for days, thanks a bunch 😡

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