Batman Arkham Asylum and pirating.

Reb · Sat Sep 12, 2009 6:55 am

All I can say is dont

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/94524-Arkham-Asylum-Pirates-Get-a-Gimpy-Batman

Quote:

Did you illegally download a cracked version of Arkham Asylum for the PC? Hope you enjoy playing with a Batman who has conveniently forgotten some of his moveset, rendering the game unbeatable.

Do you know what I love? Creative DRM. Any developer can throw in a mandated online check, or give you a limited number of installs, or something boring like that, but then you have developers with a cruel sense of humor who make it so that pirates have their genitals attacked by ill-tempered ferrets, and the ferrets are on fire. That's going above the call of duty right there.

Apparently, one of said developers is Rocksteady Studios, creators of critical darling Batman: Arkham Asylum. Pirates who have illegally acquired the PC version of the game will find themselves playing the game with a Batman who has apparently forgotten how to use his moves, notably the glide-jump. In an amusing little thread on the Eidos forums, one pirate came to innocently report a bug, claiming that instead of gliding when the appropriate input was given, the Dark Knight would instead just spread his wings and fall to his death in poison gas.

Quoth an Eidos admin in response:

The problem you have encountered is a hook in the copy protection, to catch out people who try and download cracked versions of the game for free.

It's not a bug in the game's code, it's a bug in your moral code.

Since its acquisition of Rocksteady parent Eidos, Square-Enix has announced plans to use similar DRM in its upcoming Final Fantasy XIII, where any attempt to use magic will always result in summoning a rampaging horde of Chocobos to crush the party, the player, and anyone they've ever loved.

Bloody brilliant

treeseph · Sat Sep 12, 2009 7:40 am

Thats AWSOME!

Lord Metritutus · Sat Sep 12, 2009 7:47 am

Now that's creative. I like the sound of that.

DHR-107 · Sat Sep 12, 2009 11:02 am

Sounds but like the very old fashioned DRM on Earthbound. It would let you play the entire gae upt intill the final screen, where it would just lock up and wipe your save data and restart xD

treeseph · Sat Sep 12, 2009 11:23 am

haha nice

Skillers · Sat Sep 12, 2009 11:54 am

I read this the other day and lol'd.

Si · Sat Sep 12, 2009 12:26 pm

And how long until this gets removed by pirates? It's a brilliant idea, but won't survive that long most likely.

Ogris · Sat Sep 12, 2009 1:08 pm

This will be gone in half a day.

I LOVE what they've done, but this is hardly going to prevent people from pirating it, the protection is going to go poof in a day or so. Nice try though eidos, now get to work on deus ex 3 dammit>.<

Reb · Sat Sep 12, 2009 4:04 pm

Its already been patched out by the pirates. Good idea but oh well.

Skillers · Sat Sep 12, 2009 5:25 pm

Apparantly there's a few other hooks aswell.

The thing is, even if it has been patched out, it still means people who pirate it have to go to extra efforts to get a working version and there will be versions kicking around that don't work. It skews the convinience factor away from the pirates.

Si · Sat Sep 12, 2009 7:02 pm

All versions that don't work will probabily be nuked by now already

Ogris · Sat Sep 12, 2009 7:13 pm

How is downloading a 20 meg file an inconvenience. I just don't quite see it.

Skillers · Sat Sep 12, 2009 7:22 pm

Because you have to find out the problem, find the patch and download it, which is still an inconvenience.

Si · Sat Sep 12, 2009 7:35 pm

Naa, your making it out to be harder than it is.

Ogris · Sat Sep 12, 2009 7:56 pm

Indeed.

Pirates are smarter than you average PC user/one game fanboy, you have to know how to download the game and crack it in the first place, if you can do that, you sure as hell can read a few comments on a torrent

Skillers · Sat Sep 12, 2009 8:03 pm

There are those type of pirates and the casual pirates (they do exist) which is what this is aimed at.

Ogris · Sat Sep 12, 2009 8:10 pm

Yet, if you're too stupid to do a google search/check torrent comments, then how the hell did you figure out how to install the game/torrent it?

Ok now then, let's say someone who never heard of the game but would just want to play it, he gets stopped by the bug, he will stop caring and uninstall it, no sale gained. if he REALLY wants to, he will search the comments or go on google first, not buy it.

DRM isn't making people buy the game more, it's just preventing 1/5 pirates from playing it. That is why DRM fails, DRM should be a way of ENCOURAGING you(STEAM) to buy a game, not preventing pirates from playing it, giving you no gain in the process.

DopperLancer · Sat Sep 12, 2009 8:10 pm

im a pirate who pirates a game and then deletes it and burns the evidence

Aljidy · Sat Sep 12, 2009 11:04 pm

Apparantly, when incoutering the scarecrow(a boss) glitchs corrupts save and makes you start at the begginning

The second i read this i stopped downloading batman

maybe i can pikey the disc from dragon??

treeseph · Sun Sep 13, 2009 2:01 pm

Did he get the disc? I thought he got it from steam?

Anyways if they just sold only to steam surely that'd destroy any pirating apart from on cracked steam... which hardly anyone has.

McWill · Sun Sep 13, 2009 7:09 pm

genuis

Aljidy · Mon Sep 14, 2009 3:15 pm

treeseph wrote:

Did he get the disc? I thought he got it from steam?

Anyways if they just sold only to steam surely that'd destroy any pirating apart from on cracked steam... which hardly anyone has.

Yes, he did get it on disc, play.com. Cracked steam is possibly one the most smartest ideas ever. PERIOD. I would get it for all over-priced short single player games.

azcn2503 · Tue Sep 15, 2009 11:27 am

Sims 2 had a protection feature that prevented you from building walls if you used a No-CD patch.

Batman Arkham Asylum and pirating.

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