I first played it on UltraHLE back in the day, and after getting to the very end of the game, the gates that let you get down the tower bugged out and wouldn’t open. Everything had worked great up to that point. Fortunately I was able to find a cheat that let me get past them and finish the game anyhow.
It definitely sounds like some anti-piracy stuff. Old game devs were trolls when it came to finding creative ways to deter piracy. They knew they couldn’t prevent bootlegging, but they could certainly annoy the bootleggers.
It’s why lots of anti-piracy stuff in old games only really ramps up after a few hours of gameplay. When a pirate is trying to crack a game, they don’t want to spend hours testing to see if the crack was fully successful. The game booted, so they sent it out the door. If the devs put a big obvious “we detected that you’re playing a pirated copy” warning on the title page, the cracker would obviously know that they need to take another look at their work. By burying the anti-piracy stuff behind several hours of gameplay, it means the pirate won’t be able to reliably check each version of their crack.
Especially if the game devs do something like check for a crack at multiple points throughout the game, and record it as an invisible part of your save file. It means you can’t just load a save from right before the noticeable stuff happens. Because you probably got flagged several hours ago, so loading that old save will still flag it as a pirated copy even if your crack is working now.
Also adding one known to me: If you copied RA2 back in the days, you could start a match (even multiplayer), but your buildings would explode automatically after a certain time.
TLDR; The devs released the ‘cracked’ version themselves on various file sharing sites. Their crack had an extra event though; after a while of playing, your studio would inevitably go bankrupt due to video game piracy, forcing a loss. This only occurs in the cracked version as well, so players complaining about it automatically outed themselves as pirates.
I first played it on UltraHLE back in the day, and after getting to the very end of the game, the gates that let you get down the tower bugged out and wouldn’t open. Everything had worked great up to that point. Fortunately I was able to find a cheat that let me get past them and finish the game anyhow.
IIRC that gates thing was for anti piracy. But I don’t have a source for that.
It definitely sounds like some anti-piracy stuff. Old game devs were trolls when it came to finding creative ways to deter piracy. They knew they couldn’t prevent bootlegging, but they could certainly annoy the bootleggers.
It’s why lots of anti-piracy stuff in old games only really ramps up after a few hours of gameplay. When a pirate is trying to crack a game, they don’t want to spend hours testing to see if the crack was fully successful. The game booted, so they sent it out the door. If the devs put a big obvious “we detected that you’re playing a pirated copy” warning on the title page, the cracker would obviously know that they need to take another look at their work. By burying the anti-piracy stuff behind several hours of gameplay, it means the pirate won’t be able to reliably check each version of their crack.
Especially if the game devs do something like check for a crack at multiple points throughout the game, and record it as an invisible part of your save file. It means you can’t just load a save from right before the noticeable stuff happens. Because you probably got flagged several hours ago, so loading that old save will still flag it as a pirated copy even if your crack is working now.
Also adding one known to me: If you copied RA2 back in the days, you could start a match (even multiplayer), but your buildings would explode automatically after a certain time.
One of my favourites is Game Dev Tycoon.
TLDR; The devs released the ‘cracked’ version themselves on various file sharing sites. Their crack had an extra event though; after a while of playing, your studio would inevitably go bankrupt due to video game piracy, forcing a loss. This only occurs in the cracked version as well, so players complaining about it automatically outed themselves as pirates.
Kind of an ironic measure from people who ripped essentially their entire gameplay loop off of earlier games like Game Dec Story.
Perhaps, but that’s how humanity works. We always copy and slightly iterate on things others have created. It’s one of our biggest strengths.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/serious-sams-drm-is-a-giant-pink-scorpion