News Pirated Batman PC contains deliberate glitch

Games are normally £10-15 cheaper than console copies so your saving money buying a pc title anyway.. why get a pirated version?? Its always the small minority who ruin it for others.. Im not impressed I must say! Well done Eidos for coming up with this as its only makes things annoying for pirating and not the licensed user who has to suffer with the likes of DRM.

Andy

 

While I agree that different steps have to be taken to combat piracy (instead of restrictive DRM that is only found in consumer bought versions anyway), I don't think this was such a good way. The fix was out the same day. I can't imagine any significant number of people caving and buying the game and not checking for a fix that is usually right next to it on a search.

Developers need to think outside the box to combat piracy. Glitches and DRM clearly do not work.

 

Due to posts like this talking about another anti piracy measure that just doesn't work. People will be reminded its available for free right now and as a result it will do nothing but increase piracy. Bravo.

 

Do you honestly think that this one story and it's forum comments will really attract more people to piracy? If people are inclined to get this game, or any other game, for free then all they have to do is find Google. Or even Bing. Or pretty much any search engine you care to name.

I can remember the days of tape to tape dubbing for C64 & Amstrad games (if you were rich enough to have a stereo with tape to tape dubbing!) and even Blitz Copy Turbo on the Atari STe. It's been well over 20 years since the C64, Amstrad CPC, Spectrum ZX, etc, and we still have game pirating: it's fair to say that it isn't going to go anywhere for a while.

Not defending anyone here, but I think a little perspective on things from time to time doesn't go amiss.

 

Good for Eidos I say. If they can ensure that it's easier to actually buy the game than to get a cracked version then they're on the right track methinks.

 

"Consoles are simple and cheap" Yes. The Simple Red Ring of Death, and the SImple Expensive PS3 that lasted juuuuuust over the warranty period before it stopped seeing optical disks. A well made PC runs for years. I'm still able to play most games of interest on my single core P4 I build in 2003 or so, though admittedly with the best and final upgrade to a top quality AGP graphics card. FEAR. WoW. CoD 4.

 

haha nice, what a tool.

 

LOL...

I always wondered why companies didn't flood the pirate sites with broken copies of their product.

I do see a legal problem to this though, they are breaking their own copyright, so if they try to prosecute anyone for downloading it they can't. At least for the versions they put out, so if someone creates a fix for it. It would be perfectly legal to download the version they put up and apply the fix.

 

A study came out recently saying people really haven't been phased by the ring of death and other problems, they still will buy.

Besides, with a pc you face how many possible component failures and virus issues? Which is how a lot of people see it. They have Wii's in retirement homes, they love them. Put a pc in there and they will run away.

I'm a pc person, and a pc gamer, but it's not difficult to see the appeal of them. Put disk in, play game. It's an appliance.

 

"Put disk in, play game". Sounds similar to what I do each day on my PC.

I don't think it's true that PCs break down more frequently than consoles. If anything, consoles fail more often due to cheap inadequate cooling and trying to cram components into a small box.

In all my years of PC gaming I haven't had a single virus issue. However, most of the PCs I have serviced for other people usually had absolutely no running up-to-date 'anti-virus software installed.

Viruses and spyware were downloaded 'manually' by their kids downloading hundreds of free stuff off the net, such as FREE GAMES.

 

Hook on the Amiga had a similar thing for foiling the pirates. In one bar scene you needed to collet 2 or 3 mugs, but if you had the dodgy copy you could not get the last one. Unfortunately there was a glitch to work around it if I remember.