corrections and comments: > the code on the keep talking and nobody explodes manual is for syncing versions/language, not for anti-piracy. for example, the english code is 241, but the japanese code is 122. still, it shows how easy codes can be worked around if they were for anti-piracy > sorry for being WAY too close to my mic in this video. i did not realize that my mic was practically peaking when recording, and i just had to work with in the editing process. i'll be sure to sit further away from my mic in future videos > the line at the end (“don’t pirate, or else you’ll end up like me”) doesn’t represent my actual stance on piracy. if it was, you wouldn’t have gotten a well-made video. the point of this video is just to showcase various types of anti-piracy measures & fake anti-piracy screens, not be a talking point for how “capitalism bad.” the line was meant to be a joke to tie up the setup in the beginning. nothing more, nothing less
Remember when everyone made fake piracy screens that went like "Piracy is a crime!" or "Piracy is not [blank]"? Anyway, My favorite piracy screen is the Just Shapes and Beats one, where the creator talks to you
It’s no doubt that the “scary” piracy screens were inspired by Sonic.exe, which is the bare minimum of creepy media and the bottom of the barrel of quality in todays standards.
honestly i love the unsettling feeling that some fake anti piracy fakes can capture but it just turned into hyperrealistic blood and black eyes WAY too quickly
Honestly I'd prefer if the anti-piracy mock-ups were more detached "the game ran into an error" type screens instead of aping off the worst thing to happen to modern creepypasta.
Fun fact, the "Piracy is no party" jailbar screen, that image on the bottom screen is actually in the real game of Mario Party DS. just without the flashing "POWER OFF NOW" message overlaying it. That jailbar screen is used in the beginning of the story mode of that game's story mode, as part of something Bowser did at the beginning of the story against the playable cast of characters
if I had to guess, re-using that asset was probably inspired by a donkey kong game (I forget which) which does a similar thing with reusing I think a game over screen? and it was pretty fuckin creepy
@NebulatheZorua Donkey Kong Country 2 and 3, I'm pretty sure. In some countries I think DKC2 has a bland anti-piracy screen. Maybe it's also in the third game, idk I forgor
These fake anti-piracy screens really are unique in their ways and leaves questions to theorize like what would happen if u refused to connect a headset in the screen shown at 15:49
I can’t decide if the funniest part of this is that they thought the switch had a chance to have the potential ability to call the police, but also that even if it worked, that you’d actually be arrested. I think police officers have bigger things to worry about than some games downloaded off of the internet. (the Spyro one is hysterical though)
These fake anti-piracy screens really are unique in their ways and leaves questions to theorize like what would happen if u refused to connect a headset in the screen shown at 15:49
the actual video edit alongside the "headset calling the cops" was surprisingly high quality in execution imo, i almost think the absurdity of the idea was written slightly tongue-in-cheek
Two of my absolute favorite modern anti-piracy measures are for skullgirls and enter the gungeon. In the former, you could play every characters arcade ladder, but when it came time to see their ending, all you would get was a simple screen that said “what is the square root of a fish? Now I’m sad.“ When pirates went on Twitter to start asking what that meant, the developers straight up told them that it meant that they should buy the game properly. For enter the gungeon there’s a very popular mod that you could install for the steam version, and if it noticed that you were running a pirated copy of the game, it would automatically open up two windows on your computer. One would be a TH-cam video of the Lazy Town song you are a pirate, while the other Was the steam page for the legal version of the game. If you went and tried to play the game regardless, it would immediately drop you into a ridiculously hard Boss fight that was nigh unwinnable.
@@ghoulchan7525 I still remember the PC version of Sonic Mania being delayed for a month just so Sega could add Denuvo. And the only compensation we got was an emulated port of Sonic 1, which in my case I already owned. They removed it later on in an update thankfully, but apparently for the non-Steam versions that were released later on they added it back in. Why even?
Another reason interesting anti-piracy methods died out was because game developers realized how many people would see them as a sort of easter egg and pirate games just to experience them. Modern day anti-piracy method is boring but much more effective at discouraging pirates
i saw this one anti piracy screen for tomodachi life (i forgot who made it unfortunatley) and it started off with your miis on the beach and then pirates show up and a war erupts which ends in the pirates claiming victory and taking everyone hostage, so you're island is empty. it was funny and totally played into the nature of tomodachi life lol
oh neat i saw that one too and conveniently had made my own on my old account before the whole antipiracy trend happened and then got bombarded by 5 year old children who thought that one was real and were all like "HEYYYY THERE'S NO PIRATES TAKING YOUR MIIS HERE >:(((((( STUPID TH-camR" in the comments of my video despite mine being months older than that one good times!
I really like the fake Cardiac Arrest warning for Ring Fit Adventure. It's a bit too ominous to seem real (The rather frightening sound design would likely exacerbate the situation) but it left me with chills all the same.
I know the one you're talking about! Personally I thought the creepy ambience wasn't part of the screen but rather it was in the player's head, representing the fear that their body was doing something they had no idea it was doing
I think that one is particularly frightening because its not antagonizing you, its trying to warn you, which is kindof cute in a way but also JESUS CHRIST im having a heart attack
@@itryen7632 the funniest part IMO was how the creator behind the video thought that a $2500 donation could somehow save the entire channel. like Girl that is not how it works
My favourite one is for Ace attorney investigations 2, where all the text is turned into a fictional language if the game is pirated. It completely destroys the point of the game, which is text based.
@@nosh62 No, because the language is made up of pseudo hieroglyphics with no indication of how they are meant to be used when translated. The only real way to beat the game is to use walkthrough guides or to watch other people's gameplay of it, which defeats the point of the game as both being text based and a puzzle game.
7:08 This made me fucking realize that the reason why I might’ve never progressed in Year of the Dragon as a kid was because I was playing a pirated version. I remember the cd with the title in sharpie and everything. My mind is fucking blown right now, I raged at that game so hard I broke our giant CRT TV. Either that or I was really shit at the game. Good times. Great video as always lol
@@insertcreativehandlehere I just remember standing up and angrily hitting the screen over and over and over again. I can’t remember if the screen itself broke, but something definitely did because when my grandparents got home they got mad at me because the tv stopped working lol.
@@insertcreativehandlehere I was a bit shocked myself. I remember having a particularly chunky large CRT TV growing up, and my N64 about 3 feet below on the floor in front of it. Once the CRT fell forward, face first onto the N64 with a cartridge in the slot. Somehow neither sustained even a bit of damage. That same N64 still works to this day (can't speak for the CRT, though, since it's been gone for a long time). I figured that if you did anything short of smashing it with a sledgehammer, a CRT was like the Nokia of televisions.
I'm pretty sure the Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes code isn't for anti-piracy but instead to make sure you are using the correct version of the manual so that there are no communication problems since this game is so dependant on communication. Edit: I think this makes even more sense when you consider the game asks you this every time you switch languages since the manuals and puzzles are slightly different in different languages so the code makes sure you aren't using the manual from a different language thinking it'll work with the game.
One really obscure anti piracy measure is in Rhythm Heaven for the DS, but only the Korean version. If the game detects that it was pirated the icon for the second minigame will be completely missing. You have to play the minigames in order, so you're totally blocked from progressing. Also even if you managed to circumvent this issue by using a cheating device or iniecting a save file with that minigame completed, the game will erase your save data anyway. It's just so odd how only the Korean version has this anti piracy measure when none of the other versions of the game do.
I love that one, but there's a question I've always had about it... What would happen if you just never let the pixelation appear on your screen to begin with? What if every time your sim got nude, you had the camera entirely off screen? Would the spread still occur?
I love the idea of long cons. It's so beautifully petty and sneaky. My favourite one is actually something I personally experienced as a kid and had no idea what the reason was for it. If you have a burnt copy of Sonic Adventure 2 for the Dreamcast, during one of the stages of the last level you just... fall to your death immediately at the start of it. Nothing you can do about it. I always thought the game was fucked up, and that's why it never worked right. Learning the actual reason was like an infuriating moment of clarity, lol.
nah, the actual reason was the game was fucked up, sorry you had to relive your infuriating moment of clarity again, just from the fact the anti-piracy got flipped from your bad copy.
also how is this anti-piracy on second thought? Anti-piracy is meant to prevent you from playing the game. This would allow you to play two full stories, which is straight up questionable at best.
One of the best anti-piracy methods I've ever heard was in older versions of Garry's Mod before the Steam Workshop was in place, where it would randomly crash the game and give the pirated game's owner an error message (specifically "Unable to shade polygon normals", complete nonsense in source-engine graphics but sounds believable if you don't know that) and a unique error code. Thing is, the 'error code' was actually their Steam ID, and by people asking online for help with the 'error', they'd not only be openly-admitting that they're pirating the game without knowing it, but they'd also out their steam account which they were pirating with.
The worst thing about lenslock is that the lense was different for each game that used it and you'd often receive the wrong lense for the game you bought! And even if you had the right one, if your TV was too big or small it just wouldn't work. Luckily it wasn't too hard to learn how to read the codes without a lense.
There was this one time when I was maybe 12 or 13 where I couldn't read the product key on a box (I think it was a MYST game maybe) and called the number in the manual sobbing about how the numbers were moving (I have Dyslexia and Discalculia) and the poor person on the phone was kind enough to listen to me for what felt like an hour and then issue me on over the phone.
Oh God, I remember the Spyro 3 anti-piracy measures. Little me had no idea why the game would warp me back to Sunrise Spring with no gems or eggs when I tried to do the first fight with the Sorceress. This was back when we'd get our games from a guy my dad knew who'd burn them to disc for us, and I'd play them on my modchipped PS1 (which I still have! Dunno if it still works though, the thing's about as old as I am)... ah, those were the days lol
My dad was an early video game pirate back in the 80s. There was a store that we were able to actually rent old sierra games from. He worked at a paper mill and would just take the game manual to work and photo copy the entire manual for each game. We had each game on floppies with hand written labels and a stack of stapled copies of black and white manuals that we would have to reference to bypass the piracy checks. Such a great time to grow up in! Sierra easily caught on to the fact that their games were being pirated because they would sell more hint books to each game than games themselves.
I remember when I was a little kid, my family and I played Mario Kart Wii together. My mom often accidentally hit the power button during gameplay, which made our TV show just a... blue screen with some text telling us to power on the source again. I also remember that, whenever that happened, I hid under a blanket and refused to look at the TV. It scared me. Any sort of screen like that scared me. The TV needed to be off, or it needed tobe displaying actual content. Same went for consoles and computers. If I had ever run into a piracy screen (which. i wouldn't have. because i don't pirate.), i would've died right then and there. I think the screens are interesting, though. But the ones that try to actively be "spooky" completely miss the point. They're already spooky. The fact that the game breaks the 4th wall and calls you out is scary enough. And when it's for a kid-friendly developer like Nintendo? Nintendo would never try that for their popular, kid-friendly IPs. They'd never risk scaring an actual child and getting bad press for trying to traumatize children, piracy or not.
The keygens and cracks aren't naively ignored by the developers, but they know it will take some time for the pirates to develop them, so it helps protect against the initial rush of sales, where most of the money is made.
A few other techniques were also used : - Code word pages printed with black ink on a dark red colored paper which made it nigh to impossible to photocopy. - Disquettes and then CDs with special error tracks which would give a predictable error when reading a certain block - but because of the error the CD could not really be copied except with very specialized hardware and software - The "dongle" - a piece of hardware that you could put on the paralel port - and later USB port, that would not let you start the software.. although that was more oriented towards professional like accounting or very specialized apps oriented for a niche market.
Toys to Life games did effectively use the later, though they also often easy to spoof and frankly spoofing them is way more fun than doing it legitimately. I guess that's the fundamental issue with anti-piracy, to some people you've just created a fun puzzle.
The dongle is also used in arcade machines except for certain ones which have a custom board that is the hardware that’s needed for the game and the security system because a lot of them are really just off the shelf PCs that probably are either windows based (example a terminator arcade cabinet with the guns with the grenade launcher or the Sega alls [Insert model here]) or Linux based (another example: nearly every single play mechanix box including MotoGP excluding anything to do with VR because that requires steam VR which won’t work with wine yes, including the rabbits VR ride)
product keys were the most absurd “anti-piracy” measure every thought up that never actually hindered any pirates but only inconvenienced legitimate purchasers of software. all you had to do to circumvent this antipiracy measure was to write the code down on the the copied cd or for files distributed online there was just a text file distributed with the software. i think some software distributors were just hoping you would lose the key so you would have to buy another copy.
In some situations it was absolutely just a way to force you to buy multiple copies because for a while EA would only let you reinstall the same game three times using any one code. Spore is probably the most famous game to have this “feature”.
The Dial-A-Pirate that came with Secret of Monkey Island is my personal favorite, simply because of the irony of a game about pirates having anti-piracy measures. The first line Guybrush ever utters is "I'm Guybrush Threepwood and I wanna be a pirate!" lmao (My as-of-last-summer obsession with the Monkey Island series may also have something to do with placing that one as my favorite lol) Oh, and Monkey Island 2 LeChuck's Revenge had its own Dial-A-Pirate, and this one is interesting because it also was tied to the difficulty selection for the game. Which means that in later editions, including the Special Edition remake from 2010, you cannot pick easy mode. Normal mode ONLY. Well, without hacking. Extra fun is that the game actually has unique assets for easy mode, all of which are still in Special Edition, and have the upgraded artwork done for them just like everything else. There's also a couple unique lines of dialogue for Easy Mode, which were fully voiced for Special Edition. Makes me wonder why they didn't implement any sort of difficulty selection to Special Edition.
at 12:18 the line of code if (game_is_pirated = true) would always run the code inside the if statement because a single = operator means to assign a value to a variable.
I remember watching a Super Mario Odissey anti piracy screen that it ended up being a jumpscare with the first image that pops up when you google "scary mario"
i really like the idea of piracy screens just for funsies. jsab is my favorite because its pretty calm about it. and then theres year of the dragon, which i like because of the chaos of it, even though it does kinda let you get too far into the game in my opinion.
the idea is rep ruin or time waste. Wasting time cuts less into that 1 month period that's so important. Rep Ruining makes the pirate less reputable with other games, which in turn makes them less viable as a source. It does let a photocopying kid get too far yeah, but it works wonders for the other two, being hard to crack and hard to test.
Great video! This is very well-made, with some good comedy/research! The fake anti-piracy era was honestly quite an ordeal, some of them were very good, and could be genuinely unsettling, but a lot of them just had zero effort and honestly felt awkward to watch. Same with kill screens, where every video was a clone of the other lol
These fake anti-piracy screens really are unique in their ways and leaves questions to theorize like what would happen if u refused to connect a headset in the screen shown at 15:49
i like how the project zomboid devs' stance on piracy is: "you can't afford it right now? ok sure go ask the community they have a link to download a cracked version safely, and if you like it, please buy it once you can afford it"
A personal favorite I've stumbled across is the fake Harvest Moon DS piracy screen in which the mayor straight-up murders you in the intro. And it's not even that off-brand for HMDS either, in the actual intro you can get a game over by letting your dog maul him--
When it comes to fake anti piracy screen stuff, the only one that I really remember (yes, it’s fairly memorable) is an ace attorney one where the client is on trial for piracy and it’s rather creative
Honestly, if there's anything that I am glad is a lost art, it's this. There are so many games I couldn't play due to the StarForce copy protection being broken post Windows 7 due to how invasive it was in some versions (such as kernel-level drivers) until some people managed to crack it on a game by game basis. And now it's happening again with Denuvo, which is less invasive but probably just as future-proof. I enjoy the fake ones since they remind me of old creepypasta videos and they are harmless rather than harming preservation and being an annoyance even for those who legitimately bought the games.
The pirated copy of hacknet will progress normally to the end then in the credits say "I know you have a pirated copy, that's okay" not much of a anti piracy but still memorable
Well, the main reason for the die off is that a lot of us current generation of programmers... Kinda were pirates at some point. Or just other kinds of under dwellers. And when that's the case, the idea of torturing little Jimmy who's parents just plain said no to everything just doesn't appeal as much. So it's gotten more professional and more focused on more involved DRM. It's not about playing with pirates anymore, just making it difficult to do for awhile. The people who can afford it will just give up and buy it. Little Jimmy is just going to have to wait a few months. TL;DR, we're not assholes anymore. We get it. We were it.
9:17 it's funny because gta 4 is the one game in the series that flips all of this around and has a message about how dark and horrible the life of crime is lol
I saw a fake anti-piracy screen for Conker’s Bad Fur Day around 3 years ago, and I swear, it haunted me for the rest of the day(I was like 10). It had Conker looking at you from the darkness and a message over top basically saying that he found your family and was going to brutally unalive you all. Absolute chills.
@@nimk Ohh shoot now hold on I was doing my college algebra stuff and binging your vids for ‘very enjoyable background noise’ shall I say and genuinely thought you used it for every vid and of course I comment on the one without it
I love how Mirror's Edge 2008 just decides to fuck with your ego if you try to pirate it In the tuto, when you try to move, you move very very slow until to the point you cant do anything, and when you try to jump, you get into terms with your death
I would love to not pirate! But unfortunately, done developers, studios, etc completely ditch or remove perfectly good games, which become known as abandonware. One prone example being: I wanted to play telltale's guardians of the galaxy on my new pc, but alas, it had to be removed because they went bust. With the new owners of ttg's ip and content not wanting to publish it again (probably due to licensing), the only choice is abandonware piracy.
It’s crazy that they will go through all of this hard work creating a fake anti piracy message, just to ruin it with a cheap/stock VHS overlay. For less than $30, you could get an HDMI to AV and a VCR to get the authentic look, but then you would have to digitize the tape, if you already spent so much time making the video, take the extra few minutes to at least make it authentic
i’d always assumed the people who made those type of screens were young and influenced by local 58/mandela catalogue/etc. analogue horror and they didn’t have the money to really get a good overlay i definitely should invest in a vcr so i can make legit-looking vhs stuff if i ever need it, but i have no clue how to really digitize a tape or make any of that work lol. i guess i’ll have to go researching
@@nimk I’m not good with digitizing but I put movies onto VHS, it’s super easy and you can use any tape even if it has a movie on it, all you have to do is take a piece of scotch tape and cover the security slot. Goodwill usually has VCRs for like $10-$15, the most expensive thing is the HDMI to AV adapter, which is like $15.
After getting so fascinated in actual anti-piracy measures, I feel like I wished they had more attention but I wished it on a monkey paw. Now it's mostly just used as a new platform for cheap 2000s-era creepypasta, when it was the more subtle details that made the real anti-piracy systems truly unsettling.
Some copy protection manual/paper thingie came in horrible colors with horrible contrast so that copies made with a photocopy machine or fax, which was all that was available back in the day, would be illegible. It's not a problem anymore with digital copies, but it worked reasonably well in the 80s and early 90s. I guess you could still copy the whole thing by hand, but I guess at that point you kinda earned your pirated copy.
so I just happened upon this channel and I just have to say that the video topics, editing/pacing and humour are bang on what hits the neuron activation button for me. Keep it up, hopefully there’s other people in my same demographic
Imagine being some kid playing gold rush and you know the answer to the question from your history classes but you misspell the word and see that happen to your character
I'm gonna straight up say it, I'm a pirate, and I pirate every day... with tv shows and movies anyway. The main reason why I pirate, is because I can't get them legally, all because I'm a minor and can't pay for stuff online. I've stopped pirating disney and netflix stuff because my family now has the streaming setvices, but I still pirate other stuff, like nickelodeon, cartoon network, universal studios, and those kind of stuff, all because I can't legally buy them. I only pirate old video games (usually only nintendo), and sometimes switch games that I own (mainly just so I can dump assets from them). Of course, I do also pirate where's my water... to some extent. I'll explain. I've bought the game legally on the apple app store, but not on google play, but I found an apk of it online, and I use it to mod the game. If I could, I would buy the game on google play, then use the official apk downloaded from the play store, and mod that instead. Oh, and the only times I pirate disney / netflix stuff, is when I'm watching trash, and don't want to support the creators, or I'm watching something that I don't want my family to see that I'm watching (it's just little kid stuff that I'm just watching because I'm curious), or it's just so I can watch the Australian version of bluey, and not have to pay for a vpn.
I know the perfect piracy kill screen! It’s for a pirated Windows XP and it immediately loads the Blue Screen of Death every time you power on the PC and you can’t shut it down or close the BSOD. Your only choices are to keep the annoying sound going or to destroy the PC. It also is modified to suggest calling the cops
When I was 12-13 years old, I discovered, "Wow! I can play video games for free and not have to watch let's-plays on TH-cam?!", and started pirating games. Then it actually turned into a habit. I'm definitely getting better, but since I'm only 15, it wasn't really that long ago since I started. I started by refusing to pirate certain games based on how much MB's it would take to download the pirated version, now I'm also refusing to pirate indie games. I do feel pretty ashamed about it, and the only reason I started pirating games was because I'm very socially awkward and I was taught the value of money at an early age (which is a pretty good parenting tactic so that your kid doesn't put you in debt from being like, "buy me this!" or "buy me that!"), so whenever I wanted to buy a game I had to awkwardly go downstairs and ask my dad if I could use my allowance to buy a game I wanted. (Most of the time I was too anxious to actually go down and ask so I never ended up getting some games) Sorry if this comment is overly ramble-y, I tend to talk (or in this case, type) a lot.
This is exactly the kind of situation where I don't disagree with piracy. Not everyone has the luxury of spending money on things like games. However, that shouldn't mean that you have to give up entertainment you like, which is an important part of being human. You can always choose to support the developers by purchasing the game if you wish, or you can share the game with friends and perhaps they would purchase it. If I was a small indie developer, as much as I'd prefer to be paid, the reality is that not everyone can or is willing to. It's understandable.
I pirated stuff because I didn’t have a bank account to pay for the games, even if i wanted to. I did buy a couple games second hand (Using banknotes obviously), but still, no money goes to the developer if i buy a used game. It’s just that i didn’t and still don’t have £50-£70 to buy a new game
I only pirate games if it's no longer available to purchase new. They're not making money off it anyway so what's the point of paying $80 secondhand for a $20 game. The only exception is The Sims 4 packs bc EA's not getting $900+ from me for some things for digital people.
I like the Immortal killer scorpion one and the pirate jail one. The Michael Jackson one was funny too with vuvuzuelas playing over the songs. There’s also the Batman and parkour ones that take away the abilities you need to play the game
The subnautica "anti piracy" is quite funny, when u open the built in feedback menu, it shows that you sent a message saying: "i didnt pay for this but its great!" With a dev response saying: "you should buy it if you can!"
I dont really believe Keep Talkings code was meant to be anti-piracy, its meant to prove you're aware this is 2 parts: the defuser, and the experts. Its also to verify you're using the right version of said manual (which isnt really a deal, there was no updates iirc)
fun fact: consoles now have BANNING systems for unwilling pirates. they are mostly on newer consoles like the nintendo switch, but is mostly something a normal player wouldn't run into.
I think my personal more favorite Anti-Piracy system I have ever seen was in Dragonbal GT transformation in the GBA were if you Pirate the game will it allow you to play the first 2 stages only to then when you try to play stage 3 instead give you a screen telling you that if you liked that you played so far you might just wanna actually buy the game. I love it because it turns a Pirated copy into basically a old Shareware/Demo version of the game. Tho one thing not mentioned here is how many old Anti-Piracy systems on PC just kind of died as Windows updated which these days forced people to use Pirated patches to get some of there old games running again.
i mean, they are made specifically to be scary most of the time. at least, the ones with that "standard fake anti-piracy screen formula" i mention in the video
One of my favorite anti piracy is the Coronel bequest fingerprint identifier - the game since it was a murder mystery had the finger prints of all the characters with the physical game and if you pick the wrong one the curtain falls and the game closes
There was an Animal Crossing : New Horizons piracy screen I saw a few years ago in 2020, and it actually gave off it's vibe for it. It was the Residence Service building of Isabelle doing the normal announcements then saying she just got news of a criminal on the island, and states your character's name, then showing an ACNH pop-up saying to return the game to where you bought it or destroy the copy and note legal services about the piracy.
I have a story on the first time I ran into an anti-pirate measure actually, it happened about like 2 years ago? I love Pokémon and I have a lot of Pokémon games, physically and digitally. However, I often emulate the 2D games on my tablet either to get cheats or because I was bored. One game I emulated was Pokémon Black (I don't know why, I have the physical copy). Usually, I would use the DS emulator I was familiar with, however, the one I usually used was playing up, so I downloaded a different one. I went to train in the grass after getting my Tepig because I knew I struggled with N's Purrloin near the start. That's when I noticed my Tepig didn't gain any EXP from the Lillipup it just killed. "Strange," I thought, "Must've been my imagination." And then then same thing happened the next battle So it turns out the gen 5 Pokémon game have an anti piracy measure where your Pokémon is unable to gain EXP, which will make your life hell. I think the DS emulator I usually use has some sort of built in anti piracy workaround which was why I didn't run into it on that emulator, but I did eventually find a cheat code that bypassed the measure so uh yeah. Didn't matter tho cuz I stopped playing like 2 days later-
The only games I do pirate are old games that are no longer available for purchase (bc they're not making money off of resales anyway) and The Sims 4 packs because ain't no way EA of all companies is getting $900+ for some items for digital people (I got the base game legitimately though so there's that ig)
Thanks for a great video :) I was always scared of the anti-piracy screen from Frontier - if you had got the code wrong when asked, then at a random point later the screen would cut to black with a frowning police officer face and a message about them finding out you were flying a stolen ship and hauling you off to jail. It was really a lot like those awful fake anti-piracy screens you listed!
Arcade racing games when you drive into a store/building/etc: 0:32 (I don't know why most of these games do that, also there are some exceptions, like asphalt 9)
Kill screens are certainly the strangest out of all the fake stuff. As if I thought that their formulaicness was weird enough, I went down a little rabbit hole one night and stumbled across a variety of game console kill screens based off of TV shows for infants. That's just so incredibly niche, I haven't seen such absurd forms of crossover since the GoAnimate videos back around 2015-16☠
In Dark Souls 1, if you were playing a pirated copy, you would be stuck in the dungeon cell with no way of getting out. The key you get doesn't work, and when you try to open the cell door you are prompted with the message: "You have sinned."
16:39 I know right? Imagine you’re playing Pokémon Pearl and then dawn looks at the player and tells them that you pirated it and then she goes and “ends it” (if you catch my drift)
I feel like, in the case of fake console-related horror content, next should be fake instruction manuals. I used to get sleep paralysis over battery leakage when I was like 5. At least it meant I took good care of my devices.
The GDT move just pisses me off, honestly "Oh no, pirates make us "lose some money" so we'll pretend we're going bankrupt because of them!!" There's not a single game company that actually went bankrupt because of the pirates and not because their games were just trash Even if we stats are actually legit they didn't lose anything from it Most of these pirates wouldn't buy the game anyway considering they pirate an indie game. They just don't have the money needed, that's all.
11:47 relatable. I too find it hard to exist for more than 8 hours. Every day is a struggle, or else the void threatens to consume me I must remain vigilant
corrections and comments:
> the code on the keep talking and nobody explodes manual is for syncing versions/language, not for anti-piracy. for example, the english code is 241, but the japanese code is 122. still, it shows how easy codes can be worked around if they were for anti-piracy
> sorry for being WAY too close to my mic in this video. i did not realize that my mic was practically peaking when recording, and i just had to work with in the editing process. i'll be sure to sit further away from my mic in future videos
> the line at the end (“don’t pirate, or else you’ll end up like me”) doesn’t represent my actual stance on piracy. if it was, you wouldn’t have gotten a well-made video. the point of this video is just to showcase various types of anti-piracy measures & fake anti-piracy screens, not be a talking point for how “capitalism bad.” the line was meant to be a joke to tie up the setup in the beginning. nothing more, nothing less
Really glad that you clarified this, was just about to comment this myself.
Nice
"dont pirate"
the nr2003 community: *intense sweating*
"that sounds WAY too scary to be in a NINTENDO game. " Meanwhile, Earthbound's Final boss:
Ironically, circumventing draconian corporate protectionism is EXTREMELY capitalist behaviour.
Remember when everyone made fake piracy screens that went like "Piracy is a crime!" or "Piracy is not [blank]"? Anyway, My favorite piracy screen is the Just Shapes and Beats one, where the creator talks to you
the just shapes and beats one is iconic cuz he’s like “i don’t care lol ur cool”
Same here. Looks cool ngl.
Yes
"Piracy is not Mario Kart DS. You are going to die"
*hyperealistic mario with bloody eyes appears in the background*
the game i always wanted is just shapes and beats. i'd rather want it from the nintendo website
It’s no doubt that the “scary” piracy screens were inspired by Sonic.exe, which is the bare minimum of creepy media and the bottom of the barrel of quality in todays standards.
Agreed.
honestly i love the unsettling feeling that some fake anti piracy fakes can capture but it just turned into hyperrealistic blood and black eyes WAY too quickly
ye and they like, mario or sth became creature like exe and then 'oohhhhhhh, you a are theif'
Honestly I'd prefer if the anti-piracy mock-ups were more detached "the game ran into an error" type screens instead of aping off the worst thing to happen to modern creepypasta.
I've seen some good anti-piracy screens that are unnerving in a realistic way and not just spooky face.
Fun fact, the "Piracy is no party" jailbar screen, that image on the bottom screen is actually in the real game of Mario Party DS. just without the flashing "POWER OFF NOW" message overlaying it. That jailbar screen is used in the beginning of the story mode of that game's story mode, as part of something Bowser did at the beginning of the story against the playable cast of characters
he just turned them small lol
if I had to guess, re-using that asset was probably inspired by a donkey kong game (I forget which) which does a similar thing with reusing I think a game over screen? and it was pretty fuckin creepy
@NebulatheZorua Donkey Kong Country 2 and 3, I'm pretty sure. In some countries I think DKC2 has a bland anti-piracy screen. Maybe it's also in the third game, idk I forgor
@@theoneandonly-qs1uw OSC I LIKE OSC lol
@@Danland777 I am also and OSC member, despite not being very active on it.
The pirated version of Earthbound makes the game extremely difficult, only to crash if the player is hard-core enough to go through to the end.
wipes all your saves too Btw
I love it when piracy screens just mock you and annoy you. The fake piracy screens are trying real hard to be a creepypasta.
These fake anti-piracy screens really are unique in their ways and leaves questions to theorize like what would happen if u refused to connect a headset in the screen shown at 15:49
@@aquakun3869 found the guy who makes bad fake anti piracy screens
@@aquakun3869
Let me guess, video game character with hyper-realistic bleeding eyes?
I can’t decide if the funniest part of this is that they thought the switch had a chance to have the potential ability to call the police, but also that even if it worked, that you’d actually be arrested. I think police officers have bigger things to worry about than some games downloaded off of the internet. (the Spyro one is hysterical though)
These fake anti-piracy screens really are unique in their ways and leaves questions to theorize like what would happen if u refused to connect a headset in the screen shown at 15:49
"Yeah timmy! Youre getting locked up for a LOOONNG time!! Maybe dont pirate next time!!"
Cops would have probably said something like "Stop wasting our time." Or "That's a civil issue."
the actual video edit alongside the "headset calling the cops" was surprisingly high quality in execution imo, i almost think the absurdity of the idea was written slightly tongue-in-cheek
911 Dispatcher: “Damn, that’s crazy.”
Two of my absolute favorite modern anti-piracy measures are for skullgirls and enter the gungeon. In the former, you could play every characters arcade ladder, but when it came time to see their ending, all you would get was a simple screen that said “what is the square root of a fish? Now I’m sad.“ When pirates went on Twitter to start asking what that meant, the developers straight up told them that it meant that they should buy the game properly.
For enter the gungeon there’s a very popular mod that you could install for the steam version, and if it noticed that you were running a pirated copy of the game, it would automatically open up two windows on your computer. One would be a TH-cam video of the Lazy Town song you are a pirate, while the other Was the steam page for the legal version of the game. If you went and tried to play the game regardless, it would immediately drop you into a ridiculously hard Boss fight that was nigh unwinnable.
This is way better than what denuvo or whatever that is called does
@@ghoulchan7525 And, unlike Denuvo, it doesn't end up affecting actual buyers!
@@ghost.8836 exactly why
@@ghoulchan7525 Denuvo affects performance and just gives players a worse experience than piracy
@@ghoulchan7525 I still remember the PC version of Sonic Mania being delayed for a month just so Sega could add Denuvo. And the only compensation we got was an emulated port of Sonic 1, which in my case I already owned.
They removed it later on in an update thankfully, but apparently for the non-Steam versions that were released later on they added it back in. Why even?
Another reason interesting anti-piracy methods died out was because game developers realized how many people would see them as a sort of easter egg and pirate games just to experience them. Modern day anti-piracy method is boring but much more effective at discouraging pirates
RELOADED and SKIDROW's continued releaces of cracked copies of every AAA title indicate you're wrong there, bud.
_Serious Sam 3's_ immortal pink DRM Scorpion heard you. He is 150 meters from your location and approaching _rapidly._
*Start running.*
@@MeepChangeling Still far more effective than anti-piracy methods of the past.
not rly
not really, fitgirl repacks never stop producing pirated games, and its not really hard to pirate games, i certainly am not ever discouraged lol
i saw this one anti piracy screen for tomodachi life (i forgot who made it unfortunatley) and it started off with your miis on the beach and then pirates show up and a war erupts which ends in the pirates claiming victory and taking everyone hostage, so you're island is empty. it was funny and totally played into the nature of tomodachi life lol
I watched dthat
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
oh neat i saw that one too and conveniently had made my own on my old account before the whole antipiracy trend happened
and then got bombarded by 5 year old children who thought that one was real and were all like "HEYYYY THERE'S NO PIRATES TAKING YOUR MIIS HERE >:(((((( STUPID TH-camR" in the comments of my video despite mine being months older than that one
good times!
Aw yeah! fake anti piracy which is shit or unbelievable! I love me some terrible fake anti piracy.
@@asra-5180 anything that includes tomodachi life is peak
I really like the fake Cardiac Arrest warning for Ring Fit Adventure. It's a bit too ominous to seem real (The rather frightening sound design would likely exacerbate the situation) but it left me with chills all the same.
I know the one you're talking about! Personally I thought the creepy ambience wasn't part of the screen but rather it was in the player's head, representing the fear that their body was doing something they had no idea it was doing
Me too! That one stuck with me more than the others!
i like the wii fit overexertion warning one
I think that one is particularly frightening because its not antagonizing you, its trying to warn you, which is kindof cute in a way but also JESUS CHRIST im having a heart attack
fake anti piracy screens always remind me of that “qubo’s last minutes” video where they ask for $2500 and then start shooting kid’s show characters
i’m pretty sure when looking up videos while editing this one, that video popped up more than once lol
they gave robert the tomato the Skull.
Same lmao
I never understood the appeal, it's just childish.
@@itryen7632 the funniest part IMO was how the creator behind the video thought that a $2500 donation could somehow save the entire channel. like Girl that is not how it works
@@novameowww IKR
My favourite one is for Ace attorney investigations 2, where all the text is turned into a fictional language if the game is pirated. It completely destroys the point of the game, which is text based.
Want somebody to beat that game or at least try to translate the conlang
@@plumjet09 there is a twitch streamer that did, i think.
Couldn't you technically beat it w/o issues if you took the time to learn the language?
@@nosh62 No, because the language is made up of pseudo hieroglyphics with no indication of how they are meant to be used when translated. The only real way to beat the game is to use walkthrough guides or to watch other people's gameplay of it, which defeats the point of the game as both being text based and a puzzle game.
@@Algebruh2407 ah, I see. Would be interesting if you could beat it that way, though; it would be one heck of a challenge
7:08 This made me fucking realize that the reason why I might’ve never progressed in Year of the Dragon as a kid was because I was playing a pirated version. I remember the cd with the title in sharpie and everything.
My mind is fucking blown right now, I raged at that game so hard I broke our giant CRT TV. Either that or I was really shit at the game. Good times. Great video as always lol
i feel so bad for u but also that is insanely funny omfg ToT
i could never :3
How did you break the CRT? Last time I checked they're hella strong, so you must've thrown a controller or something.
@@insertcreativehandlehere I just remember standing up and angrily hitting the screen over and over and over again. I can’t remember if the screen itself broke, but something definitely did because when my grandparents got home they got mad at me because the tv stopped working lol.
@@insertcreativehandlehere
I was a bit shocked myself. I remember having a particularly chunky large CRT TV growing up, and my N64 about 3 feet below on the floor in front of it. Once the CRT fell forward, face first onto the N64 with a cartridge in the slot. Somehow neither sustained even a bit of damage. That same N64 still works to this day (can't speak for the CRT, though, since it's been gone for a long time). I figured that if you did anything short of smashing it with a sledgehammer, a CRT was like the Nokia of televisions.
@@insertcreativehandlehere not all of them
I'm pretty sure the Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes code isn't for anti-piracy but instead to make sure you are using the correct version of the manual so that there are no communication problems since this game is so dependant on communication.
Edit: I think this makes even more sense when you consider the game asks you this every time you switch languages since the manuals and puzzles are slightly different in different languages so the code makes sure you aren't using the manual from a different language thinking it'll work with the game.
One really obscure anti piracy measure is in Rhythm Heaven for the DS, but only the Korean version. If the game detects that it was pirated the icon for the second minigame will be completely missing. You have to play the minigames in order, so you're totally blocked from progressing. Also even if you managed to circumvent this issue by using a cheating device or iniecting a save file with that minigame completed, the game will erase your save data anyway. It's just so odd how only the Korean version has this anti piracy measure when none of the other versions of the game do.
im like a real big fan of rhythm heaven and somehow i didn't know this! neat!
i guess if you really like built to scale it's still okay?
Lets not forget about the pixelation spreads sims had where they took the nudity filter that's spread to everything. Which is hilarious.
I love that one, but there's a question I've always had about it... What would happen if you just never let the pixelation appear on your screen to begin with? What if every time your sim got nude, you had the camera entirely off screen? Would the spread still occur?
I love the idea of long cons. It's so beautifully petty and sneaky.
My favourite one is actually something I personally experienced as a kid and had no idea what the reason was for it.
If you have a burnt copy of Sonic Adventure 2 for the Dreamcast, during one of the stages of the last level you just... fall to your death immediately at the start of it. Nothing you can do about it. I always thought the game was fucked up, and that's why it never worked right. Learning the actual reason was like an infuriating moment of clarity, lol.
there was an issue where sega released bad copies of the game which would activate this anti-piracy measure even if it was a legit copy
nah, the actual reason was the game was fucked up, sorry you had to relive your infuriating moment of clarity again, just from the fact the anti-piracy got flipped from your bad copy.
also how is this anti-piracy on second thought?
Anti-piracy is meant to prevent you from playing the game. This would allow you to play two full stories, which is straight up questionable at best.
One of the best anti-piracy methods I've ever heard was in older versions of Garry's Mod before the Steam Workshop was in place, where it would randomly crash the game and give the pirated game's owner an error message (specifically "Unable to shade polygon normals", complete nonsense in source-engine graphics but sounds believable if you don't know that) and a unique error code. Thing is, the 'error code' was actually their Steam ID, and by people asking online for help with the 'error', they'd not only be openly-admitting that they're pirating the game without knowing it, but they'd also out their steam account which they were pirating with.
Lol that’s so cool
The worst thing about lenslock is that the lense was different for each game that used it and you'd often receive the wrong lense for the game you bought! And even if you had the right one, if your TV was too big or small it just wouldn't work. Luckily it wasn't too hard to learn how to read the codes without a lense.
There was this one time when I was maybe 12 or 13 where I couldn't read the product key on a box (I think it was a MYST game maybe) and called the number in the manual sobbing about how the numbers were moving (I have Dyslexia and Discalculia) and the poor person on the phone was kind enough to listen to me for what felt like an hour and then issue me on over the phone.
Oh God, I remember the Spyro 3 anti-piracy measures. Little me had no idea why the game would warp me back to Sunrise Spring with no gems or eggs when I tried to do the first fight with the Sorceress. This was back when we'd get our games from a guy my dad knew who'd burn them to disc for us, and I'd play them on my modchipped PS1 (which I still have! Dunno if it still works though, the thing's about as old as I am)... ah, those were the days lol
That's pretty cool, I still have my play station , got the fearful harmony bios error because of a pirated disc, scared the crap out of me
7:38 imagine complaining online about people pirating your work in game, not knowing that you were basically self reporting
One of my favorite details about the game dev tycoon anti piracy is that it was added to the base game as a toggle to give yourself a challenge
damn, must’ve missed that! i don’t play the game much anymore but that would’ve saved me some time finding footage on YT of it lol
My dad was an early video game pirate back in the 80s. There was a store that we were able to actually rent old sierra games from. He worked at a paper mill and would just take the game manual to work and photo copy the entire manual for each game. We had each game on floppies with hand written labels and a stack of stapled copies of black and white manuals that we would have to reference to bypass the piracy checks. Such a great time to grow up in!
Sierra easily caught on to the fact that their games were being pirated because they would sell more hint books to each game than games themselves.
I remember when I was a little kid, my family and I played Mario Kart Wii together. My mom often accidentally hit the power button during gameplay, which made our TV show just a... blue screen with some text telling us to power on the source again.
I also remember that, whenever that happened, I hid under a blanket and refused to look at the TV. It scared me. Any sort of screen like that scared me. The TV needed to be off, or it needed tobe displaying actual content. Same went for consoles and computers.
If I had ever run into a piracy screen (which. i wouldn't have. because i don't pirate.), i would've died right then and there.
I think the screens are interesting, though. But the ones that try to actively be "spooky" completely miss the point. They're already spooky. The fact that the game breaks the 4th wall and calls you out is scary enough. And when it's for a kid-friendly developer like Nintendo? Nintendo would never try that for their popular, kid-friendly IPs. They'd never risk scaring an actual child and getting bad press for trying to traumatize children, piracy or not.
I get most of what you’re saying, but if it’s over piracy Nintendo wouldn’t care how many children they traumatize
The keygens and cracks aren't naively ignored by the developers, but they know it will take some time for the pirates to develop them, so it helps protect against the initial rush of sales, where most of the money is made.
A few other techniques were also used :
- Code word pages printed with black ink on a dark red colored paper which made it nigh to impossible to photocopy.
- Disquettes and then CDs with special error tracks which would give a predictable error when reading a certain block - but because of the error the CD could not really be copied except with very specialized hardware and software
- The "dongle" - a piece of hardware that you could put on the paralel port - and later USB port, that would not let you start the software.. although that was more oriented towards professional like accounting or very specialized apps oriented for a niche market.
The first one eventually got bypassed once printers got good enough
Toys to Life games did effectively use the later, though they also often easy to spoof and frankly spoofing them is way more fun than doing it legitimately. I guess that's the fundamental issue with anti-piracy, to some people you've just created a fun puzzle.
The dongle is also used in arcade machines except for certain ones which have a custom board that is the hardware that’s needed for the game and the security system because a lot of them are really just off the shelf PCs that probably are either windows based (example a terminator arcade cabinet with the guns with the grenade launcher or the Sega alls [Insert model here]) or Linux based (another example: nearly every single play mechanix box including MotoGP excluding anything to do with VR because that requires steam VR which won’t work with wine yes, including the rabbits VR ride)
product keys were the most absurd “anti-piracy” measure every thought up that never actually hindered any pirates but only inconvenienced legitimate purchasers of software. all you had to do to circumvent this antipiracy measure was to write the code down on the the copied cd or for files distributed online there was just a text file distributed with the software. i think some software distributors were just hoping you would lose the key so you would have to buy another copy.
In some situations it was absolutely just a way to force you to buy multiple copies because for a while EA would only let you reinstall the same game three times using any one code. Spore is probably the most famous game to have this “feature”.
I liked when the "Piracy is no Party!" thing was a single video. felt like it didn't need to be strung out to like 5+ videos. there, i said it
honestly the fact it has actual lore is fucking insane lmao
The Dial-A-Pirate that came with Secret of Monkey Island is my personal favorite, simply because of the irony of a game about pirates having anti-piracy measures. The first line Guybrush ever utters is "I'm Guybrush Threepwood and I wanna be a pirate!" lmao
(My as-of-last-summer obsession with the Monkey Island series may also have something to do with placing that one as my favorite lol)
Oh, and Monkey Island 2 LeChuck's Revenge had its own Dial-A-Pirate, and this one is interesting because it also was tied to the difficulty selection for the game. Which means that in later editions, including the Special Edition remake from 2010, you cannot pick easy mode. Normal mode ONLY. Well, without hacking. Extra fun is that the game actually has unique assets for easy mode, all of which are still in Special Edition, and have the upgraded artwork done for them just like everything else. There's also a couple unique lines of dialogue for Easy Mode, which were fully voiced for Special Edition. Makes me wonder why they didn't implement any sort of difficulty selection to Special Edition.
at 12:18 the line of code if (game_is_pirated = true) would always run the code inside the if statement because a single = operator means to assign a value to a variable.
in my defense i haven’t coded in java in a hot minute
@@nimk you literally used the correct syntax right below it in the if (in_the_air == true) line...
@@jackssrt in my defense it was also like midnight LOL
I remember watching a Super Mario Odissey anti piracy screen that it ended up being a jumpscare with the first image that pops up when you google "scary mario"
The jumpscare is called “Super Horror Mario” and it’s on DeviantArt
i really like the idea of piracy screens just for funsies. jsab is my favorite because its pretty calm about it. and then theres year of the dragon, which i like because of the chaos of it, even though it does kinda let you get too far into the game in my opinion.
the idea is rep ruin or time waste.
Wasting time cuts less into that 1 month period that's so important.
Rep Ruining makes the pirate less reputable with other games, which in turn makes them less viable as a source.
It does let a photocopying kid get too far yeah, but it works wonders for the other two, being hard to crack and hard to test.
Great video! This is very well-made, with some good comedy/research!
The fake anti-piracy era was honestly quite an ordeal, some of them were very good, and could be genuinely unsettling, but a lot of them just had zero effort and honestly felt awkward to watch. Same with kill screens, where every video was a clone of the other lol
These fake anti-piracy screens really are unique in their ways and leaves questions to theorize like what would happen if u refused to connect a headset in the screen shown at 15:49
i like how the project zomboid devs' stance on piracy is: "you can't afford it right now? ok sure go ask the community they have a link to download a cracked version safely, and if you like it, please buy it once you can afford it"
A personal favorite I've stumbled across is the fake Harvest Moon DS piracy screen in which the mayor straight-up murders you in the intro. And it's not even that off-brand for HMDS either, in the actual intro you can get a game over by letting your dog maul him--
i love how the gold rush one’s anti-piracy screen is literally the player being hung at the gallows.
my favorite is La Abadia Del Crimen which goes PIRATA, P I R A T A, P I R A T A, P I R A T A
When it comes to fake anti piracy screen stuff, the only one that I really remember (yes, it’s fairly memorable) is an ace attorney one where the client is on trial for piracy and it’s rather creative
Honestly, if there's anything that I am glad is a lost art, it's this. There are so many games I couldn't play due to the StarForce copy protection being broken post Windows 7 due to how invasive it was in some versions (such as kernel-level drivers) until some people managed to crack it on a game by game basis. And now it's happening again with Denuvo, which is less invasive but probably just as future-proof.
I enjoy the fake ones since they remind me of old creepypasta videos and they are harmless rather than harming preservation and being an annoyance even for those who legitimately bought the games.
The pirated copy of hacknet will progress normally to the end then in the credits say "I know you have a pirated copy, that's okay" not much of a anti piracy but still memorable
Super inspiring, you have a lot of potential! Plus video game stuff like this always goes viral. Stay strong
Well, the main reason for the die off is that a lot of us current generation of programmers... Kinda were pirates at some point. Or just other kinds of under dwellers.
And when that's the case, the idea of torturing little Jimmy who's parents just plain said no to everything just doesn't appeal as much.
So it's gotten more professional and more focused on more involved DRM.
It's not about playing with pirates anymore, just making it difficult to do for awhile. The people who can afford it will just give up and buy it.
Little Jimmy is just going to have to wait a few months.
TL;DR, we're not assholes anymore. We get it. We were it.
Yeah, I love emulating games. Nintendo console cost a lot.
Honestly, you are the reason I don't want to quit youtube! Great video.
9:17 it's funny because gta 4 is the one game in the series that flips all of this around and has a message about how dark and horrible the life of crime is lol
I saw a fake anti-piracy screen for Conker’s Bad Fur Day around 3 years ago, and I swear, it haunted me for the rest of the day(I was like 10). It had Conker looking at you from the darkness and a message over top basically saying that he found your family and was going to brutally unalive you all. Absolute chills.
So you're 13?
@@pabblo1 well done you know math
i found the video here it is: th-cam.com/video/iq4ciaSp8xk/w-d-xo.html
@@mizukittyakinyama are you young you can do that in .1 picosecond
@@Jose-Campos. i know, that's why i was saying that and being sarcastic. anyone would be able to figure that out.
The windows 95 startup has been my ringtone for almost a year now and i cant hear it normally anymore without me getting jumpscared lmfao
i... wish you the best if you watch my previous videos LOL that used to be my intro
@@nimk Ohh shoot now hold on I was doing my college algebra stuff and binging your vids for ‘very enjoyable background noise’ shall I say and genuinely thought you used it for every vid and of course I comment on the one without it
@@slimetb tbf i changed it VERY recently, but yeah that's unlucky haha
13:24 “eerie track that is way too scary to ever be in a Nintendo game” Clearly you haven’t heard River Twygz Bed from Super Paper Mario…
I love how Mirror's Edge 2008 just decides to fuck with your ego if you try to pirate it
In the tuto, when you try to move, you move very very slow until to the point you cant do anything, and when you try to jump, you get into terms with your death
I would love to not pirate! But unfortunately, done developers, studios, etc completely ditch or remove perfectly good games, which become known as abandonware. One prone example being: I wanted to play telltale's guardians of the galaxy on my new pc, but alas, it had to be removed because they went bust. With the new owners of ttg's ip and content not wanting to publish it again (probably due to licensing), the only choice is abandonware piracy.
If someone pirates my game, I’m putting the 1st episode of one piece in
It’s crazy that they will go through all of this hard work creating a fake anti piracy message, just to ruin it with a cheap/stock VHS overlay. For less than $30, you could get an HDMI to AV and a VCR to get the authentic look, but then you would have to digitize the tape, if you already spent so much time making the video, take the extra few minutes to at least make it authentic
i’d always assumed the people who made those type of screens were young and influenced by local 58/mandela catalogue/etc. analogue horror and they didn’t have the money to really get a good overlay
i definitely should invest in a vcr so i can make legit-looking vhs stuff if i ever need it, but i have no clue how to really digitize a tape or make any of that work lol. i guess i’ll have to go researching
@@nimk I’m not good with digitizing but I put movies onto VHS, it’s super easy and you can use any tape even if it has a movie on it, all you have to do is take a piece of scotch tape and cover the security slot. Goodwill usually has VCRs for like $10-$15, the most expensive thing is the HDMI to AV adapter, which is like $15.
first time im genuinely shocked at how underated a youtuber is!! Amazing video dude.
16:19 Basically every anti piracy screen ever
After getting so fascinated in actual anti-piracy measures, I feel like I wished they had more attention but I wished it on a monkey paw. Now it's mostly just used as a new platform for cheap 2000s-era creepypasta, when it was the more subtle details that made the real anti-piracy systems truly unsettling.
i'm pretty sure there was an anti piracy measure in pokemon black and white which disabled the ability to gain exp and level up any of your pokemon
Some copy protection manual/paper thingie came in horrible colors with horrible contrast so that copies made with a photocopy machine or fax, which was all that was available back in the day, would be illegible. It's not a problem anymore with digital copies, but it worked reasonably well in the 80s and early 90s. I guess you could still copy the whole thing by hand, but I guess at that point you kinda earned your pirated copy.
so I just happened upon this channel and I just have to say that the video topics, editing/pacing and humour are bang on what hits the neuron activation button for me. Keep it up, hopefully there’s other people in my same demographic
When i first saw your videos, i was like "holy fuck Scott the Woz"
And i fucking like this type of content!
Imagine being some kid playing gold rush and you know the answer to the question from your history classes but you misspell the word and see that happen to your character
12:39 that “Salam, Bowser!” caught me
How the hell is your channel this underrated? How does a content creator this good not even have 7k subs?
I'm gonna straight up say it, I'm a pirate, and I pirate every day... with tv shows and movies anyway. The main reason why I pirate, is because I can't get them legally, all because I'm a minor and can't pay for stuff online. I've stopped pirating disney and netflix stuff because my family now has the streaming setvices, but I still pirate other stuff, like nickelodeon, cartoon network, universal studios, and those kind of stuff, all because I can't legally buy them. I only pirate old video games (usually only nintendo), and sometimes switch games that I own (mainly just so I can dump assets from them). Of course, I do also pirate where's my water... to some extent. I'll explain. I've bought the game legally on the apple app store, but not on google play, but I found an apk of it online, and I use it to mod the game. If I could, I would buy the game on google play, then use the official apk downloaded from the play store, and mod that instead.
Oh, and the only times I pirate disney / netflix stuff, is when I'm watching trash, and don't want to support the creators, or I'm watching something that I don't want my family to see that I'm watching (it's just little kid stuff that I'm just watching because I'm curious), or it's just so I can watch the Australian version of bluey, and not have to pay for a vpn.
Damn bro!
7:27 game dev tycoon is such a creative way to stop pirates from making progress! Too bad it went over most pirates heads :(
I know the perfect piracy kill screen! It’s for a pirated Windows XP and it immediately loads the Blue Screen of Death every time you power on the PC and you can’t shut it down or close the BSOD. Your only choices are to keep the annoying sound going or to destroy the PC. It also is modified to suggest calling the cops
Another idea: A pirated copy of an iPhone12, except the second you turn it on, it immediately calls the police on you XD
That Game Dev Tycoon section is priceless.
Underrated channel
8:56 more then likely the drm was messed up, once you get into the 90s thats soinds like messed up drm.
"you wouldn't download a car!"
I absolutely would if it were possible.
When I was 12-13 years old, I discovered, "Wow! I can play video games for free and not have to watch let's-plays on TH-cam?!", and started pirating games.
Then it actually turned into a habit.
I'm definitely getting better, but since I'm only 15, it wasn't really that long ago since I started.
I started by refusing to pirate certain games based on how much MB's it would take to download the pirated version, now I'm also refusing to pirate indie games.
I do feel pretty ashamed about it, and the only reason I started pirating games was because I'm very socially awkward and I was taught the value of money at an early age (which is a pretty good parenting tactic so that your kid doesn't put you in debt from being like, "buy me this!" or "buy me that!"), so whenever I wanted to buy a game I had to awkwardly go downstairs and ask my dad if I could use my allowance to buy a game I wanted. (Most of the time I was too anxious to actually go down and ask so I never ended up getting some games)
Sorry if this comment is overly ramble-y, I tend to talk (or in this case, type) a lot.
This is exactly the kind of situation where I don't disagree with piracy. Not everyone has the luxury of spending money on things like games. However, that shouldn't mean that you have to give up entertainment you like, which is an important part of being human. You can always choose to support the developers by purchasing the game if you wish, or you can share the game with friends and perhaps they would purchase it. If I was a small indie developer, as much as I'd prefer to be paid, the reality is that not everyone can or is willing to. It's understandable.
I pirated stuff because I didn’t have a bank account to pay for the games, even if i wanted to. I did buy a couple games second hand (Using banknotes obviously), but still, no money goes to the developer if i buy a used game. It’s just that i didn’t and still don’t have £50-£70 to buy a new game
@@weegie3343 I don't have a bank account either, so I understand lol
I just exclusively play old games nobody sells anymore, can't lose profits that aren't being made in the first place
I only pirate games if it's no longer available to purchase new. They're not making money off it anyway so what's the point of paying $80 secondhand for a $20 game. The only exception is The Sims 4 packs bc EA's not getting $900+ from me for some things for digital people.
9:33 NIKO? NIKO ARE YOU OKAY? NIKO, ITS ROMAN. NIKO? LETS GO BOWLING
11:08 The random language changing is actually exclusive the the UK version of the game, from what I've heard.
everything i’ve seen said PAL overall. i don’t see why it wouldn’t change if it was the french/spanish/italian versions
yo, this is amazing! underrated channel fr
I like the Immortal killer scorpion one and the pirate jail one. The Michael Jackson one was funny too with vuvuzuelas playing over the songs. There’s also the Batman and parkour ones that take away the abilities you need to play the game
Well did u know that people managed to kill the inmortal killer scorpion?
0:27 We should publicly shame that store for kicking you out
The subnautica "anti piracy" is quite funny, when u open the built in feedback menu, it shows that you sent a message saying: "i didnt pay for this but its great!" With a dev response saying: "you should buy it if you can!"
I dont really believe Keep Talkings code was meant to be anti-piracy, its meant to prove you're aware this is 2 parts: the defuser, and the experts. Its also to verify you're using the right version of said manual (which isnt really a deal, there was no updates iirc)
fun fact: consoles now have BANNING systems for unwilling pirates. they are mostly on newer consoles like the nintendo switch, but is mostly something a normal player wouldn't run into.
I think my personal more favorite Anti-Piracy system I have ever seen was in Dragonbal GT transformation in the GBA were if you Pirate the game will it allow you to play the first 2 stages only to then when you try to play stage 3 instead give you a screen telling you that if you liked that you played so far you might just wanna actually buy the game.
I love it because it turns a Pirated copy into basically a old Shareware/Demo version of the game.
Tho one thing not mentioned here is how many old Anti-Piracy systems on PC just kind of died as Windows updated which these days forced people to use Pirated patches to get some of there old games running again.
these fake anti piracy screens creep me out i really dont know why.
i mean, they are made specifically to be scary most of the time. at least, the ones with that "standard fake anti-piracy screen formula" i mention in the video
@@nimk yes but they arent like actually creepy just strange
One of my favorite anti piracy is the Coronel bequest fingerprint identifier - the game since it was a murder mystery had the finger prints of all the characters with the physical game and if you pick the wrong one the curtain falls and the game closes
There was an Animal Crossing : New Horizons piracy screen I saw a few years ago in 2020, and it actually gave off it's vibe for it. It was the Residence Service building of Isabelle doing the normal announcements then saying she just got news of a criminal on the island, and states your character's name, then showing an ACNH pop-up saying to return the game to where you bought it or destroy the copy and note legal services about the piracy.
I have a story on the first time I ran into an anti-pirate measure actually, it happened about like 2 years ago?
I love Pokémon and I have a lot of Pokémon games, physically and digitally. However, I often emulate the 2D games on my tablet either to get cheats or because I was bored. One game I emulated was Pokémon Black (I don't know why, I have the physical copy). Usually, I would use the DS emulator I was familiar with, however, the one I usually used was playing up, so I downloaded a different one. I went to train in the grass after getting my Tepig because I knew I struggled with N's Purrloin near the start. That's when I noticed my Tepig didn't gain any EXP from the Lillipup it just killed.
"Strange," I thought, "Must've been my imagination."
And then then same thing happened the next battle
So it turns out the gen 5 Pokémon game have an anti piracy measure where your Pokémon is unable to gain EXP, which will make your life hell. I think the DS emulator I usually use has some sort of built in anti piracy workaround which was why I didn't run into it on that emulator, but I did eventually find a cheat code that bypassed the measure so uh yeah.
Didn't matter tho cuz I stopped playing like 2 days later-
The only games I do pirate are old games that are no longer available for purchase (bc they're not making money off of resales anyway) and The Sims 4 packs because ain't no way EA of all companies is getting $900+ for some items for digital people (I got the base game legitimately though so there's that ig)
The undertale one is REALLY funny. You're able to play fully, but when you beat the route, sans calls you a "dirty thief"
The MPDS picture is actually from the story mode, where Bowser shrinks the cast.
Thanks for a great video :) I was always scared of the anti-piracy screen from Frontier - if you had got the code wrong when asked, then at a random point later the screen would cut to black with a frowning police officer face and a message about them finding out you were flying a stolen ship and hauling you off to jail. It was really a lot like those awful fake anti-piracy screens you listed!
i absolutely love your content man. keep it up.
your editing and scripts are so funny, let it be known i've been here since 8.15k subs lol
Arcade racing games when you drive into a store/building/etc: 0:32
(I don't know why most of these games do that, also there are some exceptions, like asphalt 9)
Kill screens are certainly the strangest out of all the fake stuff. As if I thought that their formulaicness was weird enough, I went down a little rabbit hole one night and stumbled across a variety of game console kill screens based off of TV shows for infants. That's just so incredibly niche, I haven't seen such absurd forms of crossover since the GoAnimate videos back around 2015-16☠
game dev tycoons devs then added piracy mode AS A FEATURE (probs easier then if you pirate the game) killer move
In Dark Souls 1, if you were playing a pirated copy, you would be stuck in the dungeon cell with no way of getting out. The key you get doesn't work, and when you try to open the cell door you are prompted with the message: "You have sinned."
2:56
Oh boy, I have the Nascar Racing 2003 product key burned into my mind, I can still remember it whenever I reinstall the game.
8:17
OH GOD,
THIS IS VERY BAD...
16:39 I know right? Imagine you’re playing Pokémon Pearl and then dawn looks at the player and tells them that you pirated it and then she goes and “ends it” (if you catch my drift)
just fucking say "kill" dude no need to dance around it
I feel like, in the case of fake console-related horror content, next should be fake instruction manuals. I used to get sleep paralysis over battery leakage when I was like 5. At least it meant I took good care of my devices.
The GDT move just pisses me off, honestly
"Oh no, pirates make us "lose some money" so we'll pretend we're going bankrupt because of them!!"
There's not a single game company that actually went bankrupt because of the pirates and not because their games were just trash
Even if we stats are actually legit they didn't lose anything from it
Most of these pirates wouldn't buy the game anyway considering they pirate an indie game. They just don't have the money needed, that's all.
11:47 relatable. I too find it hard to exist for more than 8 hours. Every day is a struggle, or else the void threatens to consume me
I must remain vigilant
Tbh, if i had a game, i would definitely put "HAR HAR MATEY- BUY THE GAME YOU CHEAP MATE-" lmao, it would be funny for an anti-piracy screen-
This man is the ultimate fusion of scott the woz and iceypie, and i am all here for it.
6:50 ha ha that scared me
Made me laugh a little when you read the text...