Croteam Slaps Pirates With Unkillable Foe

[dlevere]

By James Fudge

Many gamers hate DRM's as an unneeded cumbersome burden on gamers that legitimately purchase software. However, Croteam, the makers of the Serious Sam franchise, have managed to protect those gamers and make the life of pirates who don't buy the game miserable.

According to a post at Dark Side of Gaming, pirates that violate the DRM will find their characters in game being shadowed by a huge red scorpion that just won't die. It will follow the player until he is dead and keep doing it as long as the game is pirated.

While the implementation is nothing short of brilliant, I wonder how many will be tempted to pirate the game just to see this armored monstrosity in action?

[Pyriel]

Kind of reminds me of the early DRM on the Mother 2/Earthbound release for the SNES. First, it would check to see if there was too much RAM on the system (implying a copier), and it would tell you to buzz off. If you got past that, the game would have a ridiculous encounter rate. If you got past that, when you reached the last boss, the game would freeze and erase all the save files in the battery backup.

[bungholio]

Wasn't there a similar thing for 1 of the recent RPGs where they made insanely powerful enemies if you were playing before the release date? I like Mother 2/Earthbound's idea.