Games with Creative Ways to Punish Cheaters

Since the dawn of video games, players have sought ways to circumvent the code, make the game easier, discover things they shouldn't or, most commonly, play without owning the game (nowadays we pay and no longer own the game, but that's a talk for another time).

This eternal struggle between developers and companies against players and pirates has had calm and productive moments (like when Steam was a better and more effective alternative to piracy), complicated moments with lawsuits, or, the coolest of all, moments when companies decide to troll pirates or clever players.

And it's these moments we're going to talk about. We're going to discuss ten measures that games have implemented to stop piracy or cheating in more creative ways than simply preventing the game from running on the console or PC, and if you have any questions, just leave a comment.

EarthBound, or Mother as it's known in Japan, is one of the most famous RPGs for the Super Nintendo and follows a boy named Ness, a kid from Onett, and his friends Paula, Jeff, and Poo. After a meteor falls near his house, Ness discovers he needs to collect eight magical melodies to confront the alien Giygas, an entity that corrupts his world. The game has a tone that combines surreal humor with pop culture references and the challenges of traditional RPGs, with turn-based battles, for example. But the title has its protections against piracy.

If the game's ROM runs on a PAL console (traditional console configuration for Europe, Oceania, and parts of Africa/Asia) or with extra SRAM memory, the game displays a lock screen. These protections were created because the game was designed to run on specific configurations compatible only with NTSC consoles and wasn’t planned for PAL, which would mess up the game due to frame rate differences and break scripts.

However, if someone bypassed these barriers, the game increased the number of enemies on the screen, making it frustrating, and before the final fight against Giygas, the game would freeze and, when you reloaded the save, it would erase all data. In other words, running it on the wrong or pirated console made it even more difficult, and if you happened to be good enough to reach the end, you’d lose everything before the final fight.

The Sims 4 is a life simulator where you create and control a Sim or a family. You define their routines, careers, and relationships exactly the way you want. Without a fixed narrative, the game allows each player to build their own digital life, their home, their story without gender restrictions for relationships, for example, doing whatever they want in whatever way they want.

Today, the game is free, with only expansions and DLC being charged for (resulting in one of the most expensive games on Steam if you want everything), but at launch, pirated copies suffered from a problem that made the game unplayable. The pixelated effect that censors the Sims' private parts when they shower or change clothes expanded to cover the entire screen! This made the experience impossible to see and play, as everything was pixelated.

Many pirates reported the problem on official forums thinking it was a bug, but, to the users' amusement and the pirates' surprise, EA moderators said it was a measure against piracy, leaving the offender unsure what to do after confessing to pirating the game.

One of the best superhero games ever made. Batman: Arkham Asylum and Marvel’s Spider-Man are examples of what should be done when someone wants to create a game based on comic book superheroes. In this game, the Dark Knight is imprisoned in Arkham Asylum after the Joker takes control of it and takes the doctors hostage. Trapped with several villains from his gallery, Batman must stop the Joker while beating up any and all Gotham henchmen who appear before him. The game mixes combat, stealth, and puzzles worthy of the greatest detective of all time.

But to solve these puzzles, you had to use the hero's various tools, such as the Batrang, radar vision, and the batrope, which he uses to reach high places, launch himself into the air, and glide. Without it, you’d simply get stuck in the game, and that's exactly what happened in pirated versions. The batrope, essential for gliding between platforms, would stop working and disappear. The hero couldn't climb walls or cross gaps, preventing progress in the campaign. Users who complained on official forums, just like with The Sims 4, denounced themselves as pirates.

Spyro's third adventure begins when thieves invade the dragon world and steal 150 eggs. Our little purple dragon travels through various worlds to recover the eggs and confront the culprit. In addition to Spyro, the game introduces some new playable allies like Sheila (kangaroo) and Sergeant Byrd (rocket-wielding bird) and mixes platforming levels and minigames.

Now, to combat piracy, Insomniac decided to make pirates regret their actions. If the game detected any tampering, the campaign would start normally, but several things would happen throughout the game to sabotage progress: eggs and gems would disappear from the inventory, portals would teleport the player to the wrong places, the European version would randomly change language, and the game would crash from time to time.

If the pirate still managed to reach the final boss, the game would delete the save file and that was it. An article in Game Developer magazine, written by one of the game's programmers, Gavin Dodd, explained that the additional checks "corrupted saves because of the callbacks". In short, every time the game checked the number of eggs, gems, and other things and saw differences that wouldn’t normally be possible, it caused bugs and forced the game to close.

Released in 2013, you start a small game development studio in the 1980s and must manage employees, research technologies, and develop franchises over the next 25 to 35 years of the fictional history of the gaming industry. Working on your marketing, improving graphics, and enhancing gameplay all influence the success or failure of the games you release.

Knowing that their simulator would be pirated, the creators released a cracked executable of the game on torrent sites. At first, everything works normally and you can play and create your games, develop your strategies and marketing. Then, suddenly, your devs tell you that your game is selling poorly and a message appears saying that players are "downloading a cracked copy of your game" and nobody buys it anymore.

And if nobody buys your games, your studio goes bankrupt. Revenue decreases until the company closes and there's no way for you to survive. This makes players see the effects of piracy and how it harms studios firsthand.

Banjo-Kazooie is one of those Nintendo 64 games that followed the successful formula of Super Mario 64. Like many others, it repeated the controls, camera angles, movement, and style that worked so well on Nintendo's 64-bit console. In this game, a bear and a bird, Banjo and Kazooie, have to save the bear's sister who has been kidnapped by the witch Gruntilda, who wants to steal her beauty.

Here, there’s a creative punishment for those who try to exploit cheat codes and break the game with password combinations that would make the character invincible. These codes grant infinite lives, open passages, and grant invincibility, but only two can be used at a time. If you try to use more than one, the witch Gruntilda will warn you: "If you try these cheats again, I will delete your save". If you insist, she warns you again. And on the third time, she really deletes it!

In the Xbox remake, using these cheats disables achievements and prevents you from saving the game. But if you ever lost your save here, don't forget: it wasn't for lack of warning.

Fable is one of the franchises that's making a comeback after years on hold. Exclusive to Xbox, Fable 1 follows a young man who sees his village burned down and his sister kidnapped by bandits. Saved by a strange hero, you're taken to the Heroes' Guild and trained as an adventurer. Now, you can search for your sister or seek revenge on those responsible for the attack on your village and become a world-renowned hero or villain.

Here, the game tells you about a powerful item: a frying pan. You start your quest when you find a clue about this item and must follow the clues to eventually find the frying pan, which is one of the best weapons in the game, with five upgrade slots and being a one-handed weapon. Now, if you go online and decide to find its location without following the clues, then the frying pan becomes a two-handed weapon, with zero damage and no upgrade slots.

In this case, if you want to save time on the quest, it's easier to look online for the clues and follow them.

This game takes us to the Unova region, where we meet a new trainer on a quest to become a Pokémon Master. We'll face the traditional eight gyms, a team of bandits opposed to Pokémon capture, Team Plasma, and capture and collect all 156 new Pokémon that the region introduces.

In the game, Nintendo implemented an infrared verification system that periodically checks the game's functionality. If this check detects that the game isn’t running on a legitimate console, the Pokémon stop gaining experience after battles, and the game crashes intermittently. It's still possible to play, but you'll have considerable difficulty winning battles without your Pokémon evolving or becoming stronger.

Mirror's Edge tells the story of Faith, a courier. She lives in a futuristic city and runs across buildings and rooftops to make her deliveries, until one day her sister is accused of murder. Faith begins to investigate what's happening and discovers a conspiracy far bigger than she expected. The game focuses on parkour and its running and jumping mechanics. And without running or jumping, it's impossible to play.

And that's exactly what the game's anti-piracy system attacked. If the game was pirated, Faith would run, but when she got close to an edge the player needed to jump over, she would simply slow down and start walking, making the experience impossible to play, since without jumping and running, you couldn't do anything. Of course, after a while, hackers figured out how to disable this, but for a while, anyone who wanted to play Mirror's Edge either bought it or waited.

With the sarcasm and biting humor typical of the series, Serious Sam 3 tells a story of time travel to prevent an alien invasion of Earth. It features hordes of monsters and frenetic first-person shooting, along with some ironic yapping from protagonist Sam Stone.

This game won't let you play if it detects you're running a pirated copy. If you run the pirated game, a kind of scorpion with its fast and lethal machine guns appears and chases you until it kills you. There's no way to defeat the creature: it has fast and powerful attacks at both long and short range, and eventually, you'll get frustrated and quit the game.

Imagine the pirates on the game's official forum asking how to defeat the scorpion and hearing answers like "just buy the game", "just don't play the pirated version", or other similar things. And worse, the guy swearing he's not a pirate and that they're being unjustly accused. It must’ve been fun being on those forums back then.