Vuvuzelas Blare On Pirated Copies of Music Game

[wraggster]

A novel anti-piracy measure baked into the Nintendo DS version of Michael Jackson: The Experience makes copied versions of the game unplayable and taunts gamers with the blaring sound of vuvuzelas. Many games have installed switches that detect pirated copies and act accordingly, like ending the user's game after 20 minutes. Ubisoft has come under fire multiple times for what players have seen as highly restrictive anti-piracy measures that annoy legitimate users as much or more so than pirates. But some more-mischievous developers have used tricks similar to the vuvuzela fanfare to mess with pirates. Batman: Arkham Asylum lets unauthorized users play through the game as if it were a normal copy, with a single exception: Batman's cape-glide ability doesn't work, rendering the game impossible to finish — although you might bash your head against it trying to make what are now impossible jumps. If you pirate Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, brace yourself for an explosion, as your entire base will detonate within 30 seconds of loading the game.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/12/06/2359257/Vuvuzelas-Blare-On-Pirated-Copies-of-Music-Game

[NeoXCS]

Of course all the problems caused by "anti-piracy" are quickly erased by a patch 99% of the time and the pirates get the superior copy. I've had my base explode on RA2 and I have a legitimate copy of it. I had to reinstall multiple times before. After a while I just started using a fixed executable when installing it just so I could actually play my game without it in the tray and with the explosion effect removed.