One of my favorite things to write about on this site is the creative ways developers have learned to fuck people who pirate their video gamesI am therefore very pleased to be able to present another example to you today.
Ross Symons, the CEO of Big Ant Studios, took to Twitter today to discuss some of the measures his company has taken to deal with pirates, who are far more creative than simply denying them access to the game.
Speaking of sports game cricket 22, the studios’ latest release, he says Big Ant just activated their own anti-piracy idea for the game, which involves flashing the entire screen white between games. As these kinds of anti-piracy measures often do, it has drawn many unsuspecting pirates to the game’s support forums for help solving their problem:
However, the white screen is just the beginning of Big Ant’s plans. reply to former My box AU Questions from Editor Alex Walker on TwitterSymons says the company has “other things in store” Some of their favorite beats from older games like ensuring pirates lose 100% of coin tosses, showing error messages on controller connection and, most frustratingly Make sure they have to line up first (while the AI is batting), and when it’s the player’s turn to score some runs, makes it “rain forever” until the game is canceled (which is something happens in cricket).
I asked Symons about these measures and how Big Ant is implementing them, and he told me “We actually have a panel for that here, where they can choose what happens to pirates on a whim, with a few other options that present a black screen instead of a white screen, letting users know the batteries in their controller are being replaced have to .
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“I think when people are going to steal the game,” says Symons, “we might as well have fun at their expense”. He also says that anti-piracy measures have since switched to this sale cricket 22 “are up 300%” and thank those who “converted” to a legitimate copy, while luring all current pirates still clinging to their free versions with the promise that “if you buy now, you will automatically keep track of your progress”.
