According to several polish websites, as well as a story that I heard from a friend that is a huge fan of the series, the original release of Witcher 2 had an interesting anti-piracy measure. At the beginning of chapter 1, when Geralt stops the hanging of his friends, Loredo tells him "I'd rather give you a thief. I'm joking! I hate thieves" then executes the thief in question. Only in pirated versions, the game would instead cut to a scene of Geralt himself being hanged in sync with the "I hate thieves" line, after which the game would crash. This entire thing was supposedly removed in later updates, where CDPR removed all DRM.
Now, my issue is that I can't find a single recording of that scene. A few polish websites link to youtube videos that were taken down, and I can find barely one or two mentions on non-polish websites of that "feature" existing at all. Can anybody confirm if it was even a real thing, or was it just a rumor all along?
That's the thing, I hear that it was triggered by some background online check, and since CDPR went no-drm, the service verifies all versions as genuine. Or something like that, it's supposedly no longer possibly to see in any legit way.
Colton Russell
Fuck you're retarded.
Sebastian Richardson
CDPR themselves would have to confirm or deny it then. Might be worth asking on their forums.
Sebastian Evans
only found this, but all in polish and without the game crashing
At least OP didn't try to say afterwards the game uninstalled itself or something to that effect.
Levi Cox
does the video actually work for you? It's not loading for me.
Ethan Rivera
this isnt hard to believe this since game companies have done thing like this before. in spyro year of the dragon if you fight the final boss in pirated copies the game send you back to the first area of the game and erase all your data
Evan Ward
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Liam King
isn't that scene triggered when you say the wrong stuff? like how you can get killed mid conversation if you choose the wrong dialog option?
Jackson Morales
my bad, it seems the site didn't like my adblocker.
Yeah, this video looks like somebody just spliced in the normal dialogue scene with the scene that happens when you lose the fistfight.
Isaac Johnson
Have you tried opening it in a new tab?
Cooper Nguyen
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Anthony Mitchell
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Christopher Rivera
It's called trying to sue pirates. What a bunch of morons.
nah
Colton Perez
So run an old rip of the game totally offline? Or reverse it and try to trigger it yourself.
Ian Campbell
But they had anti piracy measures. They call them lawyers and sent them forth with the mission to fuck with as many people as possiblie, in the vain hope to cath a pirate or two, next to all the grandmas who don't even know what a computer is.
Julian Johnson
I recall the new Serious Sam game supposedly had something like this. One of the early missions has an enemy which is invincible if you pirate, so you basically can't win.
How do they figure out it's a pirated copy?
Cooper Martinez
I'm not a Witcher fan, but I liked how CDPR priced the game in Poland. It was less than half a price of any AA game here - 80 PLN, if memory serves.
Jayden Garcia
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Juan Thompson
Although it was very clearly made as an afterthought, it is still neat as fuck.
Levi Wilson
games have tons of checks like that, whether you are running steam or files have been modified in some way, etc. cracking is all about finding those checks and ensure the tests will succesfully pass. and it gets worse when the check isn't immediately obvious (game seems to be running fine at first) and you need to rush out the crack ASAP to get the bragging rights around the scene. hence immortal scorpions
Aiden Barnes
Huh, interesting.
Sebastian Martin
what happened to zloty?
Jeremiah Smith
PLN is just a three letter code for Polish Zloty as defined by ISO 4217. I think it stands for "Polish New", since there was an old Zloty from commie times that was worth much less.
Nolan Jackson
TW2 never had any DRM other than Steam
Gabriel Wilson
They use that cutscene if you fail the QTE when fistfighting Loredo and I m still not convinced that this ever happened for pirated copies.
Isaiah Davis
Anti-piracy fags love to make up elaborate stories about how THOSE EBILPIRATES GOT PUNNDISHED. I don't really understand why, but it has happened so many times over the years. Occasionally it's true, but more often it's bullshit. And the few cases when developers put these little tricks into the game, the original crack completely removes it. The only instance I can think of off the top of my head that legitimately did punish pirates was one of the Serious Sam games.
Carter Myers
The best I can imagine are games that acknowledge you as a pirate but otherwise leave the experience untouched. (unless eyepatches really bother you that much) It's what I'd do if I was a dev.
>"You can't rule the land Antagonist! Your claim to rule is about as legitimate as [he points to the player] this guy's copy of this game!"
Are there any other games besides Alan Wake that do something like this?
Ryan Ward
Some anons posted when Dragon Commander first came out that the pirated copy had a hidden flag that would blue-ball you in the romance portion of the game, but I played the pirated copy and never saw that, so it was probably just more memesters.
Logan Brooks
Supposedly Crysis 3 had one, the last boss was unkillable, but the game was so bugged anyway most people just chalked it as that plus people complained that it triggered on payed version too. So I never knew if it was a case of "it's… it's totally not a bug, it's a feature! That disappeared in the next patch! Because you're just whining babies!"
Leo Cook
Devs love to pull that card. It's why I can't take the anti-piracy bragging seriously.
When Far Cry 4 came out, it had a lot of bugs in the PC port. Far Cry developers went on Twitter and said everyone experiencing those bugs were pirates–even though the pirated copy had already fixed those issues, so the people experiencing them were legitimate customers.
Gavin Powell
Bullshit on both counts. Source : I have release versions of both games burned to DVDs with me right now.
Brandon White
It makes me wonder why devs dont come up with better excuses for bugged games besides calling them anti piracy measures.
Aiden Clark
Command and conquer games nuke absolutely every single unit and building you have after like 30 seconds after starting a mission/match. Only seen it happen for Red Alert 2 and Generals, but it does happen.
Jace Young
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Daniel Rodriguez
Fuck me that's horrible.
Jaxon Gomez
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Christopher Bennett
GTA IV had a similar measure, only Niko would be permanently drunk.
Zachary Baker
I remembered that wrong. You had the drunk camera but the character would walk normally.
Gabriel Baker
I remember copy protection in SQ games. Without internet it was impossible to complete game because you need a guide for game. I spend HOURS trying to beat game without knowing that it was impossible without book/info.
Nolan Powell
I pirated it day one and no such thing happened
Ayden Butler
Seems to me the problem would be solved if they just put in some direct statement of the player being caught pirating. Can't kill the boss for no apparent reason? Who knows if it's a glitch or what. Can't kill the boss and text pops up saying "no winning for you, pirate" and it's absolutely clear what's going on.
The suggestions in definitely have the right idea in that regard, every one of them points out that you've been caught pirating. Were I a dev, whether the punishment were mild or severe, I'd make it absolutely clear that the game knows the player pirated when it does whatever it does about it.
With that said, my preferred response would just be to occasionally ask the player to buy the game legit if they're enjoying it during load screens or something, with the reminders occasionally changing to reflect increased progress/play time.
James Hernandez
nah it's true. I replayed the final boss fight like 4 times and did enough damage kill every enemy in the game twice and it still didn't die.
I couldn't be bothered fixing it. The ending sucked anyway. I watched it on youtube
