Silent Hunter 4-ironic twist on the whiners

[ForwardObserver]

I posted this elsewhere, but thought this forum might get a kick out of the story.

The 4th installment in the Silent Hunter submarine sim franchise was released on Tuesday or Wednesday this past week,

This version moves the action back to the WW II US submarine fleet in the Pacific like the first game in the series. The middle two games were both about the German UBoat war--mostly in the North Atlantic.

Of course like any new game, the various fan forums are filled to no end with the usual mix of fanboys, whiners, and trolls.

A patch was issued within two days of release, and looking at the huge number of fixes and additions it contains, it is pretty obvious that tons of intended content were simply left out, or not made functional, to meet the release date.

Unfortunately, this seems to be the norm now for many game companies, especially for game sequels. I have no doubt that the game will become very playable once they are through patching and the mod community has a chance to fix the rest just as they did for the previous SH games.

Anyway, my post is really about an absolutely hysterical and ironic fact that has also just been revealed by the developers in the last two days.

One of the complaints that many of the whiners have been posting about is that while in game some of the crew members turn to 2D figures, or their eyes pop out of their heads. They also start shouting strings of meaningless numbers.

It turns that this is part of the copy protection system and is actually intended. In other words these weird anomalies only happen if one is running a pirated copy of the game.

I find this to be hilarious, and a fitting comeuppance for those miscreants who have the nerve to complain when their stolen property doesn't work.

Cheers

P.S. There is also at least one review at an on-line game site that mentions this problem. How embarrassing for a reviewer to be caught using a pirated version of the game for his review.

[QuixotesGhost]

Civilization 4 had something similar. If you ran a pirated copy, the game would end automatically after 10 turns. You'd have people come on and complain about it every so often in Civ Forums.

[Busby]

The sad thing is on the SubSim Forum and Ubi Forum no one got banned... Well, if anyone complained about it I'll just laugh.

[Coey]

It's a pretty good way of dealing with pirated games, but, it may screw people over who have legally bought the game and SecuROM doesn't like something on their comp.

[ForwardObserver]

I read somewhere in one of the posts that there has been at least one case of the descibed effects happening to someone with a legal copy, so it is not perfect of course.

I understand that these effects will also kick in, if one is using a no disk (you know what) alternative with the legal game.

[Esa]

That sounds better than having starforce/securom murder your drive.

But I wonder how that SH4 "protection" works, did the developers release a torrent with this "feature"? Or can it happen on legit copies on which the players tried to add their own no-dvd crack/mini-image?

[Paladin]

Yeah, I was about to say, it's not like it's unheard of for copy protection schemes to bite legitimate users for one reason or another.

Personally if I can't make an ISO of a game and play it with Daemon Tools I'm probably going to return it. I can't be bothered swapping cds and dvds in and out of my machine all day.

[Nurizeko]

I'm with Pally (human or blood-elf?...) while copy protection is overall I would assume, full of good intentions, it always stands a chance of biting the hands that feed them, AKA the paying customer.


Personally, I mostly play games that I don't need to put the disk in every time.

[n0z3k1ll3r]

CnC Generals had one where your base exploded 5 minutes into the mission if you had a pirated copy.

[Afoxi]

nuri - DORF PALLY!

Anyone have screenshots or vids of this happening? (SH4)

[Deckard]

ForwardObserver,



I notice you haven’t bothered to quote any of your sources....



The copy protection issue affect legitimate users as well as illegal copies, just less by comparison.



Checking the Subsim.com or Ubi.com forums will confirm that. Also some of the reported issues with the crew members are actually down to other texture and model glitches. I get an issue where pilots who have bailed out of their planes have their parachutes constantly deploying and un-deploying their chutes. This continues once they are in the water. The whole thing is laughable and very poor compared to Silent Hunter 3.



As for the rest, in SH4's case people are pissed off and with good reason. I have just sent my copy back to my retailer as "not fit for purpose" after game stopping bugs, glitches and errors. The state of SH4 is shameful and another black mark on Ubisoft's score card after the debacle with Splinter Cell Double Agent.



I for one am not willing to wait for patches to make game playable and the only way to send the message to the publishers and developers of to hit them in the pocket with your consumer rights. I can live with balance issues ala DOW etc but the kind of bugs in both SH4 and SC4DA are un-acceptable. Retailers and try hide behind the "if you open this PC game you can't return it" card, which is a damn cheek. You never know if a game is a pile of crap until you have tried to play it since most reviews on both the net and magazines skip past bugs or omit them entirely from the review. I refer to PC Zones SC4DA review as an example.



The problem is, if you report you disgust on the forums, you are instantly hounded by fan boys who spew crap about your system not being able to handle it etc.



The fact there was no demo of SH4 before release should have spoke volumes.

[No Surrender]

If I remember correctly, Operation Flashpoint had something similar where your shots would start veering all over the place if the copy protection thought you were running a fake version.

I can certainly see how this kind of copy protection would harm legitimate users. For example, it is completely legal to make a back up of your own game but this copy protection basically deprives people of their legal rights by forcing them to play a buggy(er) version of the game if they opt to do so.

[n0z3k1ll3r]

If I remember correctly, Operation Flashpoint had something similar where your shots would start veering all over the place if the copy protection thought you were running a fake version. IIRC the game just sort of deteriorated in general. I heard of one guy whos gun ended up looking like the Windows Start Menu.

[WhiteKnight]

Well what is the point of that CP. It is successfully got cracked by the crackers. What is the point of CP. Only wish that companies like ubisoft and companies who decide for CP should learn from Relic and Stardock. They release good games and plus many people buy the games or software which does not have cp. Sadly CP only causes problems to legal users.

[roflmao]

How can a game detect when it is pirated or not? As far as I am concerned, most piraters first buy the game, then mass distribute it. I mean, they buy a legit copy, and then muck around with it.

Arent there also like image emulators and stuff like that?

[WhiteKnight]

I dont have much knowledge about how it detect. How they find the game is pirated is mostly in triggers. When the game search for the particular trigger if it does not find it. The game starts doing weired things for example SHunter 4.

They are image emulator and mini image.


I think companies spent a lot of money on cp. Which is not at all worth the money.

[Locutus]

/me huggles Relic/THQ for ditching copy-protection, making their games easier to use.
Its a fact that most (read: everyone I've heard of) copy-protection systems CANNOT defeat a dedicated pirate / cracker. They'll find a way around it eventually.

I think there are two good ways that I've seen: make such darn good games that people are willing to actually pay $50 for it. Or do like Stardock did with GalCiv 2 and have continual, incremental gameplay expansions contingent upon you owning a legitimate copy.

Kudos to the devs for one-upping the warez monkeys on this game. Heh, if Relic did that I would bet that warez bans here would double or more. (Hint)

[LynX]

@ OP: You are aware, of course, that legitimate customers can and have experienced copy-protection problems which supposedly "only affect pirated copies", yes?

[Question]

The CNC/Red alert series were kinda famous for having the "oops you pirated the game YOUR BASE BLEW UP LOL" CP.

IMHO all companies should just ditch copy protection. Its obviously not working.

[Ammon Ra]

Option 3: do something similar to Steam where your key and everything else is checked via internet. No need for cd's/dvds, no copy protection (the data can be backed up at free will).

[The Collector]

Next thing you know, you'll have to call a operator center to have your games activated over the internet. :(

[Squibby]

Sadly yes, but where theres a will theres a way, I suppose... won't be long before the get around it somehow, by that time though games would probably end up costing $200nz or more to pay for all the extreneous copy protection measures... somehow I think that might ironically encourage piracy.