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Schadenfreudian Slips: Copy Protection Racket
When our lead programmer Otto’s Swiss adventure game Return To Zurich ( he also is responsible for Zurich, Beyond Zurich, and Zurich Zero) was translated into English, the publishers did not notice the changed word count, so it was all out of sync and getting past the copy protection was impossible. I do not think anyone complained, since they could not get through the game anyway (oh no, I did not know to dig up that stupid plant in the beginning, so I lose! Thank you very much stupid Otto. I hope you are eaten by a stupid grue). There was a dungeon-crawl type game in the late ‘80s that used a bizarre “Scratch & Sniff” card for copy protection, although I don’t recall exactly how it worked. I do remember there was some controversy over the “Elven Sweat” spot, as many players insisted that “elves do not sweat, they glow”. Perhaps this method prevented some piracy, but in the end, most players’ mothers just threw the whole stinky game box away.
Another protection method is the dongle - a small piece of hardware that attaches to your computer. Some programs still use them. The 3D modeling program we use comes with a hardware dongle, and Lothar is constantly losing it. I have found his dongle in so many strange places - he simply cannot seem to keep his hands on it. Artists! They are always a few figs short of a kletzenbrot. But in modern times, game companies generally do not deal with piracy by using dongles or manual lookups or coming to your house to scratch the data off your drive with a pointy stick. Nowadays games barely have CD jewel cases, boxes, or more than six hours of play, much less a manual! Today everyone uses software-based copy protection systems. So I made an appointment with the Russian company NovaHammer, one of the biggest names in the business, to find out what this DRM nonsense was all about. |
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