Video games can cause stress or a significant sum of money to get one. Although most people stick to legitimate means of acquiring a video game or beating one, some do not (or did not, if they converted from the dark side).
Video game pirates, hackers, and cheaters are one of (if not the most) nightmarish problems video game developers have to face post-development.
Although an argument could be made that video game piracy is helping the video game industry in a way by acting as demos, video game hackers and cheaters are a different story as they ruin the fun for everyone, especially in a multiplayer game.
Video game developers, however, are just as smart as these pirates, hackers, and cheaters. Here are some ways developers fought back against these people in style.
Preventing Game Progress - Mirror's Edge
Mirror's Edge is a parkour-based game where the main protagonist and player character, Faith Connors, is a "Runner" that transports items for revolutionary groups hiding from a totalitarian government, per the Mirror's Edge Fandom.
At the end of the game's opening sequence or tutorial section, Faith will have to perform a long jump to end this part of the game.
If you bought the game legitimately, Faith successfully performs the jump, and the game progresses without incident. If you pirated the game, Faith would slow down to a full stop when reaching the same point, preventing you from progressing in the game.
A Dunce Hat - Grand Theft Auto V (GTA 5) Online
Grand Theft Auto V is one of the most popular GTA games of all time because of the level of production quality Rockstar Games put into it. It was even re-released on the PlayStation 5 as a separate game rather than an upgraded one of its PlayStation 4 games, per the PlayStation Blog.
However, its online multiplayer experience may prove to be unsavory due to the many hackers and cheaters the game has.
To identify the wheat from the chaff, Rockstar Games forces players who were identified to be hacking and cheating to wear a dunce cap and the cars they hacked into multiplayer from singleplayer exploded the moment they sat in it, per The Gamer.
Hackers can also be made to join a server where they can meet their fellow hackers as well.
Game Display Pixelation - The Sims 4
Maxis' The Sims series is one of the most popular and generation-defining games of all time, with the fourth entry in the series still holding up to current gaming standards despite the game's release in 2014.
However, the game's many expansion and content packs might make the game too expensive for newcomers to the franchise, which results in the game being pirated.
To deter pirates from downloading copies of the game online for free, EA, The Sims' publisher, added a subtle way of identifying them. Should a pirate play The Sims 4, their entire display except the game's UI will slowly become pixelated.
The pixelation starts when a sim goes for a bath or uses the toilet, which is normally blurred out as self-censorship. But the pixels don't go away. Instead, they will remain on the screen and then spread until the game's display is pixelated, preventing the pirate from properly seeing the game.
What's worse for the pirates is that they expose themselves on EA's support page, where they admitted to the company that they pirated the game by inquiring how to fix the pixel glitch, as WatchMojo demonstrates in their video.
Cloaking - Call of Duty Vanguard and Call of Duty Warzone
In more recent games, Activision's #TeamRICOCHET added a new anti-cheat software to Call of Duty Vanguard and Call of Duty Warzone called cloaking.
The software comes into effect at the beginning of a multiplayer match, when hackers and cheaters wouldn't be able to see players who are playing legitimately, but the latter can see them, giving genuine players a leg up over the hackers and cheaters.
Cheaters and hackers will also be unable to see and hear bullets and sounds from legitimate players. As such, these players can fire on and neutralize these people without fear of retaliation.
Cheaters affected by #TeamRICOCHET's cloaking are easily spotted through their confused spinning as they try to figure out who's shooting at them and from where. You can also hear them shouting, "Who's shooting at me?!" or typing something similar in the in-game chat.
Increased Difficulty and Deleting Your Save at the End - EarthBound
Last but certainly not least is EarthBound's way of dealing with pirates. According to IGN, if a player pirated EarthBound, the game's programming checks if the cartridge is real. If it sin't, the game will make enemies much more frequent than it should be, making the game a chore to play.
If the pirate decides to press on as is and reach the final boss, it will freeze in the final few moments before the climax and deletes the pirate's save file.
For a game released in 1994, this anti-piracy measure is brutally painful for pirates.
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