The Sims 4 developers joked about "pirates"

Maxis employees creatively made fun of players who have an unlicensed copy of Sims 4 installed. In this game there is a special effect of pixel image blurring when a character goes to the bathroom or toilet. So, in the “pirated” copy, the pixelation effect grows over the entire game area .

Perplexed Sims 4 users complained about the “bug” at the official forum, but did not receive advice.

For game developers, this is another example of how to creatively bypass boring DRM schemes. Previously, similar techniques were used in other games, here are some examples :
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• "Drunk" camera in GTA IV
• Slowdown before big jumps in Mirror's Edge
• Batman's Nonskid Cloak of Batman: Arkham Asylum
• Pirate eye patch of the protagonist in an unlicensed copy of Alan Wake
• Immortal, super - fast anti - piracy scorpion in Serious Sam 3
• Freezing the game and damage to the sav-file just before the final scene in EarthBound (but this is no longer fun and not at all creative)

However, all these methods are inferior in terms of treachery to the reception in the game Game Dev Tycoon , a game studio simulator. The developers specifically released the "cracked" version. In it, the player after the initial development of the business and the release of the game unexpectedly encountered a high level of piracy, which inevitably led the company to bankruptcy.



There was no limit to the indignation of the players: after all, to win in such conditions turned out to be absolutely impossible!