This is a bit of a touchy subject, but something that's been bothering me for awhile.

Over the course of supporting my mods, I have gotten some rather strange bug reports occasionally. They are usually one-off occurrences that manifest themselves once out of every thousand or so people that download my mods, and all things being equal, shouldn't happen. Things like not being able to read scripts out of .BSA files, or global variables just resetting for no reason, while no one else's game exhibits this behavior. Some are reluctant to use Steam Workshop if suggested, but there are plenty of legitimate reasons why someone wouldn't want to use Steam Workshop. I personally use it as little as possible, and I own three legitimate copies!

My question is, is there any one type of bug or trait that can positively identify (or reasonably point towards) a pirated version of Skyrim? I have zero desire to support these users, and would rather not spend a lot of my own time trying to debug problems that could be caused by someone's cracked executable.

I have always erred on the side of giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, and I don't for a second want to start deflecting blame for bugs I legitimately created, but it would be nice to know if there's anything I should know as an author about the kinds of problems that only crop up when someone is using a non-standard version of Skyrim.

Thanks for any insight.

This is sad, but the difference between a legit copy and a pirated one is not the fails of the pirated version preciselly. There can be bugs caused by the addition of steam not by it's absence.

Besides, trying to not help those that you are sure have pirated the game, you will always fail to support legit users. Better help 100 pirates than not helping an inocent

I agree with the spirit of this, and in general this is how I feel. However I have been down hours-long rabbit holes with some users trying to diagnose problems before, just to have them later tell me (rather surprisingly) that the copy of Skyrim that they're playing with is pirated or cracked. If I had known that at the start of the conversation, I wouldn't have even bothered, because all bets are off at that point. And asking "did you pirate your copy of the game?" as a troubleshooting conversation starter usually doesn't go over very well because it sounds like an accusation, or they just simply lie about it.

This has less to do with a desire to play Bethesda police and more to do with minimizing unknowns. I already have plenty to deal with in terms of mod compatibility concerns, everyone's mod loadout of Skyrim is different. The one thing I need to be able to rely on when diagnosing a problem is that the executable itself is the same as everybody else's.

The problem here is that there are users that refuse to update (I used to be one of them untill the CK release, now not updating is not an option), so you will find different versions anyway. The same can be applied to the use of SKSE, Script dragon or custom launchers.

Surelly eventually the problems you have solved to those users with pirated copies will be shown in users with legit copies. You didn't lost time in this. Now you know how to solve the problem.

I never have the experience of a user telling me the copy was using is a pirated one (not even a little hint about it -or at least I didn't catch the hint -). I envy you for the confidence the users of your mods have with you. It's another way to know when you are doing a great work supporting your mod .

I think your point is a great one Chesko ... if a certain problem was linkable to a pirated version, at least you'd have a clue as to the cause. Yeah, I too have had some really crazy bugs that just don't make sense. It never even occured to me that it could be a pirated version. My guess though, is that there would not be a sure-fire way to know from the mod. Otherwise, they'd probably have put that check in the game already and then someone would have found a hack for that too.

So far, I've just assumed it was buggy Skyrim... maybe there is more to the picture

The point about users that have auto-update turned off is a good one, I didn't think about that.

Ah well. I was just curious if there was some clear way of determining this, but I see that there isn't. No big deal.

if you are using a lot of scripts, it would be in your interest to force dependency on Update.esm, even if nothing in your mod touches any of the edited records from update. i'm also in a similar situation where users report strange one-off behaviors that end up being caused by either the user refusing to update to the latest patch or using a pirated non-steam version.

some scripts and quests do not function properly unless the game is patched to at least 1.5. i make it a point that the mod requires the latest update (and now am forcing update.esm as a requisite). this also weeds out most of the pirate users (not all, but a lot of them). if a user doesnt have update.esm installed, the game will CTD before the main menu.

I seriously doubt pirated copies are updated in a lesser way than legal copies. After all the pirates has the same motivations as us modders, notoriety, friendship, curiosity, money, desire to be helpfull... The same way you can found a mod about anything, I see no reason for each update not being pirated as fast as possible.

maybe not, but in my experience, usually the only ones who are having problems are the ones who do not update (pirate or not).

if a pirated copy is up to date and the mod works fine with the updates installed, i'm not going to go out of my way to be a pirate police about it. i (and i think the OP is also on this page) am only concerned with not wasting my time trying to help pirate users who cant get the mod working because they refuse to update.

What I mean is that is unfair to link not updating with piracy. Until 1.4 release, the most stable version was 1.1 (indeed maybe 1.1 is more stable than 1.4). Surelly there is a lot of users using yet 1.1 or refusing to update from 1.4, knowing the lot of problems previous updates give them.

I can't think of a way to tell which wouldn't return false positives.

Also, not all who are running the ...other EXE are pirates, I'd wager. Some probably just don't want Steam on their Systems.

You might have better luck looking for answers in the other direction - find a source for pirated copies, and ask around there if there's any issues specifically associated with them.

Id say don't worry about the one off instance of issues. One person isnt worth wasting your time over. If the issue keeps popping up, then you should look into it.

The simple solution here is to ask them what game version they're running. Don't as like so:

"Are you running 1.5?" - because they'll just lie, pirate or not.

Ask them:

"What game version is shown in the lower left corner of your game menu?" - this way they have no choice but to tell you, unless you're dealing with someone particularly savvy who knows what specific numbers you're looking for.

95% of the time you'll catch the ones who are either not updated or not updated far enough. If your mod needs 1.5.26, and they tell you they have 1.4, simply tell them they have to update and move on. No accusations, no hostility, just truth.

If someone tells you they have 1.1, tell them in no uncertain terms that NO mods are capable of working properly with that version of the game. The CK requires a minimum of 1.4 to be present before mods generated with it can be guaranteed to work. TESVSnip and SkyEdit are both unsuitable substitutes for older material. Snip because it has bugs reading compression data. SkyEdit because it has incomplete record definitions, some of which have changed over the course of the patches.