You come out of the Vault with the following effects:

#1- Your face will be permanently reconfigured so it looks god-awful. Oh, and there'll be glitching so your character's body will spaz randomly.

#2- You will be forced to wear a simple white T-shirt with a frowny face and beige shorts and white sneakers.

#3- No stimpacks or any meds to help you.

#4- Enemies will kill you in three hits. From radroaches all the way to Deathclaws.

#5- Settlements will be hostile to you.

#6- Radiation kills you immediately.

#7- Your HP will be 10/10, your carry weight will be fixed to 50/100.

#8- Voice acting will be replaced with a high-pitched demonic-like wail.

You gain a irremovable pirate hat, and all the dialogue NPCs will have beyond the intro of the game is to swear at you constantly and exit dialogue, making progress impossible.

what they should do is when the person hits new game a block of text should appear (star wars style) spoiling the main quest story then the game shuts down.

I gots it.

Day one patch. Release a game that's purposefully broken, with the day one patch fixing it. The patch will not work if the game isn't connected to STEAM, online or offline, maybe using some programming from STEAM that won't likely change. That should (theoretically) prevent all but the most dedicated of pirates from playing it, while not bothering the legal customers.

Ah, shucks, I thought you would suggest to walk 'em off the plank.

Already set up like that. PC users don't get the full version of the game until they activate the game through Steam and Nov 10 and requires to go through Steam for patches. Whether the activated game can be pirated and each successive patched version remains to be seen.

Bethesda could always lock Donald Trump in a dungeon and threaten to release him if anyone pirates the game.

Well played, sir.

Honestly there's no foolproof way to deter pirates. If something can be downloaded for free odds are it will be.

Ah, just format their drive and be done with it.

Its impossible to stop pirates... in fact the only way to stop pirating.. would be to shut down the internet completely (although then they could just steal the game from stores instead or whatever but hey its not pirating and stealing is a crime)

The only song on the radio should be "Johnny Guitar", and Three Daaawg repeating the exact same line after the song finishes.

That'll teach 'em.

For pirated copies, all the dialogue in the game will be in the present tense.

Because ever since pirates begins

pirates only speaks in the present tense does pirates...

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKv5ulewTO4)

Jail time seems a good option to me.

I'm shocked how people have a black/white view on this matter or any matter at all. There are more factors to it, then just calling it "stealing" or "sharing". Like it or not, pirating opens your game to a big crowd, that never would have been able to play it otherwise. A lot of my friends got to play game and later support those devs through initial piracy.

I'm in no way advicating for piracy, I'm just stating that using resources on bulletproofing your game, might not be the best idea. CD Project Red handled it great. They recognize piracy and understand what it is. They made their game DRM-free and still had a huge succes - oh, and great publicity. "Fighting" piracy, might not be the best thing to do as a company. Recognize it and understand that a certain %tage always will download it for free.

- just my 2 cents.

Cough Summer has been more than Nice, methinks everyone would be better served keeping it Light.

There for

So you need ole 2-Caps to come up with something as a punishment for these scoundrels..

Let it be written.... The sentence is a month serving as the wastelands head proctology doctor, with a client base of only the most unclean of raiders, molerats and deathclaws, no gloves issued. In this way the public is served and even years later every time they bring there hand anywhere near the face they will realize what a (self censor) thing they have done, mostly reminded of such by the lingering stench that just will not wash off.

2-Caps has spoken

Didn't another game do something along these lines where you kept getting attacked by something if you had a dodgy copy?

I'd just make ambient radiation slowly increase and disable the console so they can't use console commands to overcome it.

I thought the Sims 4's was quite amusing, the mosaic censor blur would slowly expand to fill the whole screen

Actually, I think it was Game Developer Tycoon that had something where your games keep getting pirated and you lost all your money which made the game unplayable after a while.

I think the OP intended this to be a light and funny conversation.

I think your pipboy should constantly play the "Song That Never Ends" from Lambchop.

Just put a hoard of naked male characters following the pirate's character around constantly and trying to have six with them.

GTA IV's shaky cam, Arkham Asylum's no glide ability, and Earthbound's crashing, then deleting all the save files are good ways to implement anti-piracy features to the game.

I think you and the other person are thinking of losing trademark rights (might not be the right term) which is a totally different thing.

That's like those stories you hear where Disney finds out say a charity in some small town uses Mickey Mouse for some promotion and although it really doesn't hurt Disney financially they still sue them. Disney still has to go after them to be seen as protecting their rights or they could lose those rights and then it's Mickey Mouse images for everyone!

This is completely different from DRM, otherwise all those DRM free games would be at risk, including big ones like The Witcher. I'm not an expert on this stuff but I am pretty sure you're wrong .

I hate the thought that anyone would pirate a game from Bethesda. I feel like I'm ripping them off when I pay $60 for their work. I'd pay over $100 without even thinking twice about it. Come to think of it, I already have.

Indeed, the only time I ever felt like I paid enough for a Bethesda game Was Fallout 3 at $10. The rest have given me huge amounts of playtime and fun for the prices I paid.