Anyone who downloaded the pirated copy of this game will be attacked by a pack of super deathclaws 20 strong.

These deathclaws have a good damage resistance, faster movements and do a lot more dmage than normal deathclaws.

Let's say that they will attack you when you emerge from the vault (after the cutscene.)

Perfect!

I wish it would be that easy...lol

Cute, but these things usually get removed very quickly by the people who upload the pirated stuff. Would probably last longer doing something subtle like adding anachronistic music to the radios or breaking specific quests or something.

I prefer the term 'stealing' to 'pirating'.

The notion of a jolly sailer rogue is too friendly for what is actually happening.

I want Bethesda to have my money! That way I might get to play Fallout 5 in the distant future

But pirates were generally terrible people so maybe it would make more sense to reevaluate your perception of pirates instead or redefining them as thieves. Since thieves are probably less [censored] than most pirates.

It's just a matter of scale, ripping off games perfectly allocates the perpetrator under the classification 'terrible people'.

Except it's not stealing, it's unlicensed use. I don't think anyone has ever gone to jail for that, though distributors have gotten quite large fines.

On topic, these sort of things have been used in the past. Problems is, with software, you have bugs, and thus they plague legitimate users too.

Better way is to not punish pirates, but reward the legitimate buyers. Or just ignore the pirates completely, most of them wouldn't have bought the game even if a crack was not available, so any DRM is just money wasted on people who are not, and never would have been customers.

It this really something publishers need help with, figuring out creative ways to punish pirates?

I though bringing suits, forcing websites to close, and getting people in criminal trials would be sufficient.

If not, I'm always a fan of dipping someone by their personal's in acid was theraqeutic and instructive, as there

are hardly any repeat offenders.

Sorry, I simply don't buy that delusion.

Whatever you call it, unlicensed use, or piracy, or whatever, it's using something for free that belongs to someone else.

To me, that sounds like (pick your term) stealing; theft, thievery and so on.

That doesn't mean that badly implemented DRM is a good idea and there isn't a good case for otherwise rewarding players who buy the game.

But ripping games off is not ok, and treating that as a minor faux pas is not ok.

You speak in the past tense as if it's already happened.

I prefer the term pirate, or the more politically correct term of 'undocumented duplicator'. Kidding aside, maybe it's because I'm older than the information age but I still associate the words 'stealing' and 'theft' with the taking of physical property (resulting in the owner not having it anymore), so pirating and pirate works for me until somebody coins a better word.

I say we keep it simple; you go through all the opening, get to the vault entrance, the blast hits, and you're dead.

Game over.

I'd say... release the adoring fan v.2015 upon them

I think it would be funnier if when the game detected it was pirated, it:

1) Renamed every enemy and NPC in the game to "Pirate".

2) Removed all bottlecaps. From everywhere. You'd never find or get any.

I think pirates would get the message.

This is true, especially with the CK involved.

Nah, what they should do is what another gaming company did- a series of less-to-more serious gamebreaking issues hardcoded into the engine, each of which is implemented after the prior one is solved by pirates.

IIRC, in the example I'm thinking of, it took them at least six months before they got through all the anti-piracy stuff.

People pirate porm all the time and no one cares.. All those free porm sites are just people making money off of porm that isn't theirs to make money off of. I'm just saying that until law makers get their act together and make some solid copyright laws, people are going to be downloading free stuff. And yeah, every time you go to a free porm site, you are pirating porm. So if solid copyright laws ever do pass.. no more free porm. (which is probably the only reason we don't have solid copyright laws. Everybody likes free porm!)

Also, if you sic deathclaws on everyone who pirates the game, you're going to need more than a pack. Otherwise they'll just be too full to get them all. You'll have a pack of napping satiated deathclaws.

This is a better solution in my opinion. Not the best though.

Something subtle but identifiable.

Like an invincible named molerat.

So when some guy comes around the forums asking why he can't kill Bartholemew an invincible radroach he can immediately be banned. Have it pick a random name and random creature type so no one can catch on.

Just like on the nexus forums. If you say something to the effect of "I'm running the non steam version of skyrim" you are immediately banned since there is no legal non steam version.

This is what I was thinking in general.

How about constant radiation that can't be resisted with RadX? And it slowly increases as you play the game.

Perhaps for pirated versions the protagonist could be voiced by Gilbert Gottfried and Fran Drescher.

I'm not saying it's OK, but in the eyes of the law they are different things. You go to jail for theft, but not for software piracy.


Yeah, everything gets pirated. And unless you shut down the internet, it cannot be stopped
Hell, i mute my TV during commercial breaks, so in a sense i'm pirating TV


Talking about wasting money on non-customers...

I recall reading an article once where, in order to fight piracy, gamers faced hilarious yet annoying and possible game-breaking things throughout their playthroughs. In the end, I believe the net revenue is still good enough to justify no such things. I also think that the amount of pirated games is by far lower than one would think.

However cheap keys from legal version might be a different thing, e.g. buying a russian key for 10% of the EU price.

You can justify everything with words "it's just business".

European Union countries share one market and price - the price is the same in Estonia with average salary of 832,57 euros and a Germany with 2155,2 euros.

If they want to reduce piracy, make the game's pricing depend on a average salary in a county, of-course more % of gamers will be pirates in Estonia then in Germany.

At-least make it so for digital games, because now for whatever reason a digitally distributed game cost the same as the physical game.

In Russia for example the majority of PC games cost about half of European price and it helped to reduce piracy, game publishers are making more money with cheaper games.

The same thing happened with WoW in China, the subscription fee their is less then Europe's/US's and Blizzard still made a ton of money.

I might pirate the game just for that feature!

I would never even jest about pirating a game to gain access to hyperbolic features that would never actually make it into a game.

There have been some funny ones over the years...

They could have a giant unkillable pink rad-scorpion that constantly chases the player in homage to Serious Sam 3. Or, your bullets turn into chickens when they exit your gun, as was done in Crysis Warhead.