Intentional game glitch thwarts pirates

Forget fancy DRM and oppressive decryption keys; a game developer has devised a sneakier way of punishing pirates of its computer games.

Rocksteady, the team behind Batman: Arkham Asylum for PC, purposely included a bug that prevents the Dark Knight from using his glider, and it only affects people who pirated the game. The glitch was revealed when a player posted about the bug to the official Eidos forums.

“When I hold, like it’s said to jump from one platform to another, Batman tries to open his wings again and again instead of gliding,” poster Cheshirec_the_cat wrote, according to AfterDawn. “So he fels [sic] down in a poisoning gas. If somebody could tel [sic] me, what should I do there.”

That’s when forum administrator Keir pounced. “The problem you have encountered is a hook in the copy protection, to catch out people who try and download cracked versions of the game for free,” Keir wrote.

“It’s not a bug in the game’s code,” the admin continued, “it’s a bug in your moral code.”

Like all anti-piracy measures, it’s probably just a matter of time before this one gets worked around, but it can’t be easy if the solution requires messing with the game code itself.

I’m not a big fan of copy protection when it places the brunt of the punishment on the consumer, but that’s not the case here. You’ve got to laugh at the frustration pirates must feel after downloading and cracking yields a fundamentally broken game.