In July 2008, Ubisoft released the 1.02 version update patch. In addition to adding new weapons and maps, the update also secretly installed a disc check anti-piracy countermeasure. This would check whether or not a legally purchased disc copy of the game was inserted in the PC's disc drive and prevent the game from loading if it detected no disc. While this was not an issue for players who purchased a physical copy, the anti-piracy update inadvertently also carried over to the digital copies sold through IGN's Direct2Drive service, locking them out of the game. These problems were rectified with update version 1.03, where it was discovered that Ubisoft's patch solving the problem was a No-CD crack taken from Reloaded, a pirated games group, and re-released as an official patch.
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Reminds me of how Nintendo has pirated ROMs of their own games on their online service right now :tito-laugh:
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It's only $20/year for games from the eighties. $50 gets you ones from the late 90s
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I can't believe how hard Nintendo continues to fumble the ball with their online content. If we're going to live in a world where these companies get to own their IPs forever, then every game that Nintendo owns the IP for should be on their online service, and they should have high-quality emulators for every one of their past consoles to play them on.
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Is it Earthbound? I hope so. Earthbound has a check for piracy that will make the game 10x harder and then delete your save at the final boss. It's malicious and wonderful
I think several games are using the pirated ROMs
The silly part is that somehow Nintendo retains copyright over 30 year old games, even though they had 0 expectations of these games yielding profit 30 years in the future, and thus why they didn't even bother archiving them. It's insane that the only way you can tell you have the most accurate copy of an old Nintendo game, is to check the hash of your ROM against the No-Intro hashset, clearly Nintendo has no authority over the file integrity of their own games, a literal ROM dump group that used to host a tiny pirated rom site in the 2000s is the final voice over which copy is legit, and somehow Nintendo still gets to profit.