Garry's Mod Catches Pirates the Fun Way

UgLyPuNk writes "A few hours ago, Garry Newman – the creator of Garry's Mod – asked, quite innocently, whether anyone was unable to shade polygon normals. He received a few comments, mostly jokes, but a quick look at Google suggests that there are indeed a few people who are experiencing problems with their game. You can hear Newman's chuckling from here — not the normal response to a wide-spread bug report, but this is no normal bug. It seems that the developer has deliberately enabled an error in GMod, which will only affect people who have pirated the game."

Comments

Ultima III

[upside]

Ultima III wouldn't let you interact with NPCs - they'd say "Honesty is a virtue, I will not help you" or something to the effect.

Personal experience. As a teenager I bought Ultima III (I think) for the Amiga for $many_weeks_allowance. The original floppy was corrupt, and being an expat in a remote country meant I couldn't get it replaced. A buddy mailed me a pirated copy to replace it. A "fun way" to catch pirates for sure, but there I was with a box, shiny cloth map and a game that would tell me I'm dishonest. Never got to play it. Guess whether this experience motivated me to (a) buy more games or (b) pirate games instead.

</childhood_trauma>

I understand the rationale behind copy protection and DRM, but they can make life hard for legitimate users and end up counterproductive.