Maxis Software is combatting piracy in its own way with The Sims 4.
Maxis is well aware that The Sims in a popular pick among hungry pirates, just as they are aware that copies of their games spring up on torrenting sites such as The Pirate Bay and Kickass Torrents often within hours of release. To prevent the illegal download of their latest addition to the Sims family, Maxis has now implemented a bit of digital wizardry.
Amusingly, players who illegally download The Sims 4 won’t be locked out of the game like so many other developers try desperately to do. Instead, pirates will be met with a bunch of pixels - similar to the ones that protect your Sims’ modesty when using the bathroom or changing - that blur the entire screen, to the point where the game is unplayable.
It starts off okay, letting pirates think they got away clean - but as soon as your Sim decides to take a shower or change its clothes the usual pixelated area will appear and then expand across the whole screen until the entire game is permanently blurred. This “bug” seems to be working well for Maxis as their Sims 4 Forums are being flooded with questions about how to resolve the issue - of course all this does is point out the fact that you pirated the game.
This creative measure to prevent piracy reminds us fondly of Remedy’s anti-piracy solution in Alan Wake in which players who illegaly downloaded the game were met with Mr Wake wearing an eye-patch with a skull and cross bones motif on it throughout the entire game (as well as a gentle reminder to please buy the game during loading screens.)
Oliver Zimmerman
Latest posts by Oliver Zimmerman (see all)
- Intel allocating $300 Million specifically for workplace diversity - 9 January 2025
- Defining Moments - Doom 3 - 8 January 2025
- PlayStation 4 has officially sold 18.5m worldwide - 7 January 2025
