Well, The Sims 4 may not be what its fans have been waiting for (and some features that were included in The Sims 3 may not be present in this new part of the series), but this does not give gamers the right to pirate it, right? Still, we all know that some will join the dark side in order to give Maxis and EA the middle finger, however – and if you are one of them – you are in for a big surprise.
Similarly to Croteam’s Serious Sam 3, The Sims 4 features a hilarious anti-piracy countermeasure. As you may know, a pixel censor effect covers your Sims’ ass whenever you send them to the toilet or shower. Maxis decided to be clever and creative, and has enhanced this effect in the pirated copies of the game.
What this means is that this pixel effect will grow bigger and bigger, until the entire game gets pixelated. And… well… you won’t really be able to play it afterwards, unless of course you enjoy old retro low-res visuals.
Kudos to Maxis for coming up with such a trick. Oh, and a note to all devs: more of these anti-piracy countermeasures please instead of those ridiculous DRM systems.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Just….LOL
It’s a feature. It’s “Game Console mode”. Silky smooth 24FPS emulation.
I don’t play Sims nor do I like it, what really is hilarous is they’re able to program Anti Piracy Measures but can’t put pools in, Ironic isn’t it.
oh, they’ve already made pools.. they are just waiting to sell it as dlc 😉
This ^^
and tons of other features.
Atleast we all now know how EA plans to make their $1 Billion in DLC sales
It’ll take just a day or two before pirated copies are ready to go without any problem but it’s funny stuff , and a good way to promote your legal product (instead of draconian DRM) . Alan Wake’s anti piracy countermeasure was the best . Alan gets eye patch .
and theres already a fix for this, you just have to simply rename a file.. so.. LOL to you EA
There’s still no reason for you to pirate it. Be it EA or not, those developers who make the game have a family too. They work for a living. How about you make something and everyone steal it?
Agreed but what is it they making? The graphics look the same, yet instead of taking sims 3 and adding stuff it looks like they took it and remove stuff.
So what are they doing? Its not like sms doesnt sell amazingly well, but something tells me they are not gonna patch in those things, but charge for dlc.
he didn’t said he wants to steal it, did he ? no. and yes devs work their a*s off. by the way, it’s a sims games, i will sell tens of millions
Very true! Trust me – those people who condone piracy have never had any of their hard work distributed behind their backs. It takes a lot of work to do things the right way and release a game, just to have lots of people disrespect your adherence to the rules.
It’s like… if you’re standing in line and five people skip ahead of you. It’s the same exact feeling. It’s just wrong. On all levels.
I take solace in the fact that the games I purchase are much more enjoyable to me than that same game to a pirate. Pirates don’t love anything. You can only love something as much as you work for it.
http://southpark.cc.com/clips/103759/not-a-big-deal
ahhahahah amazing programming there
All this does is hurt those that pirate-to-try the game and will eventually buy it. Frustrating those that weren’t going to buy it anyway won’t do any good.
The last thing EA should be doing is going out of their way to piss people off.
Pirating to “try the game” is not a valid excuse. It has been used even by those who were never planning on paying for the game anyway. Besides, you can always return the game within the first 24 hrs of purchase if you don’t like it. This form of DRM is understandable and fair, and I applaud Maxis for going this route instead of always-online.
I said something very similar in one of my other comments here. But I don’t agree it’s a good strategy. Like I said, it will just piss people off. That’s not the prerogative of a consumer electronics company – they should focus on making games that people will love to pick up and play, not in the pit throwing mud.
Well, this is the way to do it unlike sim city but WTF HAPPENED?
Seriously maxis wtf? Your games are subpar incomplete and overal they suck.
So there are like 80+ things missing from sims 4 but hey you have time to put anti piracy bugs in it and not finishing the game?
Every sims game put less effort than the previous one, sims 3 was sims 2.5 and 4 looks like 2.7.
So to sumarize this…
DONT
Dont buy it, dont pirate it.
Wait a year or so when the game is actualy finished with the proper features and it will be cheap as dirt plus the pirated versions will be fixed as it always happen in the end.
If this was a finished game i would applaud this anti piracy move, but they are basicly protectiing their beta that sell for a full price?
No thanks!!
I’m still waiting for Sim City to get better. Still. Waiting.
seriously! people pirate this ? what a waste of bandwith.
PS: @john , i want to buy Dead Rising 3, do you do performance analyses for it ?
As soon as Capcom sends us a review code. Word has it that the PC port has performance issues.
thank you. then i’ll wait for your article
Dead Rising 3 is so all over the place for everyone at the moment. Doesn’t even launch for me past the loading screen. Laptop gamers are not going to be able to play it at all until a patch is made available!
Oh and most people are complaining about it crashing every 10 min or so… :/
lol, so another crappy port ?
Yeah, but the cool thing is. For those that this game does run, they’re not having problems with the frame rate or whatever.
But yeah, it isn’t working at all for most people, like go over to the steam DR3 forums to see how much of a shit storm this is.
I went through hell and back trying to run it last night, nope gotta wait for a patch. So yeah, only buy it I’d say after seeing if the pirated copy or something works for you, otherwise you’ll have to wait for a patch.
wow. then i guess i will skip it and save for some other games 😀
Yep there are some pretty cool games coming this fall, so save your cash for any of those. Get this like at Christmas sale maybe? Hopefully the issues will be ironed out by then. 🙂
This overpriced POS needs to be pirated as much as possible.
*looks at banner*
Funny how some of these thieving c*nts are going on the EA forums and begging for support with excuses like “I scratched the disc”. Hilarious… such typical filthy behavior.
I had actually bought a game on CD and registered the code, sister took the disk (where she left it on the floor and scratched it so it wouldn’t run anymore) and I just contacted Origin who checked my record and talked me through re-downloading it without the disk. They then gave me a 20% off code for my troubles…
EA are still thieving and I hate them, but I don’t ‘own’ a single pirated game. Tempting, but I haven’t done it yet.