Mere hours after Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates hit store shelves today, pirated copies of the game appeared in the shady corners of the internet, posted for all the picaroons out there to download and transfer to their flashcarts.Twenty minutes or so into the ARPG, however, many of those pirates found themselves greeted with this "Thank you for playing!!" screen and unable to progress. Players have the option of restarting the game from the last save point and playing on, but the screen reappears at random intervals. Clever!
Why not lock pirates out before even loading up the game, you ask? Well, this way, they can try out Ring of Fates, eventually reforming their criminal ways and buying it if they find the experience enjoyable. Also, anyone dumping the game for distribution wouldn't notice this bit of programming unless they played a significant portion of it first.
Though this method isn't 100% effective, as some brands of carts are unaffected and hackers will likely find a workaround by day's end, it's certainly cute! Pirates should feel thankful that this isn't even half as malicious as Earthbound's anti-piracy measures.
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Reader Comments (Page 3 of 3)
3-16-2008 @ 12:34PM
Zero-kun said...
Hmmm.... This is rather bizarre.
a) The Japanese rom had none of this, it played perfect. o.o
b) I thought that a ROM dump was when you take EVERYTHING OFF THE ORIGINAL CART. If this screen is coming up randomly, and it's coming from the ROM, shouldn't that mean the cartridge of the game has the same issue? *Yes, I know it doesn't have the same issue, but it just strikes me as odd.* It doesn't make sense that this screen does not occur on an original copy, yet comes up in a ROM. Unless it's the way it's been dumped. x_x"
Anyways, I've heard it works on a select bunch of flash cards (Nearly everything except R4DS/M3 Simply apparently), so in one sense this hasn't really beaten pirates, just singled out the few using incompatible cards. You think something similar could happen with KH 358/2 Days? :O
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3-17-2008 @ 10:21AM
Kurisu said...
It got patched already.
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4-22-2008 @ 3:26AM
Casey said...
Why are all of you referring to this as a problem? You're not supposed to be able to pirate these things. If it's sucessfully patched or worked around, it isn't a solved problem...
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