Reminds me of Game Dev Tycoon (where the whole point of the game is that you create games) and the developer released a cracked version of the game themselves, but added in a 'feature' that after a certain point in time, people would start cracking the games you create, causing you to lose increasingly high amounts of money over time, until you run out of money and lose.
I like how the clip starts and you think it's gonna be some kind of anti-piracy trick they used, but instead it was just pirates screwing with each other.
how did the pirates screw with eachother? It's just chinese pirates pirated it first, then english speaking pirates "hacked" the chinese pirated game to make it work in english and it was good enuff. How is that screwing?
i was expecting him to mention the loading zone chunk in the middle of the map where it would try and load like 4 areas and severely chunk performance every time you walked through
Batman Arkham Asylum had an anti-piracy "bug" where the grappling hook wouldn't work but it takes about two hours to get to the point where you'd get it, otherwise the game works perfectly until you reached a wall you can only pass with it. A lot of users online were hilariousu complaining that it was broken as a result. The Godfather game had a bug were pirates copies had inverted aiming with weapons but normal aiming for moving around and also wouldn't let you enter or exit vehicles. The shooting was manageable to a limited extent but you had to run everywhere and the game map was pretty big. I think the fourth game mission you're driving a car(the game loads you into the car in a Cutscene) with a bomb in it and you can't enter or exit the vehicle so the countdown just slowly ticks down and you explode. Good times.
"it takes about two hours to get to the point" Nope. the Zsasz stealth tutorial where you need to glide is some 17 minutes into the game. That's including watching the intro cutscene and the other cutscenes leading up to that point.
I doubt it was a dedication. They’ve simply removed steam’s hooks, so provided a hardcoded solution instead. Sure they could choose English or smth instead, but why?
@@ashsessions911 No, he explains it perfectly. The original pirated copy involved significant changes to the code, one of which was hardcoding the language to Chinese. Afterwards, other folks took that existing pirated copy and swapped the data files to change the language back to English. Your suggestion that the "original chinese reversers" "swapped the fonts" is flat out wrong. Had they merely swapped the font/text files, then the subtitles in their Chinese-only copy would be spaced incorrectly (which they weren't.) I find that it helps to listen to the clip first before inventing your own headcanon. Also, hardcoded is absolutely the correct term. They took something that was conditional and made it unconditional. They hardcoded the language to be Chinese by modifying the game itself, not the data files associated with the language. (We know this because the subtitle spacing is correct and that apparently comes directly from a manual offset the game's code.) The subsequent English copy didn't fix the fact that the language was hardcoded. Instead, the creators of the English copy just manually replaced the hardcoded Chinese language's data files with the English versions of those same files. EDIT: I'm not sure if @ashsessions911 deleted their comment or if RU-vid is just being silly. Regardless, I just wanted to say: Ash, wherever you are, I hope you're having a good day. Your comment was factually incorrect, but that doesn't mean I hate you or anything. I'm just another crank in the RU-vid comment section.
@@justsomeredspy nicely explained, this guy is delusional, probably envious haha. Imagine saying "he doesn't know what he's talking about" to a game dev that took part in making one of the most popular puzzle games of the last decade haha
@@treypoling their DRM is invasive and runs on a Kernal level and sometimes prevents legitimate people from playing the game. They sometimes remove games that you've purchased from your library without refunding you. The best devs actually tell you to pirate their games if you can't afford it yet and buy it later. (E.g. Notch (Minecraft) and Toby Fox (UNDERTALE). That's what I did and I appreciate them for that. I own both games now.
How wretched it must be for a creator to go, today I want to watch people experience my game! and then hop on twitch to see that half of them had so obviously pirated it. Totally sucky.
this is jonathan blow, hes made enough money from braid, im sure he doesnt care that hes not getting paid, just that theyre playing and experiencing his game
@@BalsamicJeebs well sure, except that The Witness cost a lot more money to make and he went into debt doing it. And I'm pretty sure he's said he's gone into debt again on the next game. Which, fine, that's not unusual for a business I guess. But if the next game fails it's not like he has fuck you Braid money to fall back on. That was all invested in The Witness. And then Witness money was all invested in the next game. You want more games, you pay for them. That's the only way it works
@@1337pianomanMost game pirates at least used to say, "If you enjoy it pay for it." There was and is an understanding that most people pirating a game are doing so for financial reasons, so they remind people to buy it legitimately later if it's still viable.
nah don't generalize that, you're right about the chinese typically being good programmers but whoever re-did the crack but in english was either not a programmer at all and just made their own half assed solution or the guy was lazy, there's some crazy talented programmers in the west especially in the branch of reverse engineering
@@pold111 obviously, im referring to this specific situation. though i wouldnt put it past jon to go on a rant about how chinese and russian hackers are the best in the world or something
Lol yeah. He really did think something but then something else did happen and me watching thought something else would happen but instead sowmthing else happen. Also a Jon blow lol and admire like a lot? Huh very good. Entertainment. Yes ok good. MAN SHUT UP YOU BOT YOUR COMMENT IS LITERALLY AN ISAAC LEON VIDEO
@@dddaaa6965 wtf are u on about 😂😂 his videos started coming up quite a lot since I got interested in game dev but I didn't really like how he approached game dev and his explanations on different topics always seemed a bit out of my league as in I couldn't even understand what he was talking about. That was until I stumbled upon this video. I also got into game dev a lot more since that time, so I really got excited when I finally understood something coming out of his mouth and it was also very funny. Which is how he gained my respect. Also, I was just pointing out how smart he is because how quickly he figured what really was going on. There could be a thousand bugs in a game that could cause this. It might just be your illiteracy or you might want to go easy on that fentanyl man. you're showing brain damage symptoms already
TODO : Make a pirated version of my own game and have a download link to it. But mention that it is a pirated version and they don't have permission to use it. I am just putting it here.
@@0ia I would never sue for something like that . But what I will do is .... . . . . . . Figure out where they live and send them photos in the mail of me giving them very dis-approving looks . Then , I'll go figure out where their mom lives and... Send them photos of... . . . . . . . > > Both of us giving them very dis-approving looks . -KanjiCoder
Game Dev Tycoon did that. They put a version on pirate sites, and changed the code that the games you make in the game get pirated a lot and you lose money. Was fun to see comments on the forums "pirating is too much in this game!", not seeing the great irony in it.
Even better, do what Arkham asylum did and upload a bespoke version of the game to trackers yourself. If your game is even semi popular it will absolutely be cracked and pirated, even tiny indie games. Maybe even make it so you’re locked out of endgame content and make it easy to transfer save files over, might win back some people who enjoyed the game
Settlers 3 released in 1998 and had something like this. If you were playing on a pirated copy it would play like normal, but when crafting gold bars you instead got pigs.
Serious Sam 3 also had something like that. About 20 minutes into the game, if you were playing a pirated version, you would encounter an unbeatable enemy that locked you from continuing forward on that level. It looked like a bug, but since it was deliberately hard-coded, the devs were able to just dismiss bug reports of that kind with "buy the real game" because it was obvious which bug reporters had an illegal copy of the game
I mean how much money do you really make streaming, if you're not an extreme outlier. youtubers with millions of views make like 500 bucks a month. 2 games is about 120 bucks.. yeah I would be suprised if they didn't.
@@mycollegeshirt The Witness is $40 regular price, currently $10 on sale, it's not $60. That $20 difference would be enough to buy a whole other game, or even multiple (through sales or bundles). Twitch streamers (and likely the same for RU-vid Live and other platforms) with moderately sized audiences who stream daily or semi-daily will make far more than $500 a month, especially if they have a strong community. There are channels I watch with less than 5k subscribers on RU-vid who make hundreds in donations in just one or two livestreams, because their content is engaging and entertaining. If you're only making $500 or less a month from streaming or making videos about games, it's obviously not your full time job anyway, so you can probably afford it regardless of the fact that it would pay for itself. In no scenario is it a problem of affordability. And even regardless of that, they have an ethical DUTY to pay the creators of a game if they are actively using it to make money from playing.
@@9hoot789 Okay, let's do the math... There are approximately 7.23 million active streamers on Twitch... Not viewers.. streamers... in April 2024... This is down from 9.89 million in January 2021. So, according to Twitch, Twitch has about 240 million active viewers. If we spread that equally over all 7.23 million active streamers on Twitch, that is well, I guess on average 0.1-0.25 subs per viewer (Notice how many unsubbed in every major channel)... Considering there is literally ZERO, zilch, NADA data on this (Twitch doesn't really wanna share), the 0.1-0.25 is pretty darn generous. This would be 10-25% of viewers. Considering when you watch a major channel, easily 95 to 99% of the viewers would be subless, and there doesn't seem to be a major trend of subscribing to literally every channel you watch (even when you do sub), I still personally believe 10-25% of viewers is generous. On the lower end that would be between 723 000 to 1 807 500 subs to go around. You know what, let me extra generous, let's double it and say 1 446 000 to 3 615 000 subs. Let's even be so generous to say that everyone who subs, subs at tier 2. 10$ per person. That would be somewhere between 7 million and 18 million dollars worth of subscriptions... Now it is a 50/50 (An announced 60/40, doesn't make it better, not going to look further into that frankly) subscriber share of the money with the creator. This would be about a dollar to two dollar per active streamer. Obviously it is not just a dollar to two dollars SOME streamers earn, and the VAST VAST majority will earn literally nothing. Even if we go SUPER generous, and double and triple these estimates, we still only end up with millions, vs. millions of streamers, and we know that there are streamers who literally became millionaires through streaming... obviously some had outside help (like sponsors), but overall.... it isn't much. Your "moderately sized" audience based on anecdotal evidence (Twitch ain't gonna release the stats), is seemingly around 200 followers... or very dedicated followers... that is like 500$ a month... If someone doesn't really have the money to buy a game before, they likely wont really be super likely to afford it after spending their (if lucky) "salary" on other expenses, and chance are that they don't have the time to actually earn the expenses if they are attempting full time streaminer. Anyway, it might seem simple at first, but we don't have the numbers, and the only numbers that makes sense, still puts the amount of people capable of earning, to a RIDICULOUS small amount.
I've always wondered how much trouble a dev could get into if they embedded a crypto miner in a fake pirated copy they release themselves, along with an in-game message that pops up when their first 'payment' has been earned.
They own the ip, thus if they release a copy with a crypto miner in it they are solely responsible for it unlike an external party doing so. In other words, the sole responsibility for any damages would fall on them if people find out its the dev placing malicious content. Sure, it’s a pirated copy and thus “not legal” but so is placing a crypto miner, and thus the party which downloaded the pirated content would get fined for doing so, but they could sue the developer later. At least that’s what I think would happen, not a lawyer or legal advice.
@@shroomer3867 Well, from what I know about it all in regards to legality, it all kind of depends on how the crypto miner got there, and it's intent. Also, direct information of it being there is ... only sort of needed. For instance, if the ToS/EULA states that all "pirated" copies sent out by the developer include the miner only to reclaim compensation for the product only; and turns off when full value of stolen IP has been reached... then it might be legal. I say might, because the EULA kind of makes it legal already (kind of why you're supposed to read them, and if you don't; it's your own fault like it or not.) And I say kind of in that last part, because not all ToS/EULA's are actually 100% legally binding. A court can toss them if they find them erroneous. Or something like that. So long as the actual legitimate product does not contain the mining application, then it should (theoretically) be legal to place in the pirated version only. As for it being considered malware, since that's how it is taken by folk more often than not because of how it has been used up til now by many nefarious types; that's kind of touch and go as well. It's only really actually malware if it's not "supposed" to be there with legitimate purpose, and isn't actually doing any harm to the property of the thief in this situation. If the mining application doesn't run the system harder than a game normally would anyways, then there is no 'harm' being done to the system. Perhaps they aren't getting the 'full performance' of the game they are playing; but they stole it. So who cares? Besides, windows by default easily eats a good 10-20% of all potential performance. Is it malware? Technically it is, since it spies on you, takes your information, sells it to other people for profit... But they included that in the EULA/ToS, right? Also not a lawyer, but have been told to maybe pursue the career a few times.
@@shroomer3867 correct idea but FYI it's not about who owns the IP. If I did the same to a game from Nintendo or Sega or whoever, I would bear sole responsibility for damages caused by my code. It's just easier to dodge enforcement as an individual that can mask their identity, than a company with an account hooked up to Steam. If done secretly by the devs as a way to make up lost revenue... ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ Granted almost all software comes with a "Hold Harmless" agreement; but it's debatable how well that will hold up in Court; but in the US it's debatable if you'll even get a fair trial if the company uses arbitration...😵 law is complicated :P
@@kelvariw The very next set of words after "They own the ip" clarifies that the developer would be responsible if they release a game with a crypto miner, as opposed to the case where a 3rd party injected it and re-released. It's clear that @shroomer3867 already understands the nuance.
@@JacobZigenis Yes. I was trying to add that, in the case where a third party embeds malware, that third party would be responsible for embedding malware. Meaning, the copy being pirated does not absolve a third party from liability.
I love Blow's games and I can't wait for his next one but I seriously couldn't get into The Witness and I really wanted to. Maybe it will click on replay. I get what he was trying to go for (2deep4me) but I can't for the life of me spend hours just tapping around on screens (get it?)
For anyone who doesn't want to watch the video: He could tell because it was originally pirated into Chinese and locked to that language, then less skilled pirates took that copy and put it into English. The less skilled pirates didn't change the subtitle and font settings from Chinese when they were switching it back to English, so English pirated copies have way too much space in subtitles.
@@arisumego Because the title promises one thing, and delivers something else. I clicked because I wanted to know how he could tell if copies were pirated. I had zero interest in every other part of the video, but those parts were still in the video. As a creator myself, OP should pick one 1. Trim the video length 2. Change the title 3. Put a timestamp of when he says the reason
@@theonlyron title doesn't promise anything it doesn't deliver. he explains what the title says he explains. that is >90% of the video. he is just telling it as a story with the full details, so it takes a few minutes. you wanted to save people time, that's fine! but let's not pretend it's the fault of the person who posted the video.
The easiest (and only legal way) to "detect" that a copy is a pirated copy is to release the pirated copy with a change to it. If you have a way to detect that the game is cracked, you could very well run up against you breaking your own EULA or even be charged with distributing malware which has happened to some developers that thought they were being clever. Honestly getting hit with a malware distribution offense is actually not as bad as invalidating your own EULA, which would protect you from players that end up hurting themselves or their computers by misusing your software. Having somebody suddenly able to sue you for damaging their computer because of their own stupidity is a stupid prize for playing a stupid game. It's honestly better to skip the pirate scene all together and distribute the game yourself.
The World of Goo solution. Just don't DRM it, make decent money off of a damn good game even with 80-90% of copies being pirated, run a PWYW sale a year later for another $100k.
For those who don't have the 4.5 minutes to listen to the tediously slow verbal explanation: Chinese hackers pirated it first and hardcoded the language option to select Chinese. English hackers then made a version based on the Chinese one, but instead of un-hardcoding the option, they just replaced the Chinese font and text files with the English ones. The game code had hardcoded line height values per language, and the value it used when expecting the Chinese font was noticeably too tall for the English font that was actually loaded.
@@Kiwiiizzz I hate people who post they hate games with no reason or context. I also hate people who don't add to a conversation but feel their opinion is important, while, I'll reiterate, not _actually_ adding anything to the conversation.
@@charlescrawford9972You left two separate replies (the other one hidden by YT for being so rude, the both of them being a week apart) to a single guy because he left a flippant reply on the internet. Loser!
well he isn't writing a comment, he's telling a story on stream. this is hardly close to a bad long winded john blow ramble, it's actually very coherent and well delivered if you realise the point isn't just to communicate what happened but to do so in an entertaining way
This was such a long walk for a very short drink of water. "The subtitle lines were too far apart because the pirates edited a Chinese pirated version to English."
@@Muhammad-re4wk and please don't take this as Jon Blow defense, I think he's annoying and a pretty caustic personality. but I WILL defend the concept of speaking in full sentences
I'm not defending pirates, but when your DRM is so awful that legitimate purchasers prefer to play the cracked version: that should be a huge red flag that your DRM is atrocious.
As Gabe Newell put it, "Piracy is almost always a service problem.... If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable." (I've cut the part about "not a pricing problem" because I think it's wrong - tons of people in lower income countries would buy instead of pirating if your regional pricing is set right - but the rest of his quote is spot on.)
While it can be shitty for a smaller developer, pirating is most often an issue with the service, whether that be localized pricing issues, language barriers, local laws, platform compatibility, etc. I think the main reason Witness had a lot of pirates is solely because it’s just not a $40 game, hell I even pirated it to try it (ended up buying it on steam on sale later). Don’t get be wrong, it’s a good game with a lot of care and time put into it, but a majority of people will not see the parts of the game that took the most effort, that being the interactive environment puzzles. Even after playing through it twice it’s hard to recommend at full price, lots of little irksome things (usually made specifically so you can find an environmental puzzle) just slow some parts to a crawl. I think if it had been $20 maybe even $25 it would have been a a lot less pirated.
This is the type of person that goes full vigilante mode on the internet doxxing someone’s address because they were rude and insulted your favorite game, and then someone else uses that address to swat them which gets them inadvertently killed in the raid
@@jonessii I have to admit I was anti piracy until ten to fifteen years later with every prediction the pirates made having come true, it was time to admit they were right It is counter-initiative but when we remember to keep in mind both that piracy isn't theft and that corporations conduct piracy all the time (recently Microsoft had to pull a planned Call Of Duty DLC because it had someone else's content in it, the very definition of piracy) then we realise that the main voices pushing the anti-piracy narrative are the ones simply seeking to have a *monopoly* on piracy 😅
I'm ashamed to admit I haven't payed for the game either. But I assume and hope EPIC did... After all they gave me the free copy. The allure of free games wore off fast, the EPIC launcher imo isn't a alternative to Steam. Haven't used it in years now. Neat game btw.
I wish I did, because The Witness is an absolute mess It is simultaneously really good and _extremely_ bad. I cannot understand how people like it so much
That's funny. I usually play games with subtitles, but instantly turned them off in The Witness because they take up too much of the screen space. This is on the legit Steam version, btw.
so you’re saying you have proof they pirated your software and then used it for monetary gain. hit up the streaming platform and make a big stink about it…with lawyers. make an example out of those mofos
Although it's a good game, it cost like 40 dollars at release, which is way too much for a simple 2D puzzle game. To the player it doesn't matter that the puzzles are scattered inside a walking simulator made in its own engine. I know a lot went into it, but that doesn't matter, it's value is still only 5 dollars, which is the current sales price. I recommend it for that price.
"simple 2D puzzle game ... walking simulator" Tell us you missed the most important thing in the game without saying you missed the most important thing in the game.
@@SeanTBarrett The first one is a very cool easter egg. When you get the second one, you think "oh this is a thing now". And then after a few more, it just becomes a chore, like the collectibles in the GTA games. It's not an important part of the game. I actually forgot about it, even though I probably got 25 or so. But as I said: "I know a lot went into it".
Value is subjective, and lower prices means more sales. If you think 5$ is fair for that game, then you can recommend it when it's on sale. Others might enjoy it at full price. Price4 setting can be difficult, but the goal with it was to make money for a new game, not to play Scrooge Mcduck. I vaguely recall that JB is millions of dollars in debt right now, and Braid AE sold even worse than expected.
@@Chemieklo Most people do not think of violent criminals when you say pirate. They instead think of swash buckling adventures with treasure chests. The music industry failed horribly, if they indeed coined it as propaganda, to make to sound bad. There's a reason why pirating is often advertised with "sail the seven seas", "arrr", and not to mention one of the most famous pirating sites being named Pirate Bay. Because it all sounds cool, fun, and good.
The unfortunate thing with personally made art of arbitrary iteration as a business is that it flies in the face of how memes spread by word of mouth. Piracy IS that word of mouth practice. Single iteration physical art is the only market, and it’s high altitude and saturated
