A user on the Eidos message boards posted a tech support question for the PC version of Batman: Arkham Asylum. What made his question suspicious was that it was posted on September 4, 2009. The PC version of the game isn’t due to be released until September 15th.

Apparently, Eidos had programmed the game to disable some of Batman’s abilities if it detected that it was a pirated copy. An Eidos message board moderator responded:

The problem you have encountered is a hook in the copy protection, to catch out people who try and download cracked versions of the game for free.

It’s not a bug in the game’s code, it’s a bug in your moral code.

Even if determined pirates manage to develop a patch to fix bootleg copies of the game, I gotta give it to Eidos on this one. This is a very clever way to bust and discourage people from downloading the game illegally. This is the kind of copy protection I can get behind. Ridiculous DRM methods, “justifiable” price hikes, and downloadable exclusives only punish customers that have bought the product legitimately. More video game developers should adopt these types of tricks that only affect pirates.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 14th, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.