Sims 4 pirates attacked by pixels

Written by David Hing

September 5, 2014 | 11:06

Tags: #drm #piracy #the-sims-4

Companies: #electronic-arts #maxis

An anti-piracy trap has been discovered in The Sims 4 where the screen slowly pixelates and blurs itself out.

The intentional glitch happens when sims remove their clothes which blurs and censors the character. They then stay this way when the clothes go back on and the pixelated cloud then expands to the whole screen.

The official Sims 4 forums are currently receiving a lot of visitors looking for solutions to the bug, marking themselves out as having pirated the title. There is currently no patch for the piracy glitch other than buying a legitimate copy of the game.

The Sims 4 launched this week in several territories and launches today in the UK.

Game-breaking anti-piracy bugs are not uncommon and some studios have been known to get really creative with them. EA has dabbled with the tactic before, for example a subtle one in Mirror’s Edge where pirated copies would force the player to slow down before certain jumps that need a lot of speed.

Other examples include Batman: Arkham Asylum where the Dark Knight is unable to glide in pirated copies, putting an early halt to any progress pirates can make and a particularly brutal example with ARMA, which gradually degraded the game over time. This started with weapon accuracy becoming less and less effective and progressed to graphical reduction and finally culminated in turning the player’s character into a bird.

Possibly the most meta example of piracy glitches can be found in Game Dev Tycoon, where games the player releases fail financially because they are all pirated in-game.
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