Are These Anti-Piracy Screens Real?

VanishedVoyage

Are These Anti-Piracy Screens Real?     #DigitalHorror #CreepyScreens #AntiPiracy #UncannyTech #FoundFootageFeel #TechThriller #WarningScreens

Transcript

00:00On October 13th, 2020, a 40-second video was uploaded to YouTube titled Mario Party DS Anti-Piracy Screen.

00:08The first 10 seconds of the video show actual gameplay footage of a Mario Party minigame on the DS,

00:14after which an error message pops up on the bottom screen.

00:17The message reads,

00:19Exception occurred. Please turn off the power and destroy the game card.

00:23This is immediately followed by the appearance of another ominous message that reads,

00:27Software Piracy Detected. You are in possession of an illicit copy of this title.

00:32Please turn off the power immediately.

00:47The screen then turns black for about 2 seconds,

00:50before cutting to an image of Mario, Luigi, Wario, and several other Mario Party characters

00:55standing behind bars on the bottom screen.

00:58The text on the top screen reads,

01:00Piracy is no party. It is a serious crime to pirate video games.

01:04Please turn off the system and report this stolen software immediately.

01:08Eerie music and sinister laughter can be heard in the background,

01:11as a power-off now message flashes on the bottom screen.

01:15In less than a month, the video garnered almost a million views on YouTube.

01:19Much of the video's mass popularity can be attributed to the description,

01:22which claims that the disturbing anti-piracy screen can be triggered in the game.

01:27In the months following the upload,

01:29a similar video that had been posted by the channel Super Mario 64 Beta Archive

01:33four months earlier began gaining massive traction.

01:36The description below this video also stated that this was a real anti-piracy screen

01:41that could be found within the Super Mario 64 game.

01:44This is the original clip.

01:45The screen in question shows Mario sitting on top of the N for Nintendo,

02:06reading what appears to be an instruction booklet.

02:08Above him, there is a warning that reads,

02:10it is a serious crime to copy video games according to copyright law.

02:14Please refer to your Nintendo Game Instruction booklet for further information.

02:19Beneath Mario, a message in Chinese directs the user to the instruction manual.

02:23Similarly to the Mario Party DS anti-piracy screen video,

02:27this 24 second clip also went pretty viral,

02:30receiving over 2 million views in just a few months' time.

02:33The virality of these two videos can ultimately be explained by the shock they caused in viewers.

02:37Although every game from the Super Mario franchise was meant to be played and enjoyed by people of all ages,

02:43it was expected that a large number of users would be children,

02:47and it's incredibly jarring to see such alarming messages about serious crimes and piracy in games marketed to young audiences.

02:54As these videos received more and more attention,

02:56many viewers took their confusion to online forums and gaming websites,

02:59where the authenticity of the clips was put into question.

03:03In the first months of 2021,

03:04several debunking videos were uploaded to YouTube in which it was explained that the alleged anti-piracy screens

03:10were fabricated by the channels that posted them to scare the audience.

03:14Even though it was confirmed that the screens were fake,

03:16these two videos gave rise to a whole new genre in the online horror community,

03:20and for a while, fake anti-piracy screens reached a similar level of popularity

03:24to the previous decade's creepypastas.

03:26For several months, dozens of creators uploaded their own mock-ups of anti-piracy screens,

03:31ranging from obviously fake, to slightly creepy, to downright disturbing.

03:36One of the most unsettling of these videos was the Super Mario Odyssey anti-piracy screen,

03:41which was uploaded to YouTube in December 2020.

03:44Even though the video consists of a fake anti-piracy screen like any other,

03:48it's an example of how far some creators took the idea,

03:51and it's a lot more creepy than many of the other fake screens that were uploaded around that time.

03:55This is what was shown in the clip.

04:25The fact that this screen was so haunting immediately gave it away as fake,

04:33as Nintendo would obviously never terrify its users with these kinds of images and disturbing messages.

04:38Although most users were able to recognize the more extreme videos as fake,

04:42other anti-piracy screens were a lot more subtle,

04:44which made it much more difficult to tell whether they were real or fake.

04:48Many of these screens were so well edited,

04:50and so carefully thought out that thousands of viewers believed they were real.

04:53The fact that a large number of people would comment on the YouTube videos,

04:57and in various online forums claiming that they had seen the anti-piracy screens pop up on their games,

05:02only made the fake screens more believable.

05:05One of the most notorious of these screens was featured in a video called

05:08Sonic the Hedgehog 1991 Secret Anti-Piracy Screen.

05:12The clip shows real footage from the 1991 Sonic game for the Sega Genesis,

05:17in which the player adjusts the game's sounds in a specific order before starting the first level.

05:21After progressing through the level for a while,

05:24Sonic can be seen turning around and running in the opposite direction,

05:27until a bonus stage ring appears on the screen.

05:29As soon as Sonic jumps into it, the game glitches,

05:32and the player is transported to a screen with a black background

05:34and a message discouraging the use of pirated software.

05:38Below, a frowning Sonic gives the player a thumbs down,

05:40while holding a game cartridge featuring Dr. Robotnik in the other hand.

05:44Dr. Griffin

06:00The

06:02The

06:05The

06:11The

06:12As soon as the music ends, two unsettling messages appear on the screen.

06:19What are you doing here, and you shouldn't be here.

06:22Sonic's eye is then turned black, and the video ends.

06:25Although the description in the video doesn't mention that the video is fake,

06:28the grammatically incorrect anti-piracy message, the cheesy warnings,

06:32and the overly creepy image of Sonic with blacked-out eyes gave the video away as fake.

06:37However, many first-time viewers are still being fooled into believing the screen is real

06:41and can be triggered within the game.

06:43Although some of the most widely known screens have been confirmed as fake,

06:47others have remained not as clear,

06:48such as the one that allegedly appears in the highly popular 1930s cartoon-inspired game Cuphead.

06:54In 2021, rumors started circulating that if the console detected pirated software,

06:59strange things would start happening in the game.

07:02Some sources claimed that instead of listening to the original music of the game,

07:05the player would have to listen to a creepy, demonic version of the soundtrack throughout the whole game.

07:10Other players reported that an anti-piracy screen with dark, creepy sounds

07:14and a reverse, slowed-down version of the theme song would appear as soon as the game started,

07:19along with other strange gameplay effects.

07:21To this day, most of the people who created these screens and uploaded them to YouTube

07:39haven't confirmed whether they're fake or not,

07:41but the fact that nobody has actually found a way to legitimately trigger these screens on pirated copies

07:46indicates they're not real.

07:48The main reason why this myth gained so much traction

07:50is that it's based on something that really does happen in the game.

07:54In one of the game's updates,

07:56a strange audio that can't be triggered in the game

07:58was randomly introduced into the game's files by the developers.

08:01The file was titled

08:02MUS underscore intro underscore

08:05don't deal with the devil underscore vocal underscore 666.

08:10And it was basically a reversed,

08:12slowed-down version of the intro theme song

08:14with some strange noises added to it.

08:17Although the file definitely exists in the game,

08:19it can never actually be heard playing in the story,

08:21and it's unknown why exactly it was introduced.

08:24Many YouTubers use this audio file to fabricate videos

08:27and spread rumors about the now-infamous anti-piracy screen,

08:30causing confusion for the millions of viewers who saw their content.

08:34It's worth noting that

08:34many of the most well-known anti-piracy screens,

08:37including the Cuphead screen,

08:38have been reposted all over the internet since their creation,

08:41and most of the time it's never specified by the uploader

08:44if the screen is fake or not.

08:46Sometimes, if the screen has obviously been fabricated,

08:48or if it doesn't fit in the overall mood or aesthetic of the game,

08:52the viewers themselves debunk the screens and expose them as fake.

08:55But other times,

08:56it's not so easy to gauge the authenticity of the clips,

08:59as was the case with the extremely disturbing

09:01Nintendogs DS anti-piracy screen.

09:04In December 2020,

09:06a YouTube channel uploaded real gameplay footage

09:08of a player getting a dog in Nintendogs and naming it Zeus.

09:12After playing with it for a while,

09:13taking it for a walk,

09:14and doing all the things that a normal kid playing Nintendogs would do,

09:18a message with the words

09:19Zeus is sick with scurvy pops up on the screen.

09:31The screen then turns black,

09:33and an even more disturbing message appears.

09:36It reads,

09:37Zeus has died.

09:38Nintendogs can only survive in legitimate Nintendo DS cartridges.

09:43In a dark turn of events,

09:44the player is then taken to the dog's grave

09:46before the video ends abruptly.

09:48This is one of the most chilling anti-piracy screens on YouTube,

09:51especially since Nintendogs is a children's game,

09:54and it's hard to imagine a kid would want to play on their DS again

09:56after being traumatized by something like this.

09:59Fortunately, the screen is completely fake,

10:01but that hasn't stopped many people from reposting it on other platforms as real,

10:05which has contributed to the screen's notoriety.

10:08While these anti-piracy screens are all fake,

10:10game developers have been implementing

10:12similar legitimate anti-piracy measures for decades.

10:16In the 80s and 90s,

10:17developers experimented with many different piracy prevention methods,

10:21including lens lock, code wheels,

10:23and hidden instructions in the game manuals.

10:25Lens lock was a technology that consisted of a plastic lens

10:29that players would have to hold up to the screen

10:30to decrypt a jumbled up, two-letter code at the beginning of the game.

10:34Without the code, access to the game would be denied.

10:37Over time, lens lock became extremely annoying for users,

10:41and many developers started to use the game manual as a copy prevention measure.

10:45The way this would work is that the player would reach a point in the game

10:47where they would have to answer a question to continue playing,

10:50and the answer could only be found in the game's instruction booklet.

10:54In theory, this seems like a good approach for piracy prevention,

10:57but it posed a problem for players who bought the game used

11:00and for those who lost the booklet,

11:02and after a while, companies replaced this method with the infamous code wheels.

11:06Code wheels were circular mechanisms consisting of multiple layers of cardboard,

11:10each featuring different symbols, characters, or words.

11:13The layers could be rotated to align different elements on the wheel,

11:16revealing a code through the cutout windows.

11:19At the beginning of the game, the player would be prompted to enter a code,

11:22which would require the player to rotate the wheel until the correct code appeared.

11:25The gaming community didn't appreciate this added layer of complexity

11:29to start playing their games,

11:30and most companies dropped the code wheel soon after.

11:33This is when in-game anti-piracy measures started to become more popular.

11:37The basic idea behind this was that when the console detected copied software,

11:41the game would alert the user in different ways

11:43to discourage the use of the pirated copy.

11:46This would usually take the form of a black screen with no music

11:49and a message similar to the ones in these images.

11:52This was common in popular games such as Donkey Kong Country 1,

11:56Super Metroid, Super Punch-Out, and Super Mario All-Stars.

11:59And while this was a necessary anti-piracy measure,

12:02it didn't take long for game developers to get a little more creative

12:05with in-game anti-piracy methods and start making them a bit more creepy.

12:10A perfect example of this can be seen in Donkey Kong Country 3,

12:13which featured one of the first anti-piracy screens that could be considered creepy.

12:18It's worth mentioning that in the first installment of the Donkey Kong Country series,

12:22the anti-piracy screen was a generic error message that wasn't very intimidating at all.

12:26But this changed in Donkey Kong Country 2 and 3.

12:29When the copied software was detected,

12:31instead of seeing a black screen with an anti-piracy message,

12:34the player would be taken to this screen.

12:36As some viewers might recognize,

12:49this was the game over screen from Donkey Kong Country 3,

12:52which shows Diddy and Dixie Kong in jail

12:54while an eerie theme from the game's soundtrack plays in the background.

12:58In front of the characters, we see an anti-piracy warning.

13:02After a few minutes, a different message appears.

13:05This one reads,

13:05An irregularity has been detected.

13:08Turn the power off,

13:09wait for 10 seconds,

13:10then turn it back on again.

13:12While it may not have been the developer's intention to make the screen creepy,

13:16the ominous warning,

13:17the eerie music,

13:18and the dark image of the main characters in jail

13:20made this a pretty unsettling anti-piracy screen.

13:24An even more disturbing screen can be found in the 1988

13:27choose-your-own-adventure game, Gold Rush.

13:29At a certain point in the game,

13:31the player is required to answer a trivia question to continue with the storyline.

13:34The answer to this question can be found within the game's instruction booklet,

13:38and if the player answers the trivia correctly,

13:40the game continues as normal.

13:42However, if the question is answered incorrectly,

13:44the player is taken to this disturbing cutscene.

13:47Eerie music plays in first.

13:48The show is soon as possible with the main character.

13:50It is a great show.

13:52The game continues to be found in the game's history,

13:55and it is also a great show.

13:56In the game's instruction,

13:57the game continues to be found in the game's trailer,

13:58the track is to be found within the game's trailer.

14:01It is a great show.

14:01Essentially, the player gets killed for the crime of piracy, which coupled with the happy

14:24music playing in the background makes this a pretty grim anti-piracy measure, even if

14:29the developers might have intended it to be funny. Around the same year that Gold Rush was released,

14:34another game with a much different plotline captured its audience's attention on account

14:38of its unsettling anti-piracy measures. Due to its limited audience and unusual storyline,

14:44this is a much more obscure game that many people might not recognize, but the anti-piracy measures

14:48are unsettling enough to make it worth covering. The name of the game translates from Spanish to

14:54The Abbey of Crime. It's basically a murder mystery game set in the Benedictine Abbey,

14:59and it was inspired by the classic 1980 novel The Name of the Rose. Although the game is free to play,

15:05it features a somewhat creepy anti-piracy method to prevent unauthorized modifications, which

15:10is understandable considering it was created by two independent Spanish game developers.

15:15When the game is launched, the software verifies that the palette and audio tracks are stored in

15:19their original configurations. If they're not, it initiates its copy protection. During normal

15:25gameplay, when the player enters the abbey, the song of Marie can be heard playing in the background

15:29as music. But if the copy protection is activated, this is replaced by something completely different.

15:35This translates simply to pirate, and considering the continual distortion of the audio file,

15:56the whole scene is pretty creepy. Although both Gold Rush and The Abbey of Crime are pretty old

16:02examples, modern game developers have continued to get creative with their creepy piracy prevention

16:06measures to make their games more difficult to crack. Serious Sam 3, for example, contains a pretty

16:12aggressive anti-piracy measure that made the game practically unplayable. Players that illegally

16:17downloaded the first-person shooter game would be able to enjoy the gameplay as normal, with only

16:21one exception. If the software were detected it was being played on a copying device, the player would

16:26be chased down by some sort of red scorpion demon throughout the whole game. The monster is

16:32unkillable and moves at a much higher speed than any other monster in the game. As with Serious Sam 3,

16:38many developers implemented anti-piracy measures that would be triggered at the very start of the

16:42game to make the game unplayable. But other games, like The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time,

16:47feature slightly more cruel anti-piracy measures. In contrast to the copy protection measures in most

16:53games, even if pirated software is detected in Zelda, the game allows the player to continue playing

16:58as if nothing was wrong. You can beat every boss, follow the storyline, and reach the very end of the

17:03game, and only then is when things start to go awry. At the end of the game, after beating Ganon,

17:08the player has to escape the crumbling castle with Princess Zelda. During normal gameplay,

17:13the princess magically opens the door and the player must walk through, but in the pirated version,

17:18the door never opens, and only the princess passes through, leaving the player to die in the crumbling

17:22castle. This disturbing anti-piracy method prevents the player from ever finishing the game,

17:37which is similar to the approach taken by Insomniac Games to stop unauthorized copies of the game,

17:42Spyro Year of the Dragon for the original PlayStation. Released in 2000, Spyro had one of the most

17:47ingenious anti-piracy systems in video game history. If the game's software detected it was being

17:53cracked, Zoey, the progress-saving fairy, would say this to the player.

18:10Despite this warning, the player was still allowed to progress through the game's levels,

18:14but the attempt to crack the game wouldn't go unpunished, as the developers made the game as

18:18annoying as possible to play for the people who tried to crack it. Eggs would randomly start

18:22disappearing from the player's egg count, Spyro would start to move slowly and clumsily,

18:27gems would start to disappear from the levels, and even the language would randomly change in the

18:32middle of the story. The further you progress in the game, the worse these glitches get, making it

18:36almost impossible to beat the game. Even with these protective measures, players can still fight the

18:41final boss, but the developers made sure that pirates couldn't enjoy the happy ending.

18:46During the final boss battle, the game automatically crashes, and when you open your inventory again,

18:51you'll find that all your eggs, gems, and other purchases have been permanently deleted,

18:55which means you have to start the game all over again, repeating the cycle infinitely.

19:00Anti-piracy screens like the one in Spyro have become more common with the passage of time,

19:04as developers have found this to be one of the most effective ways to prevent their games

19:07from being cracked, especially during the first few days of the game's release. Although anti-piracy

19:12screens have served their purpose pretty well, their impact has extended far beyond the gaming

19:17community. With their unsettling content and eerie mood, anti-piracy screens have carved out an

19:22unexpected niche in the online horror genre, and have remained extremely popular to this day.

19:27you

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