Nintendo might not have plans to bring Virtual Console to Switch, but that doesn’t mean somebody else won’t. In light of new details about how Nintendo Switch Online will work and the company’s plans to bring NES games to the handheld via a subscription service, at least one hacker and longtime Nintendo fan is trying…
FlightSimLabs, a studio that specialises in custom add-ons for other company’s flight sims, has been found to be secretly installing a program onto user’s computers designed to check whether they’re playing a pirated copy of their software.
For such an important topic, it’s a shame that we can’t ever seem to have a real discussion about video game piracy. Any attempt normally goes down like this: people downloading games are painted as criminals, publishers trying to stop them are portrayed as monsters, everyone sticks to this division and nothing ever…
The Italian hacking group CPY announced today it finally cracked Assassin’s Creed Origins meaning people with pirated versions of the game will now be able to bypass its DRM protections.
A horde of pirates is undermining Patreon’s financial structure, reposting paywalled pornographic images on an illicit website for free. The makers of these images are furious that internet denizens are putting their livelihoods in jeopardy to score free porn.
By now finding a “haunted” cartridge is a scary video game story cliche, but one series in sells the tale better than the rest. Pokémon’s piracy problem, coupled with fan’s’ hunger to see a mature monster-collecting game allowed “Pokémon Black” to become one of the most famous Pokémon creepypasta to ever dwell on the…
In May, Tecmo Koei sued popular cracking-group 3DM Game in China for copyright violation. This month, Tecmo Koei announced it had won the lawsuit.
Game developers have been trying to figure out how to paddle their way through pirate-infested waters for decades. DRM, “glitches” designed to thwart pirates, and more DRM have done little to stem the tide. Seeing this, a handful of developers took less combative approaches, putting their games on sites like the…
On torrent site The Pirate Bay, typically the domain of illegal rips of media, one username among dozens uploading the horror game Darkwood stands out: the game’s publisher. Today, the Poland-based Acid Wizard Studio uploaded their own game for free with “no catch, no added pirate hats for characters,” their torrent…
Manga pirates have operated in the internet’s shadows for decades, hiding from furious publishers whose translation efforts, pirates say, are shoddy, too slow or nonexistent. Now, as more pirates realize the potential value of their translation skills, they’re poking their heads out from the underground and asking for…
Anti-piracy protection software Denuvo is getting cracked faster and faster on more games, with certain games made free by hackers in as short as a week. Denuvo says that the protection is meant to protect games during “the initial sales window” but is that even the case anymore?
A week after release, much of the discussion surrounding Rime isn’t about the ruins or the mystery, but rather piracy. Players claim anti-piracy software slows the game down. Pirates say the newly cracked version of the game fixes that problem. Rime’s producers seem unsure if DRM caused performance hits, but Denuvo…
Rime, the indie game caught halfway between Ico and Journey was released last week. With Denuvo DRM. Like a lot of games. But that made some players angry, and prompted the developer, Tequila Works, to state that once the Denuvo DRM is broken, which it eventually always is, the company will release a DRM-free version…
Spacewar is a game that draws thousands of players every day. If you search for it on the Steam store, though, you’ll never find it.
With Legend of Zelda Amiibo figures perpetually sold out and fetching prohibitively high prices on eBay, many fans are turning to bootlegged “Amiibo cards” instead. Many sellers of these cards see themselves not as mere pirates, but as modern-day Robin Hoods, providing fans with the in-game content that Nintendo won’t…
Many fans were happy to hear about Kaldaien’s “FAR mod,” a patch that fixes Nier: Automata’s technical issues on PC. Some people who downloaded the mod were surprised to find that it checks whether or not you’ve pirated the game, and the modder’s decision to include such a feature has proven controversial.
In 2013, voxel exploration game Cube World blew up, amassing millions of views on YouTube and video game sites. Despite the hype, Cube World’s creators became infamous for going radio silent, while the paid alpha for the game hasn’t updated since July 2013. Many fans have probably asked themselves, “What happened to …
In 2008, I brought my laptop over to my friend Amanda’s house to pirate Spore. Her boyfriend Nate, who worked at the local GameStop, told me to. It’s the shit, he said, and everyone’s downloading it for free. I connected my laptop to her internet and opened Limewire, 2008’s file-sharing software du jour. It was my…
The Pirate Bay is about to turn 13, and in honour of the site becoming a teenager, folks like Torrentfreak are checking out the oldest content that has been continuously available since its launch back in 2003.
For the last week, the Zelda fandom has become a minefield of spoilers, as various Breath of the Wild related images, screenshots, and videos have leaked ahead of the official release. It’s only gotten worse today. (Some spoilers ahead.)
