10 Anti-Piracy Measures In Video Games That Were Total Genius

Video games have been subject to illegal copies for years, with more modern practices resigning themselves to shady-looking websites.

People who care not about the developers and the time and resources put into making their games, often get easy access to almost anything - provided they can bypass the viruses or the desire to download an abundance of internet porn that comes alongside.

It may sound like gloom and doom for the studios, but some studios manage to get their own back. Anti-piracy measures end up being implemented to catch out or downright laugh in the face of sticky-fingered gamers, simply by luring them into a false sense of security.

This top ten list is compromised of the funniest, cruellest, and craftiest methods of catching out video game pirates. If you think there are others that deserve a place on the list, or if you've been caught out yourself in the past, share it all in the comments below!

Skull Girls, aka Waifu Fist-Fight Simulator, is full of particularly crazy fighters, from the cartoon-centric Peacock to Cerebella, the lass with two gigantic arms for hair. It's a pretty barmy fighting game, and a beloved one at that.

Should a naughty player decide to pirate the game, nothing much will happen until they complete it with any character. No matter who it is, or how many times you do it, a cryptic message will pop up which says:

“What is the square root of a fish? Now I'm sad.”

What could this bizarre statement possibly mean? Is it perhaps a post-modern statement that was deliberately written to perhaps provoke thought?

Actually, no. It's a fake error message, meant to catch out clueless pirates into exposing themselves as the shameless thieves that they are.

One player even asked the developers over Twitter about this oddball message. The response was priceless: “Oh that? It means you should probably buy the game instead of pirate it.”

Whoops. To rub vinegar into the wound, it became newsworthy stuff on various gaming websites. The embarrassed fan decided to purchase the game as his way of apologizing.

And all the developers needed to do was to write a silly message regarding seafood.