10 Video Games That Trolled Players In INSANE Ways

Plenty of games have found creative ways to punish those who dare to pirate their games, but perhaps the Mother of all passive-aggressive feats of trolling goes to the legendary RPG EarthBound.

Rather than outright preventing players from playing the game, EarthBound's copy protection makes it such a miserable and ultimately heartbreaking slog of an experience that you'll probably wish you just splashed the cash on a legit copy instead.

First and foremost, if the SNES detects a pirate game, it floods the overworld with considerably more random enemies than in the legal version, to the extent that progressing through it becomes a massive chore.

Certain areas will cause the game to freeze, and even if you persevere through to the final boss fight against Giygas, the game will hit a hard wall by freezing and forcing the player to reset their console.

When they load the game back up, they'll discover that their precious, laboured-over save file has been deleted.

Given that in the mid-90s YouTube didn't exist and allow law-breaking players to just watch the end of the game, pirates who played EarthBound upon release were up s**t creek without a paddle.