Strategy Informer  

Gamers who discover their visuals degrading in the helicopter sim Take On Helicopters have either got to re-register their authentication code or stop pirating the game. One such gamer complained of the "issue" on the official forums, and was promptly asked for proof of purchase of the game, then banned. This is due to a sneaky anti-piracy measure taken by developer Bohemia Interactive which increasingly distorts the graphics as time goes on.

According to the developer's CEO Marek Spanel, "Bohemia Interactive deploys various anti-piracy countermeasures in its titles and the morphed image degradation reported by some users is one of the symptoms of these. The original version of Take On Helicopters does not suffer from this degradation of visual quality."

Spanel added, "We have a free public demo version of Take On Helicopters in the development pipeline for those that prefer to test it before buying."

Bohemia used similar anti-piracy methods with the original Operation Flashpoint, while the PC version of Rocksteady's Batman: Arkham Asylum employed a similar stealth anti-piracy tactic. Hacked copies of the game locked Batman's cape so he could not glide, which prevented the pirated copy from progressing at a certain point where gliding was mandatory. When a gamer complained of the "bug", Rocksteady replied, "The problem you have encountered is a hook in the copy protection, to catch out people who try and download cracked versions of the game for free. It's not a bug in the game's code, it's a bug in your moral code."

Source: Eurogamer

Related games: Take On Helicopters (PC)