Giant red scorpion sees off Serious Sam 3 pirates

By Fred Dutton Published 7 December, 2011

Croteam shooter hides neat DRM trick.

Anyone who illicitly downloads recent shooter Serious Sam 3: BFE will find themselves chased around the game by a giant immortal scorpion.

As reported by Dark Side of Gaming, it's a cheeky DRM measure somehow coded into the title by developer Croteam.

Take a look at the clip below for a glimpse of the lightning fast critter in action.

Croteam's OTT FPS sequel launched on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 last month.

"A faithful and heartfelt ode to old-school FPS carnage, it certainly delivers the dumb fun that Duke Nukem Forever so dismally failed to recapture - and that, for many retro-heads, will be more than enough," read Eurogamer's 7/10 Serious Sam 3 review.

Picture of Fred.

About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (16) Latest comment 6 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • yoomazir #1 6 months ago

    Nice, that's how we need to fight piracy and not the customers!
    Edited by yoomazir at 07/12/11 @ 23:02

  • JHo #2 6 months ago

    That looks like a fun game!! Must say I preferred the Egyptian locales in the first few games. This looks too COD or any other modern military shooter graphically.

    Great piracy counter measure BTW!!

  • Yeoung #3 6 months ago

    "Pirate our awesome game and a hybrid scorpion man will fuck your shit up"

    Now that's a feature you can put on the back of the box

  • Inmediasress #4 6 months ago

    Well I didn't even know there is a third Serious Sam game.
    So much for piracy lol.

  • FortysixterUK #5 6 months ago

    Pretty graphics, but gameplay was a tad old and got dull real quick when the first SS came out...I'll get this on a decent STEAM sale or some such...it looks like its worth a tenner of anyones cash.

  • -cerberus- #6 6 months ago

    A few months ago Eurogamer reported something similar for another game. Players who were playing a pirated version got a fuzzy screen or something like that. I hoped they got creative with this DRM method in the future and they did. Excellent! :)

  • Subdominator #7 6 months ago

    How is this a way to fight piracy? With standard pirated games there is still the chance that people will buy the game. After being annoyed by that scorpion? I don't think so (cause they won't know it's due to DRM, they will think it's unfair game design). And even worse is word of mouth. Piracy is so widely spread, it's actually a factor that sells games (due to people hearing about the game and deciding to buy it). Guess what happens if people talk about Serious Sam 3?

  • Turrican_Freak #8 6 months ago

    "How is this a way to fight piracy?" by making people talk about the game.

  • Subdominator #9 6 months ago

    Sales numbers of the five games that used FADE and similar DRM in the past say you're wrong. And don't let me get started on false positives and honest buyers experiencing the anti-piracy measures.

  • Mister-Wario #10 6 months ago

    A small part of me wants to pirate the game just to see this scorpion man. Obviously I'd buy the game first.

  • Mazrim_Taim #11 6 months ago

    Nice idea, doubt it will take long to be cracked out by pirates though.

  • matty_matt_mattmatt #12 6 months ago

    just make it get stuck. Ps hackers will fix this in like a day or 2

  • DreadedWalrus #13 6 months ago

    @-cerberus- Yep, that was Take on Helicopters by Bohemia Interactive. ArmA by the same developer used a similar trick, where over time your aim would get worse and worse so you could barely hit anything, even in the firing range, and after a while, you'd all of a sudden be in control of a seagull rather than a soldier, and wouldn't be able to change back, so you'd just be able to fly around in the sky slowly until you felt like quitting.

    Also, back in the day, a pirated copy of Sports Interactive's football management games would gradually delete parts of the database until the game was practically unplayable. People would turn up on the forums reporting this "bug", but would promptly realise they'd been duped when asked to provide proof they had a legitimate copy.

    There's a bunch of videos of Arma 2 copy protection if you do a Youtube search for Arma 2 Fade as well.
    Edited by DreadedWalrus at 08/12/11 @ 05:24

  • Nova1977 #14 6 months ago

    Legends!

  • bad09 #15 6 months ago

    Anti piracy affecting pirate not customers? Madness.

  • arcam #16 6 months ago

    This is exactly the same as any other DRM except instead of refusing to run, it will run with a giant scorpion. Surely pirates are being punished more if the game can't run at all?

    It's like saying anyone who pirates Skyrim will be unable to play because it needs to be activated on Steam. While that's true technically, in practice it's not because the DRM is cracked so anyone can run it. That's the whole point of piracy.

    The only way this might work over normal copy protection is if pirates and crackers are unaware of this and do not realise that their game hasn't been properly cracked. Of course if every website runs news stories about it, everyone will know, and nobody will download the 'giant scorpion version', thus rendering the whole thing as effective as any other crackable DRM - i.e. not at all.