Far Cry 4 director Alex Hutchinson dropped a bomb on anyone stupid enough to pirate Ubisoft’s newly-released open world shooter with a recent tweet:
PC players! If you're online complaining about the lack of FOV control … You pirated the game.
— Alex Hutchinson (@BangBangClick) November 18, 2014
Touché, Hutchinson. The field of view control he refers to wase added in the launch day patch as part of a clever scheme to make pirates out themselves by complaining about the missing feature. With day one patches becoming the norm for major releases, it is easy to slip in this sort of safeguard against leaked copies that would not be receiving updates through sanctioned channels.
The industry has experimented with invasive DRM programs and always-online requirements to combat piracy in recent years, but often to the outrage of fans. More recently, some studios have pulled moves like this to out thieves. Most ironically, Kairosoft’s Game Dev Story included an extra feature in pirated copies which the studio leaked wherein players’ games within the game would be pirated until their studio went bankrupt.
Far Cry 4 is now available for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.
