The Sims 4 launched last week much to the excitement of fans of the game, and derision from critics. However, those who pirated their copy of the game discovered an unusual bug. The pixelated censorship that appears on Sims when they take a shower would slowly grow until the dominates the entire screen, turning the entire game into an unplayable blob.
This issue was first noticed on EA’s official Sims 4 forums where players began to turn up asking for help with a bug that was affecting their games. Spokesmen from the company then informed these players that their versions of the game were obviously pirated, as the pixelation issue was implemented on purpose to deter people from simply downloading their games. The original threads on the forum appear to have been deleted as of this writing.
In-game anti-piracy measures are not a new thing with games, as Game Dev Tycoon had originally used a feature that caused the player to constantly lose sales and revenue to piracy. The pirates would eventually cause the player’s studio to go bankrupt as a piece of social commentary about the importance of buying games to support the developers.
That being said, the pixelation has already been defeated by enterprising programmers who want to play the game while silently protesting against the business practices of big publishers. Apparently the solution involves changing a file name, although this apparently doesn’t always work.
[Source: Player Attack]
