Bohemia's Anti-Piracy Tech Degrades Game Performance Over Time

In the constant back-and-forth battle between pirates and publishers, Bohemia Interactive continues to deploy a relatively unique system that degrades the performance in pirated copies as the player continues to play. Bohemia has used the system, known as "FADE," to thwart software pirates since 2001's Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis. That game displayed a message telling non-paying players that "original games don't fade" as the game's graphics and performance declined. The system is also in use in the company's latest release, Take On Helicopters, leading some ignorant players to unknowingly admit their piracy in the game's official support forums. Bohmeia notes that the system doesn't stop an illegal downloader from playing the game entirely, but lets them "only get a small taste before many aspects of the game, including performance, start to degrade." An official demo version of Take On Helicopters is in development for these kinds of players, the company says. "One of the aspects of developing any game in this modern age is how to protect it ... [against those] who, for whatever reason, feel that their right is to not pay for something despite all the thousands of hours that have gone into its development," Bohemia said in a statement. "That is why we try to come up with unique and irrefutable ways to stop people from playing our games without paying for them," the statement continues. Other publishers have tried similar methods to discourage pirates: illegal copies of the DS version of Ubisoft's Michael Jackson: The Experience include a warbling horn sound that's played over the game's music. Still others are less interested in putting up roadblocks for pirates: Valve founder Gabe Newell recently said that the best way to fight piracy is to give people "a service that's better than what they’re receiving from the pirates."