Serious Sam is notorious for its insanely over-the-top FPS experience, but pirates are getting a little more action than they bargained for. Instead of forcing legitimate players to jump through extra hoops, Croteam has unleashed a relentless foe to torment the living hell out of pirates. Folks with illegal copies of Serious Sam 3: BFE are greeted by a ruthless invincible mutant scorpion that spawns on the first level. It can't be outrun or outgunned, and it certainly can't be reasoned with, to steal a line from The Terminator. There is no escape:
The latest version of Serious Sam uses Steamworks for DRM, but as usual, that hasn't prevented cracked versions from surfacing on torrent sites. And while the devilish arachnid might spoil the fun for some unwitting pirates, you can bet it will be removed from a future cracked version. Probably sooner rather than later, unfortunately. Nonetheless, gamers have praised Croteam for its humorous approach to thwarting unauthorized players – though it's not entirely unique. Plenty of developers have deployed similar antics in the past.
Earlier this year, Garry's Mod creator Garry Newman introduced a bogus error designed to appear on illegal copies of his game. Upon seeing the message, pirates sought assistance on the Steam forum. Little did they know, the error contained their SteamID. Thousands of illegal players were tricked into revealing their identity and were presumably banned, but humiliated at bare minimum. "If we leave it easy for people to pirate we're betraying the people that paid," Newman said at the time. "I'm just having fun at the pirates' expense."