Arkham Asylum Pirates Get a Gimpy Batman

Did you illegally download a cracked version of Arkham Asylum for the PC? Hope you enjoy playing with a Batman who has conveniently forgotten some of his moveset, rendering the game unbeatable.

Do you know what I love? Creative DRM. Any developer can throw in a mandated online check, or give you a limited number of installs, or something boring like that, but then you have developers with a cruel sense of humor who make it so that pirates have their genitals attacked by ill-tempered ferrets, and the ferrets are on fire. That's going above the call of duty right there.

Apparently, one of said developers is Rocksteady Studios, creators of critical darling Batman: Arkham Asylum. Pirates who have illegally acquired the PC version of the game will find themselves playing the game with a Batman who has apparently forgotten how to use his moves, notably the glide-jump. In an amusing little thread on the Eidos forums, one pirate came to innocently report a bug, claiming that instead of gliding when the appropriate input was given, the Dark Knight would instead just spread his wings and fall to his death in poison gas.

Quoth an Eidos admin in response:

The problem you have encountered is a hook in the copy protection, to catch out people who try and download cracked versions of the game for free.

It's not a bug in the game's code, it's a bug in your moral code.

Since its acquisition of Rocksteady parent Eidos, Square-Enix has announced plans to use similar DRM in its upcoming Final Fantasy XIII, where any attempt to use magic will always result in summoning a rampaging horde of Chocobos to crush the party, the player, and anyone they've ever loved.