The Sims 4 ‘glitch’ is inadvertently exposing pirates

A ‘glitch’ designed to hamper the experience of those who have pirated The Sims 4 has caught a lot of people out online.

Player Attack reports that the game’s forums are awash with folk complaining that the pixelated blur normally employed to protect their avatar’s modesty is instead growing and eventually obscuring the whole screen.

However, it transpires that the ‘bug’ is actually an in-built feature that is triggered when an illegitimate version of the title is unable to authenticate itself.

It’s not the first time a game has employed an unconventional piracy prevention technique. Garry’s Mod used a polygon shading bug to break pirated versions while similar ‘quirks’ have appeared in the likes of Game Dev Story and retro title Superior Soccer.

In 2009 the PC version of Batman: Arkham Asylum famously glitched the Caped Crusader’s ability to glide if it detected anything fishy.

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,” the team said at the time, as reported byThe Daily Dot. It’s not a bug in the game’s code, it’s a bug in your moral code.”