Piracy is a massive problem for the gaming industry.  Unscrupulous hackers can replicate software in minutes that companies spend months and years developing and then distribute them through thousands of online file-sharing sites.  An organization called the Business Software Alliance announced that $51.4 Billion of software was pirated in 2009 and worldwide, 43 percent of all computer software were pirated in 2009, up two percent over the prior year.  That’s a big, big problem.

Which is why Ubisoft’s solution for the Nintendo DS version of their new Michael Jackson: The Experience game is so refreshingly creative.  Instead of hampering the game with the awful experience created by digital rights management tools, their solution combines state of the art technology with meme of the year annoyance.  On illegally-pirated copies, code in the game literally overrides play with a blare of hyper-annoying vuvuzelas.  Ubisoft calls it “a creative way to discourage any tampering with the retail version of the game.”

It’s audio pwnage of the highest order.  Brilliant.

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By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Element 79

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