Ey there kiddos, Spoofer here again for another voiceover for Vadim. Did you know that the drunk camera is not
the only hidden anti-piracy measure in Grand Theft Auto IV? In reality, Rockstar Games implemented much
more of these sneaky measures and today I will be showing them off to you! Before we move on, we have to go over the
backstory for these measures. When GTA IV was going to be released on PС, Rockstar Games had a lot of worries about the piracy on the platform and decided to implement as many protections into this game as possible. All these protections were meant to slow down, or maybe even prevent Saltine crackers from cracking their precious game. Sadly for Rockstar Games, when GTA IV finally got released on the platform, already available was a scene release with a presumably non-working crack. However on the next day, a cracker or a group of crackers by the name of LOBO released the first ever working crack to the public and
people went crazy. At this point, anyone who wanted to started
to download the game and were happy to see it work initially, ready to explore the land of opportunity as Niko Bellic in the newly revamped Liberty City. Their happiness was short lived sadly. After playing this game for about two minutes, the game began to annoy them by activating some very special anti-piracy measures. Starting from here, the game becomes basically
unplayable. No one could understand what was going on and why their screen was shaking. So what was it and how did it happen? Welp, Rockstar Games knew very well that the copy protection sooner or later will be defeated by the crackers. To slow these guys down, the company decided
to implement an additional hidden protection to their game like with their plans with Vice City, crack protection. If this specific protection detects that the copy protection doesn’t do its job anymore, then it activates some special anti-piracy
measures, which are meant to break the game. Since the crackers couldn’t defeat this protection initially, everyone who used their broken cracks experienced wacky anti-piracy measures. Let's finally look at how Rockstar tried to slow down these fellas and prevent pirates from enjoying their game. Every single time when you launch an improperly cracked version, the game counts up to three or two minutes and then it activates three annoying anti-piracy measures. And they are: drunk camera, damaged engine and auto acceleration. The drunk camera is a constantly shaking screen. Normally you see this effect after drinking
with your in-game mates and it only lasts for a short time. It seems that the developers thought that
it would be hilarious to enable it for pirates, making this effect endless and much stronger so they could all partake in the dizziness and headaches. Thanks to this measure, normal gameplay becomes a nightmare, because who would enjoy playing this game for too long if the game does not want you to anyways. This measure makes it VERY hard to concentrate on simple things on the screen. Good luck with making it far, Rockstar were pretty serious with this measure. Should remind you watching that I found a trick to disable this measure in the game so you can still watch the remainder of the
video without hurling. Along with the shaking screen, the game provides Niko with a personal poltergeist, who lives in his vehicles and does two annoying things: First, the status of the engine will always
lower to 10%, meaning that every single car you enter will emit black smoke. Second, the car will always accelerate forward as if the gas pedal is stuck or your acceleration key is broken. It means that when Niko sits in whatever transport he wants, in a couple of moments it will become trashed, because Rockstar Games did everything they could for you to make one of the finer aspects of the game even better! To be fair, the driving isn’t that bad in
this broken version, though you will have to be very careful and not to hesitate on
using the handbrake to turn or to decelerate. On the other hand, you will lack the ability to drive in reverse. It means that your first obstacle might become
your last. Thanks to this, you can’t even fix your car in pay’n’spray, it is almost impossible to get out of it otherwise. Thankfully the engine will be fixed though! Though if you have a car that is fast enough, you can do a little bit of drifting and get there in backwards. Sadly, in this case the garage won’t close
with some cars inside. I think it is safe to assume that Rockstar
made sure to keep up on any oversights. These anti-piracy measures not only screwed around with cars, but also with: bikes… boats… and helicopters. The helicopter, however, doesn’t have auto acceleration meaning it is the safest transport in this entire version. It will still be rather smokey though. Despite the fact that these anti-piracy measures
are meant to annoy you, experience you can actually some unique tricks and glitches with them. For instance, if you exit your car before these measures take place, your parked car will drive away from you. Here’s some solid evidence that GTA IV does have ghost cars, but only in the improperly cracked version. By the way, have you ever enjoyed annoying
taxi drivers in GTA IV? Here’s a fun trick, just sit in the yellow car as a passenger and the driver won’t even have a chance to drive to your destination point without you skipping a trip. He either will crash his car or drive into an obstacle. If he manages to crash his wheels and bail out, then the car will still be driving without him and for a very weird reason, the taxi
driver will steal another car. The American dream Niko and everyone was seeking, right? Here is my favourite part. If you hold the handbrake and exit your car,
it will become a self driving disaster. So yeah, you can drive your cousin of a ramp if you really want to. You can perform the famous "Swing Glitch" by driving a ghost car to it. Honestly, I had a lot of fun messing with these sneaky measures, causing unique chaos on the streets. If the game didn’t have that drunk camera, then people would enjoy these specific measures. Actually, I heard that people knew some tricks to disable this camera effect, but it did not really help that well. Thanks to the auto acceleration your main car after watching a cutscene could drive away from you. Good luck completing the mission if your vehicle with a key character inside drives away from you. If you think that these are all hidden measures left by Rockstar Games, then you are totally wrong. The developers also implemented some traps in the mission scripts as well. Some missions want to be sure that the copy protection is still present in the game. If it sees that it is removed, then the mission becomes broken and you can’t even complete it. I want to say special thanks to Zolika1351
for finding these traps in the missions and for sharing this information with me. He also managed to enable them in the normal game for me so I could show them to you without dealing with other measures. So yeah, let’s look at them! The first mission, where the pirates were burned was the “Clean Getaway” mission, where Niko had to steal Jimmy’s silver Blista
for Vlad. The trap in this mission is hilarious and I bet someone will find it familiar. In this version when Niko steals the silver Blista from Jimmy, the sequence of the mission breaks. When you drive to the destination shown on the map, you will notice that the garage, where you need to store this car is actually closed. Here is the funniest part. If you decide to exit the car, you will not be able to get back inside, because the sequence is stuck from that moment, when Niko closed doors so Jimmy couldn’t enter it. Either way, consider that mission a failure. In the normal version after the car is stolen, Niko calls Vlad and tells him that his new car is dirty. Vlad is not satisfied hearing this and orders Niko to wash it. We drive to the car wash, where it is being cleaned and then we drive to the garage and leave it there. Pretty simple right? In the improperly cracked version, even if you decided to call Vlad after stealing the car, nothing happens. Vlad’s phone is turned off. Also nothing will happen if you decided to wash this car without anyone telling you to do so. You will just waste money on nothing. Technically speaking, pirates can’t progress further thanks to this trap unless someone shares a save game with the completed mission. On the other hand, the developers were not dumb and predicted this move from the community and that’s why they decided to break more missions, taking care of any oversights. The next mission, which reminds players that it would be a good idea to get the game in a more legitimate manner is the “Uncle Vlad” mission, where we have to deal with Vlad for destroying Roman’s dreams. If you had a chance to catch your getaway car, then be prepared to be burned again. When you leave a bullet in Vlad’s head, the game will be interrupted. Starting from this moment, you will see a loading screen, which will never go away. Well, Rockstar decided that the pirates don’t really need to see this pivotal cutscene with Roman and Niko discussing terrible things
they have done and what they should do next. Instead, they have to try and find another savegame with this mission completed. If the pirates still have patience to continue playing the game, they will be searching for new savegames a lot, because the developers
decided to break in-game computers as well. If you need to access a computer during a mission, then forget about completing it. No matter how many times you press the action key, nothing will happen. The hint about using a computer will appear over and over again. It means, that such missions as: Logging On… Out of the Closet... Wrong is Right... Final Interview... I'll Take Her… And any other content available through the in-game Internet service cannot be triggered or even completed. This is not the end however. During the story, Niko also has to use police computers and guess what, the developers decided to break them for pirates as well. When you want to use a police computer, upon pressing an action key, nothing will happen and the hint disappears. No matter how many times you press the action key, nothing will ever happen. As a result, such missions as: Search and Delete... Portrait of a Killer... Smackdown… And even odd jobs can’t be completed in
this version. Welp, just have to deal with it if running
illegitimate in this case. Rockstar Games thought that this was not enough and decided to leave a small surprise in mission “No. 1” for Brucie as well. Just to remind you, in this mission we have to participate in a race. Brucie calls Stevie and asks him if we could borrow his yellow Comet for the race. Stevie gives us a green light and says that his car is parked outside and we can take it. After hearing whatever nonsense Brucie is trying to tell us, we approach this beautiful yellow car. Well, the developers thought that it would be super cool if the car was closed for the pirate. We can’t open it, because the car received a special flag which basically tells the game that it can’t be stolen. No burning rubber in a race today Sonny Jim! I bet the developers had a lot of fun figuring
out what they can break for the pirates. Unfortunately for these people, the developers decided to break the famous “Three Leaf Clover” mission, where we have to rob a bank and then disappear with some sweet sweet loot. In the improperly cracked version after emptying the vault, the bank doors will remain closed. As a result, we can’t leave the place! Our crew doesn’t even see the trap and continues to run to the door while the game tells us to follow them. These doors can’t be destroyed meaning that the only way out is to deal with our partners. Thankfully, the game teleports us from here. Honestly, this is a hilarious move from the company, but I doubt that people could get here by playing this broken version for too
long. The next mission, which has a small surprise for the pirates is the “Hating the Haters” mission from Bernie. I want to remind you that in this mission we have to stalk Bernie in the park and find who is threatening him while he is jogging. The problem with this mission is that it starts to use different parameters to detect distance between Bernie and Niko in the park. In this version Bernie can’t even decide if Niko is too far away... or very close to him… As a result, he always seems unhappy telling Niko to fix things ASAP, and the player will not understand what is wrong. Sometimes this mission triggers a special sequence. When Bernie waits for Niko to catch up to him via busying himself with stretches, he stops doing that when Niko approaches him at a very close distance. It doesn’t work like this in a normal version of the game, but at least it gives you a thought that something is wrong with this mission. But the result will be always the same, Bernie blames Niko for blowing his cover and the mission fails. In the normal version, this mission is a piece of cake and you don’t experience these problems. The last trap was left in the close to final mission, but only if you decide to choose revenge and deal with your old enemy. This is the “A Dish Served Cold” mission,
if you didn’t get it and sadly for the pirate, the whole mission is a total waste of time. In this mission we have to clean the ship of enemies… deal with our ultimate enemy… and then we are free to leave the place. Can you guess, which of these phases is broken? If you guessed the last one, then you are correct Sonny Jim. As soon as you approach this marker, a hint, which tells you what you have to do will disappear and the game won’t reveal your next steps. It doesn’t tell you that you have to abandon the ship, but who cares as no one can stop us from doing so? Well, this won’t help, as the developers
broke the mission sequence here. So yeah, the mission is stuck now, you can probably guess where we end up now based on the previous issues. If you are interested, in the normal game as soon as you approach this marker, the hint will change telling you to abandon the ship. When you do it, the mission will be completed. As you can see, Rockstar Games tried their best to hide tons of hidden tricks in their game slowing down crackers from cracking their game till the cracked end. It was a good challenge for crackers to find them and disable this pesky crack protection in the game with their magical ways. After presumably three days from the release date, some crackers found a way to disable this special protection. After about two more days, Razor had finally made their famous crack, which worked flawlessly and the pirate’s nightmare finally ended. These days before the fall of Rockstar’s special protection were rather special days, because people tested at least 9 weird cracks, which still triggered these anti-piracy measures. At the same time, some pirates found an opportunity to earn some extra cash by selling bootleg discs as fast as they could with the broken crack. Ordinary people bought these discs and wondered why their cars are possessed by ghosts and why the game camera was having an epileptic fit. Have to wonder if they knew that the pirates cut the radio stations and other media, such as the in game TV stations, to save some space and release this bootleg version on one disc, instead of two?
