9 Ancient Video Game DRM Schemes

The DRM wars have gone on for a long time, long before we called it DRM. Programmers have battled aspiring software copiers with schemes ranging from the clever to the bizarre.

Although most of them were fairly innocuous, like checking a manual, others were quite destructive, rendering the install disk unusable or even in some rare cases harming the system. The regular check-ins with an activation server are annoying, but still somewhat tame in comparison.

Here's a sampling of ancient DRM.

1. Keys hidden in included materials

I found Wing Commander at random when browsing the software aisle at Wal-Mart, and brought it home to find blueprints of all the fighters in the game, and even a magazine written from a perspective inside the game's world called "Claw Marks." The name was inspired by the main capital ship in the game called "Tiger's Claw."

These weren't just nice pack-ins. They held vital details for launching the game. You were presented with a question about a specific item like the range of a ship's weapons or a detail from the magazine every time you wanted to play the game.

2. The whole OS solution

The nice thing about early IBM-PC compatibles was that the hardware was pretty consistent, with only a little variation in CPUs and sound cards. This meant a developer could ship a disk that booted the hardware, giving the programmers low level control.

While this let them gain incredible efficiency and make some nice, vibrant games on low-powered hardware, it also meant they didn't have to follow any standards. The file system was non-standard, meaning no common copying program could touch it.

3. One-time use

I had a bad time with the software sold at a local dollar store back in the '90s. The owner was a nice guy, but he didn't know much about software. This meant people would buy a $1 game, play it all the way through, and bring it back for a refund.

Many of these games would change some bits on the disk on the first use and render the disk unusable. It was always disappointing to find one of them.