Take On Helicopters Takes On Pirates

Software pirates, that is.  That garbled mess above offers a glimpse at how Bohemia Interactive is hobbling illicit downloads of their new flight simulator Take On Helicopters, forcing the game engine to process an intense distortion filter that ruins the game’s visuals and performance.  And best of all, the above screenshot comes courtesy of one would-be thief picked out for seeking tech support on the developer’s official forums.

Games often flourish on word of mouth recommendations, so to avoid any confusion on why some users might be reporting poor performance or “graphical glitches” with Take On Helicopters, Bohemia Interactive is publicizing their decision to employ this style of DRM.

The original version of Take On Helicopters does not suffer from this degradation of visual quality. Piracy is a big problem for Bohemia Interactive, as an independent PC developer, and we’re trying to focus our support as much as possible towards users of legitimate copies. Counterfeit copies of our games may degrade and, moral aspects aside, we certainly recommend only playing the original version. We have a free public demo version of Take On Helicopters in the development pipeline for those that prefer to test it before buying.

Take On Helicopters was released via digital distribution on October 27th, 2011.  Prior to release, it offered both a “Community Preview” version to anyone who owned a copy of ARMA II: Operation Arrowhead, and public beta access for anyone who preordered the game.  Click the Press Release button below to read Bohemia Interactive’s full statement on their anti-piracy measures.

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