I was skimming through my Twitter feed when I found this gem in Matt Gemmel’s timeline. The developers of the shoot-em-up game Serious Sam 3 have embedded a great way to discourage piracy in the game: a giant, immortal, pink scorpion that relentlessly mauls you to death as soon as the game starts, but of course only on illegally obtained copies of the game.

Which in turn led me to the aforelinked piece by Brian Howe about DRM. The real, hardcore DRM, mind you:

Standing five metres high, covered in dense hair and ropy muscle, our Digital Rights Minotaurs are eternally vigilant deterrents against product use. Where did we find them? Don’t ask. These mythical beasts never seem to eat or sleep, and we’ve got a crapload of them. There’s probably one grunting softly outside your cubicle right now, waiting. Since we agree that hand loss is a fair penalty for attempted gaming, it hardly needs to be said that going so far as to make a backup copy for personal use results in an instant deathblow.

The entire piece is filled with rage-inducing awesomeness.