A fanmade S***c game made by someone from Taiwan with the use of Little Fighters 2 engine with the gameplay being reminiscent of ***** Battle on Game Boy Advance. It has tons of stages and music to choose from, mostly originating from those games in the franchise. It's a fun game except that I discovered it late like this year or something. What attracted more people into discovering it was due to the fact that it has some malware.
The game started like tons of years ago until like a few years ago, the developer sort of freaked out upon discovering that his original character sprites were stolen. Unfortunately, the policy he set up was sort of negative. The sprites for the characters looked like the originals as if they were taken from The Spriters Resource or something and especially for fanmade ones made by others and yet he claimed them all to be his creation or some sort when they were actually made by the company or the fans. Another problem was that if you plan to cheat, mod or even hack the game, the malware would be activated and do some damage to the game even if you reinstall it. What it means is that the malware turns the game in unusual color and switches to the creepy music that is obviously from some game in the same franchise. The registry is modified and some parts of the game are modified permanently to make it unplayable.
Even worse is that you can't play the game in the virtual machine as it is smart enough to refuse to run. Not to mention that you need to be CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET TO PLAY, as well as to run the game as an Administrator. I don't know the reason on why do you need to run a fanmade game as an Administrator to fix something that prevents it from running but normally, a fanmade game doesn't require this kind of permission to run. And by the way, internet connection requirement for gaming has been around ever since the MMORPG days but it's spread to other kinds of games as well like today's modern arcade games mostly from Konami for instance as well as other game genres that provide MMO experience. This fanmade game on the other hand, I don't know what to explain about it. By right, there should be Multiplayer and Single Player game modes but I don't know if Little Fighters 2 today has Online Multiplayer support. For modern arcade games nowadays, it is unnecessary to require internet connection to start up but it is one bonus feature to prevent piracy or something. Another useful thing in modern games being online is that your player data will be stored on the game servers as well as the fact that they offer online multiplayer and other features that are online exclusive. The same requirement goes for games on IOS & Android nowadays in which you need to be connected to the internet at all times or you can't proceed any further. Unlike modern arcade games today where you can go smoothly offline, there's no way you can proceed further easily in IOS & Android games unless they offer offline support in which they are entire playable without needing internet connection.
Interestingly enough, the external actions were at the beginning 4 years ago in which administrator permissions were still needed to run the game although what they did was to make the log file in the drivers folder. Not to mention that the malware was effective like 2 years ago according to some wikis.
The way things work when starting the game are that the game contacts the server like asking for permission to run as well as to check the local conditions stored on the computer to see if the game will still activate them. Firstly, the game secretly opens some site to send your computer's IP to the developer's server which he can use that collection to alter or disable the game based on the conditions downloaded secretly to. Secondly, the game checks the Google Search history on your computer as well as to alter the registry without your consent. Lastly, there's the API call for raw HDD access to see if you try to hack, mod or even cheat in the game. Of course, cheats and hacks are more or less bad in video gaming but to go against modding is another question. If you get caught searching for hacks or cheats for this fanmade game, there's a chance that the game will close the browser window itself. Not to mention that other things will be modified and activated.
The only way to undo this bullshit is to contact the developer and prove that you are innocent and your computer will be whitelisted. Basically from the beginning, the game contacts the server and the server does something to the game data and further technical actions will be done to the game and your computer if you plan to look up hacks, cheats or mods for the game online. I guess that some of the stuffs are activated from the server or whatnot so the chances of reverse engineering this like trying to take out all the bullshit are difficult. I don't know if doing OS re-install or System Restore is going to help revert the computer back to the pre-infection phase or not.
Since the developer is situated in Taiwan, there wasn't any excuse not to use the English language and English voice acting. I wonder where did he learn Japanese from if that's the case? Also, the team is getting new developers for this fanmade game although I don't know if there will be promises to take out all that bullshit.
Speaking of Google Search history, I'm not sure if other search engines will be affected by that game like searching the same things on Bing, Duckduckgo, etc. but it is wrong to violate people's privacy through data collection, system monitoring and other stuffs.
In my opinion, the privacy violation just because the sprites are stolen or whatnot is akin to a cyber-crime. Not to mention the use of Japanese language along with Japanese voice acting had already made the developer look like a radicalized fan of the franchise. There are sprite-sheets taken from the game and posted to Deviantart so that anyone can use them without any worry although they are ripped from the older version of the game. One interesting discovery, some of the sprite-sheets contain sprites taken from other games as well like the giant fire shield-like bomb effect from Cave's Progear.
If there's a controversial side of a fanbase in which some of the fans had committed some crimes over a particular game franchise, it's probably the S***c franchise or perhaps those famous AAA game franchises. There was already a case like that 4 years ago over S***c Boom's release although the imprisonment of the fan who damaged the Gamestop store displays of that game wasn't enough or some sort and he also caused similar trouble at Walmart like using the same spray there over being banned from visiting the store again or something. Even as a fan of the franchise you like, it's best that you behave yourself like a decent person. It's rare for anyone to tell you to behave yourself over a particular stuff or place.
