Endless Paradigm

ha ha. is there any chance to ignore it?

Yeah, there's been a number of games/apps which have done something like this.

eKusoshisut0 Wrote: [ -> ]Apparently its hard coded into the game. It can probably be patched, but not without breaking core aspects of the game, and the only reason this activates is because the unique meta-data gets changed with a patch / crack.

Doesn't really make a difference.  In the end, there's some switch somewhere which triggers it.  And since there's a switch, it can be nullified.
Instead of spawning a unit, the game could've simply to refused to run instead.  From a cracker's perspective, it's really no different.
(actually, not exactly true - putting the activation later is probably to make it a bit more painful to crack since you can't instantly see whether your attempt succeeded or not, but on the flip side, gives the cracker much more things they can target)

eKusoshisut0 Wrote: [ -> ]Hell it might take them a month or so to find a workaround, but that's long enough that nobody can enjoy playing the game. My bet is it takes them just long enough to hold off the initial wave of piracy / frustrate pirates enough to force people to buy the game.

One belief is that the whole point of DRM is basically this.  To hold off successful crack attempts long enough that it doesn't matter too much any more.

eKusoshisut0 Wrote: [ -> ]Either way, i hope most newer games take this route of fudgeing spoon up if you pirate it. Especially because this is a better alternative to DRM since it doesn't screw over legitimate customers.

Definitely don't like the online activations (assuming that this game doesn't).  Though this is more of a fun way to approach things, and ultimately, from a security standpoint, is about as effective as anything else out there.
Hell, it may even be possible the original developers put this crack up which triggers that, lol.

Actually this reminds me of CoreAVC's DRM.

https://customers.corecodec.com/knowledg...locks.html