Dragon Quest V anti-piracy measures make illegitimate gamers wait forever to play

Confused gamers who downloaded illegal copies of the new Dragon Sword V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride on DS, which has just been released in Japan, have flooded internet message boards wondering why their characters are still sitting on the same boat in the game's opening cut-scene hours after starting it up.

It turns out Square Enix has implemented anti-piracy measures to prevent downloaded copies of the game working properly.

"If gamers are playing a pirated copy, the ship from the opening scene will never reach port," said a company spokesperson (as reported by Daily Tech) "This is an anti-piracy measure we decided to implement."

Quite a clever one, too. We like the idea of people who've bagged their copy for free sitting down to play only to get stuck watching a cut-scene for ages. That's time they'll never get back, remember.

Unfortunately, as is usually the case, the hacking community has been on the case and firmware and cheat-based solutions which allow downloaders to get past the anti-piracy measures have apparently already been developed.

Still, if it encourages even just a few misguided souls to paying for their games in future it's been worth it.