Unpatched version of Demon Souls gets harder the more you die. I actually thought that is cool.

- Game uses weird key combinations for simple actions, for example Alt + Tab + F5 to walk forward.
- You have to find them out on yourself, because developer thinks it adds to the fun
- Game has an aging system that makes your character weaker at higher age. Oh, wait....

Coming up with ideas for the first post was actually a little difficult, because it seems that, no matter how atrocious an idea is, it seems that there's *some* game that actually implements it. For example:

* Game randomly (intentionally) deletes your characters. The NES versions of Wizardry 1-3 actually do that (particularly on the cave floor of Knight of Diamonds); trigger a teleport trap, and there is a chance that you will be teleported into solid rock and your characters lost forever. Do you think that's fair? (I am glad Elminage Gothic doesn't autosave, because it is possible for an enemy's Miracle spell to send your party into solid rock, and I have had that happen (in an ambush) more than once.)

One more idea:

* Game deletes your save file at the start of the final dungeon. In other words, once you enter the final dungeon, if you die you have to start the entire game over from the beginning. Now, do this in a long game (20+ hours), and put traps in the final dungeon that will kill an unprepared (or unaware) player, and you now have a case of bad game design that *will* make your players quit the game. (Ninja Gaiden did this in a smaller scale; if you die during the final boss rush, you have to start back all the way at 6-1 (7-1 in Ninja Gaiden 2); not all the way at the beginning, but you have to replay more of the game than if you died during the level just *before* the final boss.)

Medal of Honor Kart Racing
Race through such exciting locations as Treblinka, Pearl Harbor, Dresden, Bataan, Nanking, Nagasaki and Omaha Beach -- but watch out for blood slicks!

Yes. Yes, it did. I have a physical copy, thank goodness for patches.

I recall Myth 2 and the original retail Half-life having similar issues, wiping out the parent directory of your game installation in some cases (could be that if you simply installed it to a non-default place).

There's always this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUc4GkMN1qs

It is a bit like in Team Fortress 2: whenever someone dies, they call the other one a "n00b!". Doesn't it make you look bad if a noob (= first time player) is able to kill you? Just like Bond beats the guy who has actually designed the game himself? How embarrassing...

Another thing could be that the computer AI can also save their game and savescum. So when you think you have already beaten a boss or finished a mission... BOOM! the game goes back to an earlier state where you had not won yet. Over and over again. So take that, you save-scumming human being! Taste your own medicine!

Here's one:

An anti-cheat technology that frequently flags legitimate activities as cheating. Even worse, have it apply in single player as well, and anytime a player decides to do anything even remotely clever, she gets banned from her own game. Also, no option to turn this off.

Cool one. I thought of one too:

Game introduces a major character who is from Hong Kong (and I mean specifically Hong Kong, not mainland China) and said character then either:
_ Gets diarrhea, particulalry if done in a studpid way (like by eating unwashed lettuce), or
_ Buys a talking dog to have as a pet.

That's often how demo/trial versions work, although I think you mean "pay for the game up front, then get 'ransomwared' to continue."

How about this:

You can play the game for a time, but then it encrypts your files and you have to send the game's developer a bitcoin to get your files back. (In other words, the game becomes real ransomware, encrypting files that are unrelated to the game.) Bonus points if the game also encrypts files on network shares and shreds the originals to make them difficult to recover.

How long do you think it will be until somebody actually makes this sort of trojan horse game/ransomware?

But don't? I'd say they have most of it figured out already; certainly enough to a level where there is an example of everything talked about in this thread in some game or another. I'm adding some, and they have been done already.

-Autosaves that trigger regardless of other stuff in the game, like an autosave that saves the game just as you alert an enemy and force you to play from that point after losing even though it would have been easier to play without alerted enemies.

-Removing stuff from their game because people whine about it even though it was a part of the game and not a bug.

-Changing the anticheat program in an update so it changes from one you trusted to one that looks shady.

-Token co-op where they just add in more enemies, make them spongier and call it co-op.

-Not having a server browser for MP games.

-Mapping more than one thing to one key.

EDIT: mistook this for the other thread here : https://www.gog.com/forum/general/evil_things_game_developers_could_do_and_actually_did/page1

Sounds like GTA V. I've read some posts by people that clain to have been banned for using mods in single player mode.

How about (going back on topic here):

Autosaves that specifically save whenever you are at low health or otherwise in danger. (In other words, instead of triggering regardless of other stuff, it specifically triggers at the worst possible moment. In other words, instead of being just poor design, it's malicious design.) Also, make it so that there's only one save slot, so the autosave wipes out your carefully placed manual save.

I could point out that Ultima 3 actually autosaves whenever somebody in the party dies.


I was thinking of something worse; have a reasonable strategy trigger the ban. For example, something like using an ice weapon on a fire enemy could trigger such a ban.

In an online game (especially an MMO or MOBA), automatically ban anyone deemed to be using anything other than the optimal strategy. The algorithm used to determine the acceptable strategy will be constantly changing, and will at no point be published or explained.

Actually, does it count as evil if it just saves the other players the bother of doing it themselves?