[The Omniverse - Abyssal Hardware Manufacturing Floor]
The manufacturing floor of Abyssal Hardware was a continent-sized factory of sparking mythril and automated assembly lines. Millions of Stamina Meters and turnstiles were being pressed, boxed, and shipped to franchised dungeons across the Omniverse.
Valerius, the celestial CEO of Abyssal Hardware, stood over a holographic analytics table, his four arms resting heavily on the glass. He looked exhausted.
Victor Thorne walked onto the factory floor, his midnight-blue suit perfectly cutting through the industrial smog.
"Quarterly hardware orders are down eighteen percent, Valerius," Victor stated smoothly, taking a slow sip of his black coffee. "Explain the leak in our sales funnel."
"Piracy, Principal Thorne," Valerius sighed, pulling up a holographic projection of a rogue faction of hooded artificers. "A decentralized group calling themselves the 'Open-Source Arcanists'. They managed to reverse-engineer our physical turnstiles and Stamina Meters. They are mass-producing cheap, counterfeit knock-offs and distributing the blueprints for free on the astral web."
Princess Ignis, acting as Corporate Security, ignited her broadsword. "I'll track their IP addresses! We will burn their rogue forges to the ground!"
"Physical retaliation against a decentralized network is a logistical nightmare, Ignis," Victor checked his gold pocket watch. "You cut off one head, three more anonymous developers fork the code. We don't fight pirates with swords. We fight them with software."
Victor turned to the factory's primary control terminal and tapped his gold-nibbed pen against the glass.
"The pirates successfully copied your hardware, Valerius. But hardware is just metal," Victor explained, his Tycoon's Aura humming with absolute malice. "To calculate the stamina drain, those counterfeit traps still have to secretly ping the Abyssal Cloud servers to access the combat algorithms."
Victor slashed his pen across the Tycoon's Ledger, initiating a massive, Omniversal firmware update.
"I am officially implementing Always-Online DRM—Digital Rights Management," Victor declared softly. "Effective immediately, our cloud servers will require a proprietary cryptographic handshake every ten seconds to verify that the hardware is an authentic Abyssal product."
"And if the counterfeit traps fail the handshake?" Valerius asked, his eyes widening.
"Then the server triggers the Anti-Tamper protocol," Victor smiled a ruthless, calculating smile.
Across the Omniverse, thousands of rival gods and cheap dungeon masters had installed the free, pirated traps to save money. The moment Victor pushed the update, every single counterfeit trap failed the server authentication.
Instantly, the pirated turnstiles superheated. The stolen Stamina Meters violently detonated, melting the obsidian walls and collapsing the rival dungeons into piles of molten rubble, trapping the cheap gods inside their own ruined real estate.
"Piracy is no longer a lost sale," Victor checked his Rolex as the live feeds of exploding dungeons rolled in. "It is an automated demolition. Let's see them open-source that."