Eli5 How do games with anti piracy detection know the game is being pirated?

Question

Saw a list of games where certain events trigger when the game detects the game is pirated and wondering how this is detected. Ex: Earthbound

In: 13

Answer 1

Playstation had an i trresting approch.
They put a “wobbly” track onto the disk. While their drive could measure that wobble, normal drives would just compensate it. So burned disks might have the exact data written to them, but because that track would be “perfect”, the Playstation could detect that it was a illegitimate copy.