Why would a program require a specific minimum number of CPU cores?

Is it possible to write code (or complete software, rather than a piece of code) that won't work properly when run on a CPU that has less than N number of cores? Without checking it explicitly and failing on purpose:

IF (noOfCores < 4) THEN don't run properly on purpose

I'm looking at a game's (Dragon Age: Inquisition ) minimum system requirements, and it states a minimum of a four-core CPU. Many players say it does NOT run on two-core CPU's and EVEN on Intel Core i3s with two physical and two logical cores. And it's NOT a problem of computing power.

From my understanding, threads are completely isolated from the CPU by the OS since that cannot be done.

Just to clear things out:

I am NOT asking "Can I find out the number of CPU cores from code, and fail on purpose?" ... Such code would be ill-intentioned (forces you to buy a more expensive CPU to run a program - without the need of computational power). I am asking that your code, say, has four threads and fails when two threads are run on the same physical core (without explicitly checking system information and purposely failing).

In short, can there be software that requires multiple cores, without needing additional computing power that comes from multiple cores? It would just require N separate physical cores.