RIP Denuvo: Resident Evil 7 Cracked In Five Days
from the on-to-the-next-one dept
The Denuvo saga has been impressive on a couple of levels. The DRM software's public cycle was notable first in that game-cracking groups, notorious for their confidence in their own abilities, initially sounded the alarm over Denuvo's status as an anti-piracy unicorn that would never be broken and would lead to the end of software piracy. That happened in January of 2016. By August, Denuvo was being broken by other cracking groups. By the time winter rolled around, game developers, including developers of AAA titles, were pushing out quiet updates to games to remove Denuvo from their software entirely. Denuvo's makers, meanwhile, spun this as a success story, suggesting that developers were chiefly using Denuvo to protect games during the initial release cycle and then removing it afterwards.
But that thin thread of relevancy appears to have snapped, relegating Denuvo to the same scrap pile as every other form of DRM ever tried, now that a cracking group has successfully cracked a Denuvo-protected game in five days' time.
Yesterday, just five days after its January 24th retail date, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard was cracked by CPY. The self-proclaimed Italian group placed RE7 on a so-called top site, with the ‘piracy pyramid‘ doing the rest of the work by cascading it to torrent sites in a matter of minutes. Currently, tens of thousands of pirates are grabbing the 23GB download.
So, that protected release window has shrunk to just under a week. Whatever the cost to implement Denuvo in a game, those five days can't make it worth the price of admission.
Now, some will point out, as does the TorrentFreak post, that there are still un-cracked Denuvo-protected games on the market. And that's absolutely true. But also true is that the trend for the efficacy of Denuvo DRM only travels in one direction and not a good one for those looking to the software as a way to end the scourge of video game piracy. When we begin measuring the effectiveness of DRM in days, or even when we do so in weeks, it's clear the only logical action for developers that used it is to rage-quit the DRM entirely and move on.
Particularly when that same DRM, so ineffective at stopping piracy, proves to be impressively effective at pissing off real customers.
Some fans have complained that Denuvo is unwieldy and annoying. It forces games to be dependent on third-party activation servers and makes certain types of modding impossible. Publishers use the program regardless, in hopes of boosting game sales by rendering piracy more difficult.
And now that it's no longer serving that purpose, it's time it was dropped from use. The good news for those of us who want to see a thriving games market is that Resident Evil 7, because the reviews have been quite positive, is selling quite well. Even with it having been cracked in five days' time. Because piracy isn't a barrier to success, nevermind one worth annoying legitimate customers over.
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Filed Under: denuvo, drm, resident evil 7
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Control
If they make the game, they're entitled to sell it for a fair price. On multi-player games there's even a certain degree to which they should aim to control the experience.
But DRMs and copy protections were only ever means of control. Why else would these companies have kept paying even 1c for protection software when they were so ineffective that the games showed up online days or weeks before launch? Why double and triple down with draconian online schemes and limited activations when a crack was just a few clicks away, even if you had bought the game?
Denuvo's goals were no different and I'm happy it can be gotten rid of. If for nothing else, the goal of preserving these games for the future makes that worth it. Because publishers have shown, time and again, they don't care that the DRM on the game you bought 10 years ago can no longer talk to the servers it needs, among other examples.
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Random, per copy changes to the code make breaking it easier
That only works if the crackers only have one copy of the game!
P.S. The correct word isn't CONTROL, it's MEGALOMANIA or NARCISSISM.
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Re: Random, per copy changes to the code make breaking it easier
From the Arstechnica article:
Denuvo copy-protection relies on specific triggers inserted into the executable game code, and those triggers are placed differently in each protected game.
My read on it was that the 'random' bit to the code didn't differ between copies of a particular game, but between different games. In that case knowing where the code was buried in Game A won't do the ones cracking it much good for Game B, as they need to start the search over each time.
On the other hand, once they have a good idea of the code they're looking for then the search should take less and less time each time it's done, as it becomes easier to spot it, which may explain how RE7 was cracked so quickly, plenty of practice on the part of those DRM hunting.
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Re: Re: Random, per copy changes to the code make breaking it easier
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Welcome to the family, son!
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Re:
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Lol
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Re: Lol
"Also piracy is as big on the consoles as it is on the PC"
Citation needed.
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Re: Re: Lol
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Re: Re: Re: Lol
In my experience, piracy is a lot lower on modern consoles since they're so closely tied into paid for online platforms and both Sony and Microsoft make sweeping account bans for modded consoles. Some people do pirate, and I've known people to have 2 consoles for this reason (an extra one so that they can pirate without being kicked off their beloved CoD account). But, most people don't seem to bother with that.
Generally speaking, PCs will have higher rates of piracy because they're an open platform where people are encouraged to mod their systems, compared to consoles where they're discouraged and locked down. You're free to disagree here, but if you're not basing your opinion on up-to-date evidence, I don't think you're correct.
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I wonder how many of those are actually lost sales, compared to the people who were waiting until reviews came out (since the last one was rubbish), waiting for the inevitable discounts or waiting till they can afford to upgrade to a PS4 Pro for the VR (i.e. not wanting to buy the game twice but not wanting to buy the potentially inferior one first). Plus, the people who won't buy a Denuvo infected game to begin with.
As always, there's plenty of factors that go into potential lost sales, but they obsess over the one they can pretend to be beyond their direct control.
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Re: Re:
Doesn't count.
Much like record breaking theater profits it doesn't matter how much something made with the existence of piracy, because clearly were it not for piracy every game, movie and song would be bringing in quadrillions of dollars each.
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oh yeah?
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Denuvo -- The Game
So at least from one perspective, they were giving the gift of a second 'free' game with each copy they sold! The winner gets bragging rights, and Denuvo's cash cow gets slain... talk about high steaks (sorry, I couldn't help myself).
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no worries
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There's only one thing left for Denuvo to do...
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https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/02/denuvo-our-cracked-re7-protection-is-still-better-than -nothing/
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Re:
Most people don't care, or are even aware of DRM, no... right until the server goes down and their 'single player' game can't start, or something happens and their paid for copy is tagged as a pirated one and refuses to work, or the DRM causes their game to not work in some other way, at which point they get to learn about the wonders of DRM the hard way, and getting them to pay the next time becomes that much harder.
After all, if they're going to be treated like a criminal even after paying, then why pay in the first place?
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Great Game of Wits.
I think this is fun and exciting. I realize there are tens if a hundred and tens of millions of dollars at stake, but these are the things I need to know.
I don't know about the rest of you'z... :)
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