Funcom Responds Well To Mixup Over Denuvo DRM Resulting In Piracy Of Conan Exiles Game
from the good-guys dept
With the way the past couple of weeks have gone for Denuvo, the DRM that was supposed to end piracy but instead only ended the industry's brief resurgence in faith in DRM, you would be forgiven if you thought this was going to be yet another post about another Denuvo-protected game being cracked and released to the pirating masses. This isn't that kind of story. Instead, it's the story of game publisher Funcom accidentally stripping Denuvo out of the latest build of its early access game, Conan Exiles, and having that be released to the pirating masses.
In Conan Exiles' case, Denuvo Anti-Tamper was temporarily removed - and accidentally. An updated version of the game was suddenly without protection. Denuvo Anti-Tamper returned soon enough, via another update, but not quickly enough. Pirates pounced and the damage was done.
Remember, Conan Exiles isn't solely an online game, which tend to prevent piracy by requiring game versions to match that of the official servers. In Conan Exiles you can host your own worlds and play them alone or with others, or join their private worlds. In other words, a pirate can play the game.
I'm having trouble thinking up a way to construct a more frustrating experience for a game publisher. To have a game not susceptible to server check-ins, to have tried to infuse that game with DRM only to have it stripped in error and released, and to then have that game very much playable by the people you had specifically tried to prohibit via the DRM is like some kind of trifecta from hell for a game publisher. Remember, Nintendo lost its shit comnpletely when its free app was found to be "pirated." You're probably expecting Funcom to be cheesed off at equal or greater levels.
Except, at least from the company's first public statements on the matter, not so much.
"There is unfortunately not much we can do about those who choose to download and play unauthorised copies," Funcom said, "but we hope they make the jump to the official version so they can stay up to date with the latest patches and improvements. Being an Early Access title, there will be a lot of updates going forward!"
It's a nearly perfect response. First, the company admits that piracy is a thing that's going to happen. Then the company makes both a logical case for why fans of the pirated versions have a reason to buy an authorized copy, while maintaining a cool demeanor and enthusiasm that can only ingratiate the publisher to its fans, paying customers or otherwise. And keep in mind that it would be totally understandable if Funcom had a negative emotional response to all of this. But this way is better business.
It may be a little light on the connecting with fans part of the equation, but Funcom has focused on giving those who might pirate the game -- and like it! -- a reason to buy. Well done.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: conan exiles, denuvo, drm, infringement, piracy, reality
Companies: funcom
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Accident... yeah, right
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Accident... yeah, right
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Accident... yeah, right
The console versions go through the 1st Party Certification process that catches the things like that. PC titles generally only rely on internal processes and checks that are easy to bypass. Plus Denuevo is designed to not be noticeable so it isn't obvious if it is running on a build (even if you are looking for it).
Game build pipelines get to be complicated and are often looked after by a lower level engineer. Denuevo wrapping is a separate step in that process and it would be easy to confuse builds if you don't have a good publishing process and tech.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Accident... yeah, right
I am a bit surprised that Funcom is recognizing the value of fighting piracy by updating the game, while still using money on DRM. It seems a bit of an expensive approach for rights management.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Accident... yeah, right
What's special is, that they do a performance evaluation of an exe with debug symbols, to identify functions that aren't performance critical.
The wrapper then targets those functions specifically, so FPS won't suffer from it. That's why Denuvo protected functions are usually those that are tied to starting up the game, loading data and so on.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Accident... yeah, right
As for value, the players willing to play an outdated version are often not likely constumers anyway. Cracking with or without a DRM, so the better protection of value is often updates and bugfixes to the game. Thus the use of DRM is an expense that may delay hacking a bit, but if the game is updated frequently enough, why bother updating the hack and why bother giving the cracker a different challenge?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Accident... yeah, right
They basically released demo (early access, game may change a lot) and game revolving about frequent updates WITH Denuvo that got cracked once won't put in higher priority for CPY than AAA games that aren't cracked yet.
So basically unless there will be easy and fast method to crack Denuvo that's known to more groups, they probably protected their game from cracking by this move.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Accident... yeah, right
As for the FPS comparison approach that takes a lot of time to perform as it won't be obvious. By the time the consumer sees the game (i.e. not a dev build) most FPS slowdowns are worked out as QA finds them and the devs work with the Denuevo team to remove performance issues. I have seen that the Denuevo team is eager to work with the devs to fix performance and crash issues.
Build pipelines often have options for free/clear build outputs. Those builds are normally debug builds for the devs and often run slower due to the debug functions.
I actually know quite a bit about the process with Denuevo but I am still under a NDA so I can only provide limited details in my efforts to clarify things for others.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
(They're not the worst company all around though, they at least make good games that you can buy once instead of getting fucked with "DLC")
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Funcom missed a great opportunity to call it a demo and reap the rewards of releasing one.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Can we get demo CD's back
no as I have said before
it's time to shut the internet down and go back to dialup bbs's
SHUT
IT
DOWN.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
"Jump to the official version"
But if they buy, will they have to deal with DRM? People already have the DRM-free version, and Funcom doesn't mention anything about that.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: "Jump to the official version"
This should make it much much easier for cracking teams to yank the DRM from later builds because a simple compare on these two versions should show you exactly where the DRM is hooked into on the game.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
soo...
And no, I am not joking. I currently refuse to buy any games with this level of DRM in them. I sucks to not play some games with my less and "committed to putting your money where you mouth is" friends but in a way, they still suffer for them having one less friend to play with.
I am working on a game myself... it will be DRM free, I would rather someone pirate it than to not play it at all.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Bravo
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Microcosm
This, in turn, means that there's absolutely NOTHING (aside from maybe contractual things) preventing EVERY game ever released with this crap releasing a patch that simply removes the DRM outright. If it can be omitted "accidentally" then it's trivial to patch it out intentionally.
For what it's worth, The Secret World, another Funcom title, is one of the best MMO's I've ever played. The controls are an even split between WoW and TERA (tab targeting but with active dodging) and the setting is the absolute best take on Lovecraftian Horror I've literally ever seen in a video game. If you feel like supporting them without installing this DRM crap on your system, give TSW a try.
tl;dr the best way to make your game pirate-proof is to just make it so awesome people feel guilty not buying it. Same thing as everything else on Techdirt: Just Make A Better Product, Stupid.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I, personally, dont care about piracy, and it does nothing for my interests to burden me with some DRM crap.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]