Denuvo Responds: Five Days Is Better Than No Days, Amirite?

from the math dept

It certainly looks for all the world like Denuvo is unraveling as a valid option for DRM in video games. The software, once described as the final solution to piracy, has had its defenses cracked in time intervals following an exponentially shorter curve. For how long it would take to crack a Denuvo-protected video game, reality went from "never", to "months", to "less months" in the case of the latest Doom game. After Doom was cracked, and after the developer removed Denuvo from the software via a patch, the makers of Denuvo spun it as a victory, stating that developers were protecting their games during the early release window and then removing it later.

But then Resident Evil 7, protected by Denuvo, was cracked in under a week's time. With its spin halted by this new reality, Denuvo's response has changed slightly to: hey, it could be worse!

Now, Denuvo is defending its "Anti-Tamper" technology, saying it's still the best copy protection currently available.

"It's correct that the title in question was cracked some days after release," Denuvo Marketing Director Thomas Goebl told Eurogamer. That said, "Given the fact that every unprotected title is cracked on the day of release—as well as every update of games—our solution made a difference for this title."

It's a response as bold as it is simple: five is a number greater than zero. And, hey, that's true. Every positive number is greater than zero. Like, oh I don't know, the cost of Denuvo licensing being greater than the zero it costs to not implement it at all. If we're going to boil this all down to simple math equations, it seems to me the most important equation should be is X greater than or equal to Y, with X being the amount of money a few days of DRM protection provides and Y being the cost of using Denuvo DRM. With a cracking window short enough that I can count the number of days it takes on one hand, it strains the mind to understand how X could possibly be greater than Y.

And keep in mind that Denuvo prefaced this by stating that its DRM was the best on the market. And that's true! But that doesn't say anything positive for the value of Denuvo, while at the same time telling game companies all they should need to know about the value of DRM in general: it doesn't work. And not only does it not work, but you don't get your money back after it fails to do its job.

Goebl did deny earlier reports that publishers were being issued refunds after their Denuvo-protected games had been cracked. "We do not have any deals in place that offer refunds if a game is cracked within a specific time frame," the company told Eurogamer.

Hey, at least they're being upfront about it. Game developers can buy a thing that doesn't work and doesn't come with a refund, or they could notice that Resident Evil 7 continues to sell very, very well, piracy and all.

Filed Under: cracked, denuvo, drm

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.

Filed Under: denuvo, drm, resident evil 7

Denuvo Spins Doom Dropping Its DRM Into A Victory Dance

from the managing-expectations dept

The speed with which the prevailing opinion of Denuvo, the DRM unicorn de jour, has changed has been nearly enough to make one's head spin. It was only at the start of 2016 that the software was being rolled out en masse by many game publishers, leading some normally bombastic cracking groups to predict that the video game industry had finally found its final solution to piracy. That lasted until roughly the middle months of the year, when several games using the DRM were cracked. While Denuvo's makers remained fairly silent, the opinion of it shifted from "final solution" to "hey, it's still the hardest DRM to crack." Cracking groups that typically measure their work in weeks were finding cracking Denuvo to be a project measured in months. That likely explained why so many big-ticket games still used it. Until, somewhat suddenly, multiple big-name games began dropping Denuvo from their code via patches and updates. The latest example of this was Doom silently nixing Denuvo, with id Software not even referencing the move in its patch notes.

And so the speculation began as to what was going on. Some said the game makers were finally realizing that DRM is pretty much useless at everything other than being a minor inconvenience for cracking groups and a major inconvenience for many legitimate customers. Others suggested that perhaps Denuvo offered some kind of money-back deal if a game using it was cracked within a certain time-frame. Still others claimed that publishers were only using the DRM during the initial release window of the game to protect it during the most crucial sales period, and then dropping it afterwards.

Denuvo, just recently, publicly endorsed the last theory.

“The simple reason why Denuvo Anti Tamper was removed from Doom was because it had accomplished its purpose by keeping the game safe from piracy during the initial sales window,” Denuvo’s Robert Hernandez said to me in an email. “The protection on Doom held up for nearly four months, which is an impressive accomplishment for such a high-profile game.”

Hernandez also insisted there is nothing like a money-back program if a game using Denuvo is cracked. And perhaps he's correct about why these games are suddenly dropping the DRM, although it should be clear that this theory is the best one available for Denuvo's business. The other two theories mean Denuvo is a failure. At least the idea that game publishers are using it during the initial release window allows the company to claim it's still providing a benefit to publishers.

But for how long? Given the precipitous drop in the posturing around Denuvo from "un-crackable" to "hey, we kept the game safe from piracy for a couple of months", it's reasonable to wonder why that downward trend shouldn't continue in that direction. Unless the company has some serious tricks up its corporate sleeve, it's not like cracking times are going get longer rather than shorter.

And the bigger question is one of math. If Denuvo carries negatives in its use, as its being dropped by several games clearly suggests, are those negatives really made up for by a couple of month's worth of protection? At four months, perhaps id Software thought it was. But if that protection window shrinks, there is going to be a line which, once crossed, makes Denuvo more trouble than its worth. You know, like every other DRM ever created. Denuvo's business still relies on its software being a unicorn, although one it already acknowledges has a horn much less shiny than originally believed.

Filed Under: copyright, cracking, denuvo, drm

Like Flies: Doom The Latest Game To Remove Denuvo Via Patch

from the hmmmm dept

One or two instances can be outliers, but any more than that and it's a trend. And there is now indeed a trend among video game companies for removing Denuvo, the DRM once thought to be the industry's final solution to piracy. As the DRM software has indeed been proven crackable, some game makers have begun releasing patches to remove it from their games entirely. Somewhat strangely, Denuvo's removal tends to be absent from the patch notes. Such is the case in the latest example, in which id Software has stripped AAA title Doom of Denuvo.

Theories abound as to what is going on here. There are some who believe these game makers are finally coming around to understanding that DRM is annoying their legitimate customers and no longer stopping piracy. The problem with that theory is that you would think companies like id Software would include the removal of Denuvo in the patch notes if that were the case. It would be a PR boon to be seen as consumer friendly if there were no plans to keep up this annoying DRM arms race any longer.

At the NeoGAF link above, some are suggesting that the new strategy for publishers will be to utilize DRM in the first few months of a game's release and then strip it out once it's been on the market for a while. That way, the companies can combat piracy as best as they can during the critical initial release window and then, I guess, choose to stop annoying their customers months down the road. If this is indeed the strategy, it's a dumb one, as quite a lot of ill will in the public can be generated if/when the DRM breaks the gaming experience for real customers, especially if that happens in that same critical release window. Not to mention that Denuvo in particular cripples the modding community, which often serves as a boon to interest in any particular game.

Still others think that this all has something to do with a money-back guarantee offered by the makers of Denuvo.

There are theories floating around, though. The biggest is a rumor that Denuvo offers developers a money back guarantee if a game is cracked within three months. The (alleged) main stipulation? Developers have to remove the anti-piracy tech first. Given that Inside and Doom have both been cracked, majorly blemishing Denuvo’s vaunted un-crackable reputation, that would certainly explain the removal.

And, if true, it should hopefully dissuade that kind of hubris from developing with other DRM makers in the future.

Which is ultimately the entire point: this is an awful lot of hand-wringing over a technology that has never been proven to work, has been shown time and time again to pain the backsides of legitimate customers, and acts purely as a cost to game developers with no real ROI. Maybe it's time the industry decides it's simply done wasting its own time and money on DRM?

Filed Under: denuvo, doom, drm, video games

Game Developer Updates Game To Remove Denuvo DRM As Fans Cheer

from the better-late-than-never dept

Denuvo, as you will recall, is the name of a modern version of anti-piracy DRM, foretold to be the end of video game piracy, when the reality is that its legend exceeded its capability. While we've begun to see an uptick in stories of game developers actively limiting or excluding the use of DRM in their games, those stories tend not to be about Denuvo DRM. Many have taken this to be an indication of Denuvo's strength and usefulness, even if it isn't 100% effective.

But now we do indeed have a story about a game developer that had initially included Denuvo in its game, only to yank it via a patch at a later date.

Nowadays, most talk of DRM revolves around titles that add the “anti-tamper” tech known as Denuvo, thus preventing piracy of those games. That’s what makes the latest update to side-scrolling puzzle game Inside so unusual: the developers have chosen to do away with Denuvo.

Playdead did not give a reason for the removal of Denuvo in the short patch-notes, though it’s worth noting that the game was also recently released on GOG—which is marketed as a digital storefront that does not believe in DRM.

Which is one of the ways that GOG is most useful. Like a popular candidate on the extreme end of the political spectrum, the success and popularity of GOG serves to yank what might otherwise be a near-uniform desire to use DRM by game developers back to a more reasonable position. If developers see GOG as a good platform for selling their games, even with the site's virulent anti-DRM stance, then it stands to reason that DRM generally isn't worth including in their games. That this is starting to become the calculation for what was supposed to be the DRM unicorn is a positive development, though one wonders just how much money Playdead wasted including it in the first place.

Meanwhile, fans of the game are celebrating Playdead's decision. Some are even actively promoting the game to friends and family, or buying other titles by the studio, all as a result for removing an annoyance to legitimate customers.

Filed Under: denuvo, drm
Companies: gog, playdead

Remember When Cracking Groups Said Denuvo Would End Game Piracy? Yeah, Didn't Happen

from the back-to-the-arms-race dept

As you may recall, earlier this year a well-known hacking group that specializes in cracking PC games made the bold prediction that cracking games would no longer be a thing in another year or two. Contrasting with what seems like the neverending trend concerning DRM in software, 3DM stated that the software industry had apparently found its unicorn in a DRM called Denuvo, which was increasingly elongating the time between a game hitting the market and the crack for it becoming available. A practice that usually took days or weeks was suddenly being measured in months, pushing to a year. 3DM made the case that this amount of time and effort to crack a Denuvo-protected game made the practice too costly and, more importantly, that the DRM software was being updated and getting so good that it might essentially become uncrackable.

This prediction, of course, flew in the face of the history of DRM and the speed with which it has always been defeated, leading me to be more than a bit skeptical of the prediction. Skepticism well-founded, it appears, now that Denuvo appears to have been neutered in the days since.

Early this month, a ‘Scene’ group called CONSPIR4CY properly cracked an iteration of Denuvo that had been protecting Rise of the Tomb Raider (ROTTR). The news had many pirates extremely excited. While undoubtedly a momentous occasion, ROTTR had been released in January, meaning that in theory CONSPIR4CY might have worked on the crack for six or seven months, a lifetime for most pirates. Furthermore, half a year’s head start is huge for the title’s developers in terms of sales, so without doubt Denuvo had done its job.

Yesterday, however, there was a new development which might represent a more worrying chink in Denuvo’s defenses. With a lack of fanfare usually associated with some of the Scene’s more mature groups, CONSPIR4CY (a reported collaboration between the CPY and CODEX groups) released a fully cracked version of puzzle-platformer ‘Inside‘.

Inside, by the way, was released on July 7th, meaning that even if work on the crack had begun on that very day, a Denuvo-protected game had been unlocked in a matter of weeks. It's a return to normal, in other words. Or it will be, if CONSPIR4CY can duplicate this with another recently released game protected by Denuvo software.

So all eyes now turn to the brand new release of Deus Ex Mankind Divided. If that game is quickly cracked by CONSPIR4CY, Denuvo could be coming out in a cold sweat. In the meantime, others are also attempting to dismantle their empire.

At which point the handsome amount of cash these game developers will have paid for Denuvo might as well have been doused in gasoline and lit on fire. This brings us back to my original reaction to 3DM's original prediction that DRM would eventually stamp out piracy: that ain't how arms races work. I was actually hoping that the game industry had found its DRM unicorn, because then we could start getting some solid impact numbers as to how its use might increase sales in the absence of piracy. Unfortunately, Denuvo instead was just another rung on the arms race ladder.

And that brings game publishers back to the question that they have faced for the past twenty or so years: is it worth sinking money into what is at best temporarily-effective DRM, or is that money and effort better spent figuring out how to connect with their fans and giving them reasons, and business models around which, to buy their products?

Filed Under: cracking, denuvo, drm, video games

Game Cracking Group Predicts The End Of Cracking Because Of Better DRM

from the hmm dept

Spend any reasonable amount of time looking through all the posts we've done here on DRM -- digital rights management -- and one theme becomes abundantly clear: the whole thing is an exercise in futility. Far from a blanket solution to video game piracy, DRM instead can be best explained as an arms race between game publishers and the hacking groups that best them at speeds nothing short of remarkable. All, mind you, while mostly annoying legitimate customers of the games the DRM is meant to protect from the pirates that crack them.

But one hacking group out of China is predicting that this trend will cease and that cracking games is about to become a thing of the past. 3DM is a group out of China that is fairly well-known for cracking games that have DRM. The group has recently been suggesting that one form of DRM, called Denuvo, is already much more difficult to break than other iterations of DRM, and even predicts that within two years nobody will be able to crack games any longer.

Just Cause 3 is the current hot potato and despite having released an endless supply of cracks for other titles (and having had success against Denuvo in the past), the cracks (excuse the pun) are beginning to show at 3DM. In a posting on her blog, 3DM forum founder ‘Bird Sister’ (also known as Phoenix) has revealed the frustrations being experienced with Just Cause 3.

“Recently, many people have asked about cracks for ‘Just Cause 3′, so here is a centralized answer to this question. The last stage is too difficult and Jun [cracking guy] nearly gave up, but last Wednesday I encouraged him to continue,” Bird Sister explains. "I still believe that this game can be compromised. But according to current trends in the development of encryption technology, in two years time I’m afraid there will be no free games to play in the world,” she adds.

A grave prediction for those wishing to pirate games to be sure, but how realistic of a prediction is it? Again, it's a claim that is up against a trend that has only moved in one direction. As they say, extraordinary claims must be accompanied by extraordinary evidence and I'm not seeing it here. One game presenting more of a challenge than others thus far doesn't seem like enough to be convincing. We've seen in the past new forms of DRM touted as the end of piracy, and even work for a short while, only to be bested and beaten to the point of their being useless. Should we believe this time it will be different, all because one hacking group claims it to be so?

But, hey, let's say game publishers get their unicorn and Denuvo is the perfect DRM. Let's say it's never beaten, or that it at least changes the game such that piracy is significantly more difficult, cracking takes far longer such that it becomes less attractive, and all the rest. Pretend it happens. Then what?

Well, then the real fun begins, because we're all going to then get a very good look at exactly how important DRM is for the gaming industry and exactly how much piracy hinders the bottom line for game companies. Because if the DRM unicorn exists and the anti-piracy folks are to be believed, well, then all those lost sales will be transformed into paid revenue and the gaming industry had damned well better completely explode in terms of income. Were that not to happen, then DRM would be revealed to be the false god my side of the argument has always claimed it was: fighting a fight not worth fighting. Because the majority of those who would pirate games likely never were potential customers. Because every download isn't a lost sale. And because there are much better methods for a game company to ingratiate itself to gamers, giving them reasons to buy, that DRM doesn't even touch.

Given that the gaming industry is one that has embraced so many new ways of doing business, a DRM unicorn would almost certainly be a step backwards. I actually hope this DRM unicorn exists so we can finally get some impact numbers to work with. I doubt we get the chance, however.

Filed Under: 3dm, china, cracking, denuvo, drm, just cause 3, video games