Latest version of the Denuvo anti-tamper tech cracked in less than five days

[neoglow]

I'm no expert but as I understand it, for every bit of code written to enable something, another bit of code can be written to disable it or vice versa.

Nothing - especially in the gaming world - is safe and as another person said above, all these DRMs, anti this, anti that just encourages hackers to crack it. It's like a challange so whilst Denuvo may work for a short time, ultimately it will be hacked and as hackers get better and more accustomed to Denuvo games will be cracked in no time at all. Rendering Denuvo useless like all other forms of DRM, but what do us punters know right?!

Last year Doom remained uncracked for a short time but that didn't last long and once it was cracked the devs removed Denuvo from the game.

 

[stewski]

Piracy is a difficult one, I understand that people want paying for their work.
I also think technical locks on media are unlikely to increase overall usage or payment.

Piracy is an issue but based on personal experience people I know (for music primarily) who have allocated far more of their income to collecting / going to gigs and merchandise than me have also partaken in piracy for discovery in a way that I haven't.

It is certainly not clear that each act of piracy = a lost sale
it is clear (to me) that effective technological locks and walled eco systems are likely to move me away from one medium of entertainment and towards another.

 

[Smokey Deza]

People that pirate would never buy the game, it's no lost business.

I think this is mostly true. Some pirates will cave but those extra sales will mostly just be paying for the Denuvo investment anyway.

They just shouldn't bother and put the effort into other areas.

Mods sell games. They don't often work with cracked EXEs, so pirates have to buy the game legit if they want to use them.

 

[pitkin]

When I were a lad,some 30 plus years ago, they used to say games were so expensive because of lost sales from piracy.
If there was no piracy or 'competition' at all, I wonder if that statement would really be true? Or would it go the other way?

I think the worst thing about copy protection, is that todays games may be totally unplayable in the future if they aren't cracked. For all us retro gamers out there, playing on our Windows 10 emulators in 20 years time, this could be a problem.

 

[V4NT0M]

Music DRM causes a lot more problems than game DRM for genuine users.

I think the major truth is that a lot of people who pirate the game would actually buy the game if it fell within their level of worth.

Why bother risking all kinds of malware to download a game from a torrent when you can get it for £5?

 

[neoglow]

Something that annoys me is platforms like steam force updates on a game in order to play unless you are in off line mode. When devs update their games they either intentionally or unintentionally break mods that have been created by the community. Before now I have had to resort to 'acquiring' an older version of a game in order to play with a particular mod that I like.

 

[MikeTheNative]

Something that annoys me is platforms like steam force updates on a game in order to play unless you are in off line mode. When devs update their games they either intentionally or unintentionally break mods that have been created by the community. Before now I have had to resort to 'acquiring' an older version of a game in order to play with a particular mod that I like.

I don't think you can call it prating when you have purchased the game legally somewhere else. I once bought Rugby 08 off EA's download service(before origin), a few years later after a reformat I go there to re-download it and I can't find it on the store anywhere. It was in my account under orders but the link went nowhere. After realising that I could not download the game I purchased I had to pirate it in the end.

 

[DrToffnar]

What issues though? I keep hearing this all the time about Denuvo. Resident evil ran excellent and am sure I have played other games using this software.

Pirates making up excuses is all am seeing

I can appreciate points on both sides, but definitely fall more on this side of the discussion. Don't know that much about piracy and even less about DRM systems and how they're implemented, but I do know that half my friends pirate pretty much everything they can. By that reasoning, you have to assume lost sales somewhere down the line.

If gaming is a hobby and you enjoy it, yet you consistently pirate then you can't really argue against the lost sales point. Plus, I think it's very hard once your in the mind-set of getting stuff for free to then just say, "hey, maybe I'll buy it this time".

 

[malachi]

I don't think you can call it prating when you have purchased the game legally somewhere else. I once bought Rugby 08 off EA's download service(before origin), a few years later after a reformat I go there to re-download it and I can't find it on the store anywhere. It was in my account under orders but the link went nowhere. After realising that I could not download the game I purchased I had to pirate it in the end.

I had the same with the first Crysis. I contacted them and they added it to Origin once I sent them CD key. As I didn't want to be shooting chicken bullets.

 

[Curlyriff]

I never understood why people refuse too buy games with these technologies inside? If it wasn't for this news about RE7 being cracked I would never have known about it using Denuvo

And too say releasing a game without any form of protection would increase sales is madness. This is what cheapskate pirates would love.

I agree with this 100%

People giving it bad rep normally because the game itself had such an issue. Someone stated that games without it that had been pirated work better than with.

I did a little test on this on games I own that I know used Denuvo and saw zero difference between the two.

 

[Curlyriff]

Something that annoys me is platforms like steam force updates on a game in order to play unless you are in off line mode. When devs update their games they either intentionally or unintentionally break mods that have been created by the community. Before now I have had to resort to 'acquiring' an older version of a game in order to play with a particular mod that I like.

Sorry but that is kind of irrelevant. The devs updating their game and taking their time to do so is a positive. It is down to the mod creator to sort it rather than the devs to try and support all unofficial mods that we as a community create.

 

[Curlyriff]

I can appreciate points on both sides, but definitely fall more on this side of the discussion. Don't know that much about piracy and even less about DRM systems and how they're implemented, but I do know that half my friends pirate pretty much everything they can. By that reasoning, you have to assume lost sales somewhere down the line.

If gaming is a hobby and you enjoy it, yet you consistently pirate then you can't really argue against the lost sales point. Plus, I think it's very hard once your in the mind-set of getting stuff for free to then just say, "hey, maybe I'll buy it this time".

Yep and I have download a few cracked games. If I like it I purchase it. I kind of use it to demo things. I normally play it near release to try it but then wait a few months for it to drop in price a little but I will always put back to the devs otherwise they will stop making games.

The **** games just get deleted so they don't loose anyways. With the way steam is now though I don't even bother with the crack although I can try the game for two hours and decided what price I think is fair and either keep it, refund and buy it when I feel it has dropped to a price I am willing or just move on.

No real need to crack unless I don't want to support the industry I love as my past time and thus I don't understand gamers who do such things. DRM I feel is needed of some sort to protect them now we do have ways to easily try games like the steam refund policy.

 

[melmac]

And too say releasing a game without any form of protection would increase sales is madness. This is what cheapskate pirates would love.

I can appreciate points on both sides, but definitely fall more on this side of the discussion. Don't know that much about piracy and even less about DRM systems and how they're implemented, but I do know that half my friends pirate pretty much everything they can. By that reasoning, you have to assume lost sales somewhere down the line.

If gaming is a hobby and you enjoy it, yet you consistently pirate then you can't really argue against the lost sales point. Plus, I think it's very hard once your in the mind-set of getting stuff for free to then just say, "hey, maybe I'll buy it this time".

For me the issue isn't DRM protection interfering with my enjoyment of the game. It's that they are spending huge money trying to stamp out piracy that would be better spent elsewhere.

There are three groups of people,

Group 1: those that pay for every game they buy,
Group 2: those that never pay, or only buy second hand or when the price falls to nearly nothing.
Group 3: those that buy some games, pirate others.

Even if you did come up with an uncrackable game protection system, I am not sure there would be much difference in sales figures. The people in group1 won't be affected. The people in group 2, still won't buy the games new, and group 3, well, they will just buy the games they really want.

 

[TheVoice]

This 100%. Just because they stop people getting it for nothing does not mean they will buy it. Very few will and all this "lost sales" nonsense is just that...nonsense.

Based on what, anecdotal evidence? You'd think that perhaps the companies designing these anti-piracy systems and and the publishers paying for them probably have at least some idea of what percentage of pirated titles would translate to lost sales.

I don't really see anything wrong with preventing people from pirating a game they were never going to buy either.

 

[stewski]

Based on what, anecdotal evidence? You'd think that perhaps the companies designing these anti-piracy systems and and the publishers paying for them probably have at least some idea of what percentage of pirated titles would translate to lost sales.

I don't really see anything wrong with preventing people from pirating a game they were never going to buy either.

As I say I understand the desire to be paid for digital content.

Technical restrictions/limitations are an issue with gaming as a whole in my opinion. I can't imagine a world where it is technically infeasible to play old movies or music on a range of devices and while there may have been fair reasons for the multi platform approach in the early days of digital gaming technology, that situation is becoming less reasonable IMHO. Lack of inter-operability between platforms, potentially harms the value proposition of games when compared to other media. Once you add to that technical restrictions to playing games on the same class of platform, I start to wonder if the industry isn't wasting more money than it could make.

And it isn't only me, there are a number of developers (especially indie but also larger) that are stepping away from it.

 

[Limpnoodle]

took them a year to hack it, still pretty impressive

Games get old we move on, den buy the game for peanuts!!! win win

Honestly if its a good game you will buy it, only game i haven't bought yet is witcher 3 and i feel really bad about it, but i will buy it eventually, not everyone has £20 to blow on a game

Like that minecraft dude said if u cannot afford it then pirate it then pay afterwards, and get a legit copy

 

[Zethor]

Denuvo has worked for some AAA, single player driven games but it's been a waste for indies(Inside being the prime example) and many other games.

I think the developers are better off creating online multiplayer elements that would convince the pirates to buy rather than investing in expensive, failure prone anti-tamper tools.

 

[mid_gen]

Based on what, anecdotal evidence? You'd think that perhaps the companies designing these anti-piracy systems and and the publishers paying for them probably have at least some idea of what percentage of pirated titles would translate to lost sales.

The people with all the data think that paying for anti-piracy tools makes economic sense. It's quite compelling, as much as it would be nice to be able brush off piracy as 'not a lost sale'.

 

[Akagi]

People that pirate would never buy the game, it's no lost business.

They just shouldn't bother and put the effort into other areas.

Not necessarily, there are loads of games I have obtained using "alternative methods" which I have later bought on Steam etc.

 

[Gregster]

The old Amiga days I was very naughty but since moving to pc, I have been genuine. I have even bought a game twice so I can play via steam and not use the cd/dvd. Looking back to when I was bad though, I would have bought the games had I had no alternative, so for me piracy was bad for the publishers.