Denuvo DRM has been cracked... again

[IceForce]

So, this is basically just a follow-up to the following news story:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.932488-Will-DRM-Finally-Beat-Piracy-Notorious-Cracking-Forum-Says-Yes

Long story short: A new(ish) type of DRM called Denuvo Anti-Tamper was used in a number of fairly recent PC games, including Rise of the Tomb Raider, Doom, Just Cause 3, Far Cry Primal, and others.
This DRM did its job so well, that crackers were apparently stymied by it and were unable to crack it. Ergo, there were no 'pirated versions' of these games anywhere to be found.

That is, until now.

Rise of the Tomb Raider was the first one to be cracked in just the last couple of days or so, and all the other games have likewise followed suit.

Source here: https://torrentfreak.com/denuvo-properly-cracked-rise-of-the-tomb-raider-first-victim-160809/
Disclaimer: (mainly for the moderators' benefit), the above site is a legit news site and NOT a site that links to illegal content. In fact, it's exactly the same site used as the source in the official Escapist news article linked at the top of this post.


Now, this isn't the first time Denuvo has been cracked; an older version of it (that was presumably easier to break through) was used in Dragon Age: Inquisition and a couple of other games. In those examples it only delayed the pirates by about a month.
This time, with this latest cracking, it's delayed the pirates by about 6 months.

So anyway, that's the story in a nutshell, and now you can post your thoughts on it.

Also, please respect the forum rules when posting in this thread. This is Off-Topic, not the Wild West. Discuss the wider *ramifications* of this topic, and avoid talking about your personal experiences with piracy, and hopefully everything should be fine. Thanks!

 

[Pirate Of PC Master race]

According to some sources that I do not trust, it is a mere bypass of the Denuvo.

However, it should be still noted that end result itself remains the same. The game may become playable.

It was only matter of time of course. No DRM remains uncracked forever. It is endless war...

 

[Einspanner]

//i.imgur.com/8tL0KqO.gif

Also everything that slo said.

 

[chadachada123]

Huh. Cool. I always like seeing problem solvers find a solution to a particularly difficult problem. Not because I want to see piracy, but because I like to see hubris being brought down to earth.

Like rooting for the iceberg because so-and-so said the Titanic was unsinkable.

Any challenge like that ought to be refuted on principle.

I have to wonder about the kind of impulsive person that would seriously buy a game just because they couldn't pirate it. Does such a person even exist? Or is Denuvo and the like just a burning money pit?

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

According to some sources that I do not trust, it is a mere bypass of the Denuvo.

However, it should be still noted that end result itself remains the same. The game may become playable.

It was only matter of time of course. No DRM remains uncracked forever. It is endless war...

It would end if publishers quit being worried about people they're likely never going to get money from anyways. They're not actually stopping piracy, they're actively driving people to it, because they're making people angry with the DRM and those people are going "well screw you (insert publisher), I just wait for the cracked version!". The only way to hamper piracy is to make getting legitimate copies easier, so that pirating becomes the more incontinent method, iTunes taught that to the music industry... Who then failed to learn the lesson in the long run.

Seems like whenever there's a large scale of money moving, big business starts to worry about the pennies they were never going to get in the first place.

To be clear: I am not condoning piracy, I'm stating simply that we're never going to stop it, while the restrictions companies use to try to stop it just make people unwilling to pay for whatever company's stuff. So all the DRM actively drives people with less disposable income to piracy... Because who wants to give money to a company that is actively giving you the middle finger? Some of the people who say no money for whatever company, will still want the product, and will still get it illicitly. So the DRM battle is just companies making more people look to illicit sources. It's not hard to understand, I wish companies would stop pinching pennies and actually fight piracy the sensible way, make getting the product and using it really simple, easy, and convenient. Like Good Old Games does, because they understand they're not going to stop the piracy, so they incentive buying the product, instead of punishing the consumer for the actions of pirates.

 

[Tayh]

There has to be a better way to do things than this, and get more money out of it.

It's called GoG.com.
But that won't happen as long as people keep fanatically worshipping their DRM Messiah(steam & gaben).

OT: Wasn't really interested in those games. Still, applaud the pirates for giving the middlefinger to yet another DRM scheme.

 

[FalloutJack]

Not that I'm surprised, but then I gotta ask why people would crack Doom? It's definitely worth the actual money. Like...principles should held up high on that one.

 

[chadachada123]

Not that I'm surprised, but then I gotta ask why people woulc crack Doom? It's definitely worth the actual money. Like...principles should held up high on that one.

I can sympathize, because all of the promotional material was awful and completely misrepresented the gameplay. On top of that, they apparently released a demo...of the first level, which is significantly slower than later levels.

Had I not played it at a friend's house, I'd probably be stuck thinking that it was "okay" with no legitimate way to find out the truth.

Actually, because of Denuvo, the hivemind opinion of 8/v/ is that Doom 4 is shit, and anyone that claims otherwise must be a shill or literal child. Despite very few of them actually playing the game. Stupid, yes, but a natural byproduct of the aforementioned awful promo footage/demo combined with not being able to try it (for 'free').

 

[FalloutJack]

Not that I'm surprised, but then I gotta ask why people woulc crack Doom? It's definitely worth the actual money. Like...principles should held up high on that one.

I can sympathize, because all of the promotional material was awful and completely misrepresented the gameplay. On top of that, they apparently released a demo...of the first level, which is significantly slower than later levels.

Had I not played it at a friend's house, I'd probably be stuck thinking that it was "okay" with no legitimate way to find out the truth.

Actually, because of Denuvo, the hivemind opinion of 8/v/ is that Doom 4 is shit, and anyone that claims otherwise must be a shill or literal child. Despite very few of them actually playing the game. Stupid, yes, but a natural byproduct of the aforementioned awful promo footage/demo combined with not being able to try it (for 'free').

So, these people you speak of have the spoiled child demeanor of those shits from No Mutants Allowed who give other Fallout fans that DON'T throw tantrums a bad name?

 

[chadachada123]

I can sympathize, because all of the promotional material was awful and completely misrepresented the gameplay. On top of that, they apparently released a demo...of the first level, which is significantly slower than later levels.

Had I not played it at a friend's house, I'd probably be stuck thinking that it was "okay" with no legitimate way to find out the truth.

Actually, because of Denuvo, the hivemind opinion of 8/v/ is that Doom 4 is shit, and anyone that claims otherwise must be a shill or literal child. Despite very few of them actually playing the game. Stupid, yes, but a natural byproduct of the aforementioned awful promo footage/demo combined with not being able to try it (for 'free').

So, these people you speak of have the spoiled child demeanor of those shits from No Mutants Allowed who give other Fallout fans who DON'T throw tantrums a bad name?

Twelve seconds of Google suggests yes. 8/v/ as a whole asserts that Doom 4 is a slow, boring cash-in that pales in comparison to even Doom 3, let alone the god-on-high that is Doom classic. Despite never actually playing it.

God forbid you try to discuss the game there unless it's to say something negative. What's strange is that most games, Call of Duty aside, aren't treated with anywhere near that amount of certainty and negativity. But then, that's the nature of insulated communities, I suppose.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

This is actually the first time that it was properly cracked. Previous "cracks" were all exploits based on bypassing Denuvo. This time hackers managed to track down every Denuvo trigger and stop it from executing. It's similar to old school cracks of completely removing protection. But Denuvo is not actually DRM. It's DRM armor. It's there to protect the protection.

Some people think that this will lead to other Denuvo games being cracked soon too. Maybe, maybe not. What people don't understand is that these hacker groups aren't in this for the pirates, they're in it for the glory of being the first and the best to crack a new system. It's not like they're going to share their findings and methods with other groups. So far there's only been one group that managed to completely remove a similar anti-tamper method from GTA V. Other "cracks" were just exploits of some sort.

There's no telling how long ago these guys started on this crack and how long it actually took them or if they can do it again. Then there's the fact that guys behind Denuvo can probably update their protection and make it harder once again. Maybe, we don't know. It depends on what these hackers actually discovered. If they managed to fully understand how Denuvo works and if they now know exactly what to look for, if they have the tools to somewhat automate the process of finding and patching the triggers then they probably can crack other games as well. Maybe. But I doubt that anyone here knows exactly how Denuvo works and how hackers do what they do. So it's all speculation at this point. But no protection lasts forever.

Anyway, as fascinating as all this is, I hope Denuvo continues to exist for a while. If for no other reason then to prove the publishers that piracy has nothing to do with their sales. I was initially against Denuvo because I thought that it was behind those long ass loading times in games, but it turns out that was just EA's shitty Frostbite engine. MGS V loads like a champ in 3 seconds. And also because the guys behind Denuvo are the same guys behind the godawful system breaking SecuROM. So for a while I bought into that narrative that it kills SSD's. That was pure fabrication. Denuvo so far doesn't do jack shit to your system. It's fine.
In principle I'm still against it because it protects DRM and DRM is the devil.

My only fear is that if hackers become more proficient at cracking this, Denuvo will introduce some fucked up update that will have a negative impact on performance. If that happens then we will once again live in the world where pirates get a better product than paying customers. And who the fuck wants to go through that again?