Will DRM Finally Beat Piracy? Notorious Cracking Forum Says Yes

[ninja51]

There's a reason why MMO's are notoriously "pirate proof".

The longest time I've put into any MMO was with WoW, about a year. I didn't pay a dime. There's a billion private servers, true, often not perfect working versions of the game, but good enough to have huge player bases and role playing guilds, which I was a part of. They kept up with the expansions too

 

[fenrizz]

To boost sales, all they'd have to do was add a splash screen that said "If you enjoyed this game, please consider purchasing it" and people would be more inclined to do so.

You can't possibly believe that to be true... you seriously think pirates will pay for a game as long as developers... ask nicely?!?

Thanks for the hardest laugh I'm likely to have all month.

You'd be surprised how far you can get with asking nicely.
It's actually pretty effective.

 

[fractal_butterfly]

Meanwhile, CD Project Red is still shoveling their metric shit-ton of cash, that they made with DRM free games.

 

[The Enquirer]

That doesn't really have anything to do with them simply "asking nicely", and more to do with an overall consumer-friendly approach.

A consumer friendly approach such as actually not having DRM in the first place? Though I see what you're saying.

OT: This is just how arms races work. Eventually someone will figure out something new to crack the DRM and learn from it, and companies will try to make it more secure. This process will continue until the majority of companies, as CDPR has learned, to just treat customers well and shockingly enough people may actually be happy to give them money.

 

[Janichsan]

In other news, the crossbow has just been invented. That's it people, pack up your stuff and go home. The arms-race is now over, nothing will ever trump it. History ends today.

I know this is a joke, but the invention of the crossbow basically completely changed the way wars were fought. All of a sudden people with very minimal training could be effective in battle against even hardened veterans. Nothing, not even the gun, changed war as much as crossbows did.

And still, the highly-trained English longbow archers repeatedly kicked the French crossbowmen's asses in Hundred Years' War?

 

[tzimize]

Meanwhile, CD Project Red is still shoveling their metric shit-ton of cash, that they made with DRM free games.

Yep, I bought a ton of games on gog. Most of them I didnt need, and some of them I barely even wanted. But its easy doing business with a company like that. Hell I bought extra copies of witcher on there just to support them.

If companies think DRM will boost sales in any meaningful way they are deluding themselves. If there was like one game release a year it might have an effect, but honestly...there is so much to choose from, why bother with all the crap drm? I wanted to buy settlers 7, but didnt because of the drm, and I have all but stopped buying games from ubi because I dont like their drm or policies. Do I feel like I've lost something? Hell no.

I've spent a decent amount of money on Star Citizen, and that game isnt even out.

Recently I started playing Path of Exile, free to play, with cosmetic micro transactions. Its probably the most fair business model you'll find everywhere. I bought some points for 20$, invested in some stash space. I still fell like I ripped them off. I'm eyeing an ascendancy supporter pack for 110$, and still feel like I'd be getting good value.

Its not that hard to make money, you just have to have a decent product, and treat your customers with the same respect you want them to treat you with.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

Anyone really believe this?
When an opponent comes out with a new weapon or technology you'll fall behind for a while.
But if you're not annihilated in that time you can adjust.

Which means Denuvo will eventually be just as crackable as what came before it. They just need to find the right technique to counter it and voila; fast cracking is once again not a problem.

 

[Aeshi]

Second, I wrote that it would boost sales, not end piracy.
Get rid of the notion (if you have it) that this will magically make all "pirates" buy games. There are loads of people who simply cannot afford these things and when you have movie, music and games fighting for the same people who have a set amount of money to spend, someone is going to lose customers. This is why you see so many Christmas releases, since many receive bonuses and everyone wants a slice of the cake.

They could always, you know, just not buy the game. Or wait for a sale like everyone else does. Just throwing that out there.

Treating people with a bit of decency goes a very long way. This has been a tried and trusted way of doing business in retail, shops and restaurants.

Last time I checked it's far harder to steal physical objects than it is to copy digital data, more likely to get you caught and usually carries a harsher punishment. Do you honestly think that any of those examples would be doing anywhere near as well if Physical Theft was as easy, low-risk and un-punishing as Piracy?

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

Um, yeah, I'll believe that this new version is tougher to crack and may turn away more pirates and keep the determined ones stalls for a little longer so intial sales can possibly be slightly higher, but I'll never believe that piracy has been "beat." Someone will always be there trying to get it for free and they will eventually find a way with any non-MMO game.

I just hope this news doesn't give publishers some fancy excuse to up the DRM bullshittery. (And who knows? This whole story could some sort of false flag operation where the "hackers" are paid by Square/Denovo to say they "gave up.") If you make your game's DRM bog down systems, or call home in singer player, the piracy will come right back to bite you in the ass (and the backlash from paying customers will be biting the other side).

That said, I do have to wonder what will happen without pirates to blame, will we finally see the prices of video games fall? Or will we see another boogie man combined with claims of how they are already a great value maintain the existing $60 new price point for AAA games

I can see it now: CEO of Oversized Game Corporation says "gamers are going over to friends' houses to play our games for free, trading their PCs to get out of paying for games, or letting their non-paying siblings, spouses, and children use their accounts to play our games. We have to stop this by mandating webcam facial recognition to verify the user is the paying customer." [small]Sorry, I might have gotten a little 1984 there.[/small]

More realistically I can also see some publishers blaming gamers waiting for common sales and Game of the Year editions that are cheaper than the launch price, but included most or all of the DLC. While I hear most sales are made within the first few weeks for most AAA games, I'm sure that's one of the scapegoats they will try when sale don't hit their ridiculously high expectations. (I'm certainly one of those jerks that are patient, like to know what they're buying via many reviews and public opinion, and not made out of cash.)

 

[Ftaghn To You Too]

In other news, the crossbow has just been invented. That's it people, pack up your stuff and go home. The arms-race is now over, nothing will ever trump it. History ends today.

I know this is a joke, but the invention of the crossbow basically completely changed the way wars were fought. All of a sudden people with very minimal training could be effective in battle against even hardened veterans. Nothing, not even the gun, changed war as much as crossbows did.

I'm going to step in with my current work on a degree in medieval history specializing in arms and armor and point out that the earliest crossbows in Europe show up prior to the 5th century BC in Britain, and saw scattered use all the way up through the medieval period among Romans, pre and post Saxon Britain, and all the way to their eventual eclipse by firearms. While it's easy to think they would be an equalizing weapon, in fact most crossbows in the high medieval period and onward when they became extremely common in warfare were used by highly paid mercenaries and professionals. Crossbows capable of penetrating armor (which was never a guarantee) are expensive, difficult to maintain, and require complex machinery to cock. This means that crossbows in warfare were generally in relatively small numbers and didn't have such a tremendous effect as to change warfare, or were cheap and relatively ineffective against armored men. Gunpowder didn't even shake things up very much at first, since guns and knights coexisted for hundreds of years and armor was capable of stopping bullets up until the very end. What actually changed warfare forever was the advent of well drilled formations of men, often pikemen, capable of holding cohesion against heavy cavalry charges. This and the advances of firearms in the 16th century made common men able to fight, as during the preceding medieval and Renaissance period almost all fighting was done by semi-professional retinues accompanying nobles, semi-professional city militias with regular training and guild funding for arms and armor, or professional mercenaries. Peasant levies in warfare are, actually, a myth until later conscription in the 16th century onward.

And then there's China where as soon as the crossbow was invented dudes lined up and shot each other by the thousands because that's how Chinese warfare rolls.


OT: Yeah, nah, it'll get cracked in a few weeks. Then a new unbeatable DRM will appear, and it'll get cracked weeks later, and the cycle will continue for all eternity.

EDIT: Sorry for this spontaneous rant. It's one of my passions and sometimes I can't help myself.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

I find that part interesting. The groups who crack most games are not seeking profits and the vast majority of pirates aren't going to pay launch day prices for the game regardless... so why would it make any difference to the pirate whether they get the game for free on day 1 or 2 months later? If they can't afford to buy the game for full price they will pirate it when they can. I don't see how the time frame is relevant, if they have no money to buy the game, they aren't going to buy the game.

There area few things at work here, so let's talk about them in sequence:
1. Game Publishers, just like Movie Publishers, are mostly interested in the release and near-release sales, since that's when the majority of sales happen and that's usually when they calculate profit. If you can stop a cracked version from hitting the net until a month or two (or in the case of FIFA 16 half a year) after release, the idea is that you'll get some extra sales from those that really want to play your game but would jump at the opportunity to get it free instead of paying for it if they had that chance.

2. Games' popularity diminish after release. Everyone talked about Battlefront when it was released some 1,5 month ago. Not so many are talking about it now. At some point people just forget about games (and other media) unless it is a game they really, really want to play. So if you can't crack Just Cause 3 for a few months, chances are that most pirates that might have pirated it on release are not going to be bothered since there will be other games they are more interested in.

3. Pirates are people too and this ties in to the point above. If a Pirate gets a significant enough backlog they will start picking the games they want to play the most and as such will ignore older releases that aren't as hyped right now (unless that's the game they want to play).

4. Supposedly all of them above can add up. If you know that you didn't get to play FIFA 16 because you couldn't pirate it and you couldn't pirate Just Cause 3 and didn't get to play that either and suddenly Awesome Game, which you really want to play, is announced to have Denuvo, chances are that you might actually decide to pay for it instead.

Piracy, like so many other things, is mostly down to psychology. Make it hard enough for the pirate to get the games they want when they want them and chances are that they might buy a legitimate copy instead. Even if they don't, your shareholders will love the realization that your game wasn't extensively pirated.

 

[Dalsyne]

I find this idea... vaguely possible. The idea of making copy protections so frustratingly hard to crack that pirates stop bothering with it certainly has a non-zero chance of existing. The other scenario is for video game piracy to be similar to movie piracy, in that you have to wait months for a good version (or any version at all).

The question here is if GoG will keep its no-DRM policy in place if this really takes off.

 

[Smooth Operator]

It is only one group(and apparently only one guy in their group) out of countless others, if something becomes known as "unbeatable" it just makes hackers work even harder for it. And no they aren't doing it to beat early sales, they do it to prove they can.

The only DRM that truly works is sadly "always online", but going there would make absolutely everyone suffer, well everyone who ever cared about games.

 

[sonicneedslovetoo]

The second DRM wins is the second history dies because eventually something is going to make it stop working with modern OS's whether it be the authentication servers going down or the Lenslok completely failing to work with non-standard CRT monitors. Eventually the games that were the most locked down will be forgotten about as it was simply too much trouble to bother to preserve them and not enough people care to try and bring it back.

 

[fix-the-spade]

I'm very interested to see if that would actually mark an increase in game sales, I mean it'd be pretty hilarious if they spend all that money on decent drm for it to not impact sales figures in the slightest.

We already know that the only impact of DRM on sales is negative. People who won't buy the game, won't buy the game anyway, plenty of people who would buy the game, won't buy the game because of DRM issues.

Meanwhile the DRM free Witcher 3 is CD Projekt's best selling game ever.

 

[Czann]

Games only need to remain uncracked for two or three months anyway.

But DRM is made to satisfy ignorant shareholders. The cretins invest in game companies knowing nothing about the market.

Witcher 3 uses no DRM and it didn't mattered at all when it became a huge sales hit.

 

[Lightspeaker]

You know, call me nostalgic, but whatever happened to the days where not being able to afford a piece of entertainment just meant you didn't buy it and got on with your life?

Pretty sure there has NEVER been a time when that was true. Back in the day if you didn't want to pay full price on a new release there were still plenty of people selling much, much cheaper and most definitely less than legitimate copies of entertainment in all kinds of formats. Usually on stalls in dodgy markets.

The internet has just made it easier to do it: 1. quicker and 2. entirely for free, rather than at a massive mark-down.

The other scenario is for video game piracy to be similar to movie piracy, in that you have to wait months for a good version (or any version at all).

Wait what?

Hateful Eight came out literally today here. Its only been out two weeks in the US even, and that was a limited run. Its been out 'properly' for about nine days. I was at a friend's house a week ago and they happened to have it on the TV. Presumably acquired online. Months?

 

[Random Gamer]

And still, the highly-trained English longbow archers repeatedly kicked the French crossbowmen's asses in Hundred Years' War?

And then in a couple of battles, most of them were slaughtered, and then it was game over, because it takes 20 years to get such an elite corps back.

What actually changed warfare forever was the advent of well drilled formations of men, often pikemen, capable of holding cohesion against heavy cavalry charges. This and the advances of firearms in the 16th century made common men able to fight.

A nice formation with firearms to shoot people from far away and pikemen to protect them from cavalry charges. Bonus when there's a roll of shooters, first line shoot, next two are reloading.

You can't possibly believe that to be true... you seriously think pirates will pay for a game as long as developers... ask nicely?!?

Well, if you make a good game, you'll find people who want to pay you for this - though of course many people will still copy it for free. I mean, it's happened several times to me - though by the time I eventually had time to play the game and decide to buy it to reward the devs, the price of the game has gone down quite a bit.
That said, online games and the huge amount of sales we've seen since years probably help to bring down the overall level of piracy.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

3DM are renowned for their trolling, especially when you consider that most of the info taken from them is translated.

There's also the fact that out of all games using Denuvo, nearly all have been cracked, including: Lords of The Fallen, Fifa 16, Dragon Age Inquisition and Metal Gear Solid 5(which was cracked in a week).

The only reason that 3DM claims this is because they're one of the key players in the scene at this point in time, whereas the rest of the big cracking collectives have all but disappeared. It's more of a "who is left to crack" dillemma rather than "it's impossible to crack".

Games will be cracked and inevitably pirated. It's just a fact of the industry right now. SecuROM gave people problems, as did Diablo 3's online marketplace, but sooner or later, they all fell. Denuvo is no different.

 

[dochmbi]

Finally! ***ing finally somebody is reporting on this. I've been following this issue for a long time and couldn't believe my eyes when there was literally nobody on youtube, nobody anywhere on the web commenting on this development even though it's huge news and may greatly affect the triple A games industry. (Of course I'm personally affected too, otherwise I wouldn't care so much...)

Thank you so much.

Btw, I sent a tip to the escapist about this a few weeks back, with links to the reddit and other info.