Will DRM Finally Beat Piracy? Notorious Cracking Forum Says Yes

[direkiller]

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.

That's kinda false.

The height of popularity for them was at a time when most were levied militia, who had to pay for there own gear. Crossbows were very expensive, your average farmer could not afford them. So they were mostly restricted to mercenaries or Noble's guards/servants he paid to equip.
As a result the people who used crossbows were very well trained and armed.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Actual Scene Hackers deny this. This particular group is a gimped for profit group, and therefore the 'scene' is snorting and rolling its eyes at this assertion.

I have to agree. 3DM isn't the fastest or most thorough cracking group out there, a lot of their releases containing fine print that basically reads "Yeah, this is a 3DM release, but we used parts of SKIDROW or someone else's code because the Cracking Scene is totes a brotherhood of gentleman scoundrels."

Spoilers: it isn't. Scene groups tend to jealously guard their codebases and jump at one another's throats as soon as someone's half-baked effort triggers false positives.

JC3 will get cracked. If not now, then a lot later. Heck, EA's SimCity was almost ready for its offline-only pirate debut, before EA threw the towel in and released an Offline patch for the game.

 

[littlebunnyfuufuu]

To everyone saying "Good, this will teach them." Or anything along this lines-
Not everyone who downloads a crack, has pirated the game.

I personally use cracks, because I dont believe in letting mommy know you want to play a game, and when I double click a game icon, I Expect it to launch that game. I also want to future proof myself for the day when you cant download the game (however unlikely that may be.)Its allready bad enough that I have to wait through 4+splash pages telling me who made the game.

But first and foremost, i use it for the tracking. Steam has No Business knowing how long I play a game, and what ido in that game. I just want to play and chill.

You may say "oh, but you are in the minority, who cares about track7ng?"
I point you to this article-
http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/11/18/145-of-fallout-4-pc-players-still-havent-left-the-vault
14.5% of fallout 4 players havent left the vault on pc. Guess why steam cant tell why Some of them have left the vault? Sure some of them might have had the trophy unlock, but not all of them

And screw trophies anyways, I dont care. You dont need to tell me how to play a game. The only reason they exist is to track you, and make you feel attached to your account.

But then again, I know im different from most folk, specifically because I make a steam/uplay/origin account Per Game. Along with emails. Because by god, if I want to sell it, or let a friend play it I will.

Three days ago, I bought Champion return to arms for the Ps2 for an outrageous $25 (and thats a good price, it normally goes for $30+) I had no problems paying for it. That shows that if you make a good game, people will pay for it, no matter how long its been out. But if you make them jump through 8 million hoops, they change their mind.

And stopping cracks wont even stop piracy! All you have to is buy the game, make an account, download it, block the the game from going online with your firewall, and request a refund!

Note-I am not condoning or admitting to piracy of any kind. As "Cracks" are not owned or copyrighted, they cannot be "pirated".

 

[Lunar Templar]

right ....

I'll believe that if/when it actually happens. other wise these guys just come off as lazy to me, or maybe lacking in talent to do the job.

 

[mrdude2010]

That's BS. Every one knows that the only true way to stop piracy is videogame streaming.

For those that don't know: Imagine yourself, that all game data of your bought game is on a centralised server. The server takes 90% of the hard work on itself and the player is just getting a pretty picture on his screen - much like Steam Link, actually, but works like modern MMO's

While this type of DRM is also not invincible, it's simply too hard to crack - you as a pirate literally will have to catch every single byte of server information and/or reverse engineer them by yourselves which is too long and costly. There's a reason why MMO's are notoriously "pirate proof".
Oh, and also - you can't play the game without being always online, but tough shit poor people - it's the inevitable future.

That's a fucking awful idea. Way too few people have the bandwidth, let alone the ping, to properly play a game like that. With modern MMOs, you still have pretty much the entire game on your hard drive. It's only your interactions with it that are being sent back and forth between the server.

 

[Vigormortis]

"I still believe that [just Cause 3] 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."

And that's the problem, right there. There will be plenty of free games to play in two years, in five years and in 20 years. There just won't be as many pirated games. Calling it "free" is bullshit. Call it what it is - "stolen".

This? This, right here? This is a crucial distinction.

In the argument of piracy as either theft or 'copyright infringement', this distinction is often muddled. The fact is, when you pirate a game, you're not playing a free game, you're stealing information. You're free to argue about the consequence of that action, but let's not pretend that it isn't theft.

 

[The_Great_Galendo]

In the argument of piracy as either theft or 'copyright infringement', this distinction is often muddled. The fact is, when you pirate a game, you're not playing a free game, you're stealing information. You're free to argue about the consequence of that action, but let's not pretend that it isn't theft.

I mostly agree with what you're saying -- I wouldn't call a pirated game a "free" game anymore than I would call a shoplifted game a "free" game -- but people equating copyright infringement with theft always bothers me somewhat.

Theft is taking something from another person; they now no longer have access to what you stole. Copyright infringement is copying (illegally) something from another person, but they still have access to the original. There's a reason that we have distinctive names, distinctive laws, and distinctive punishments for these two crime, and it's because they're very different crimes with very different implications for the victim.

 

[IceForce]

Yeah, they said Assassin's Creed 2's always-online couldn't be cracked either.

Yup and it was cracked 6 weeks later, which for the time was really really slow, because games were available on day 1 cracked in those days.

This DRM on AC2 made a paying customer out of me,

See, the thing is, for some people the DRM is what put them OFF the game. Or even worse, put them off Ubisoft entirely.

Skip to about 5 minutes:


People like to say that piracy negatively impacts sales figures, and there's likely a small element of truth to that. But (intrusive) DRM also negatively affects sales figures too.

 

[Something Amyss]

People like to say that piracy negatively impacts sales figures, and there's likely a small element of truth to that. But (intrusive) DRM also negatively affects sales figures too.

Yup. I'm far less likely to buy an Ubisoft game. Uplay is a huge turnoff for me and my wallet. And when other companies pull this, well, the result's the same.

I don't like it when I'm punished for doing something I don't do.

 

[immortalfrieza]

Do you know why devs and publishers care about piracy?

Because they think it hurts their sales. So for an anti-piracy measure to be successful that needs to be true. And it really isn't. Denuvo apparently costs a lot of money. So why would companies bother with it if they notice that their sales don't justify the price of Denuvo? At that point they'd be losing even more money which would ironically make the anti-piracy measure cost more than actual piracy. Also, it was cracked once and it will be cracked again. Denuvo's method might be different, but it shares the same destiny as SecuROM. I do feel sorry for the people behind this tech though. They are obviously smart and they're trying to protect other people's work. But it just won't last.

Devs and publishers don't care about piracy and they know perfectly well it's never hurt their sales and never will, they just want something to point their finger at aside from themselves for their utter failure to make games worth playing and thus paying for while marketing and selling them effectively and at a decent price. If piracy didn't exist these people would find something, ANYTHING else they can to avoid admitting their incompetence. Anyone that tries to sell anything and fails to meet their expectations or even just wants more no matter the market does this sort of thing, things don't sell as much as they expect and want it to solely due to their own incompetence with either the product or their ability to sell it or both so they blame anything and everything aside from themselves simply to cover their rear ends. All developers and publishers know that things like DRM and always online and so forth don't work, never will, screws over legitimate customers, and just wastes money to make, but they do it in order to act like they are doing something about what they know is a nonexistent problem to shut up their shareholders and whoever else they have to answer to.

DRM will never prevent piracy, but putting up smokescreens and pretending they are doing something about them has always been the real point.

 

[Lord Garnaat]

Wonderful! Though I sincerely doubt that pirating will ever completely go away, it's encouraging to hear that it's actually becoming increasingly difficult to do. Most likely this will just mean new attempts at cracking anti-piracy systems, but at least there is some progress to show for it. Piracy and the human filth that partake in it are both pet peeves of mine, so hopefully this makes life just a little bit more frustrating for them.

 

[Veylon]

"I still believe that [just Cause 3] 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."

And that's the problem, right there. There will be plenty of free games to play in two years, in five years and in 20 years. There just won't be as many pirated games. Calling it "free" is bullshit. Call it what it is - "stolen".

While I have no love for DRM, I've always found the pirates to be absurdly whiny. The world abounds in free games of every genre. Kongregate and abandonware sites aren't going anywhere. Previously pirated or DRM-free games aren't going to become retroactively locked. Their cry of pain is that they won't get to play brand new AAA right away for free. First World problems, even in China.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

"While nothing is completely "uncrackable", and I'm sure Just Cause 3 will fall, if Denuvo can manage to keep games uncracked for several months following release, it will probably cause most crackers and pirates to lose interest. After all, those first months are where most sales are made."

This statement confuses me. It implies that the cracker's intention is to cause lost sales for the game. Which I don't believe is the case at all. As for people who pirate the game, they usually have no intention to buy it anyway. Granted, if a game's crack is delayed 2-3 months, that'll likely push people who were tentative about buying it to eventually give in and purchase. But for those who still never intended to, they'll likely be willing to wait those 2-3 months. Ultimately I think that's the best case scenario. 2-3 months is more than enough times to get the initial sales, and maybe even a steam sale to discourage pirates further.

Yup!

A whole host of people wait longer than that just for sales.

So I see no reason why folks wouldn't be willing to wait a bit. Plus, with all the entertainment available, you'd be hard pressed to find anybody out there who doesn't have some sort of backlog to tide them over at this point.

But, yeah, competitive pricing, a consumer-friendly approach, and quality titles are how you effectively "combat" a good chunk of piracy. You can't completely eliminate it though...that's a fool's errand and everybody knows it.

 

[Lightspeaker]

That's a fucking awful idea. Way too few people have the bandwidth, let alone the ping, to properly play a game like that. With modern MMOs, you still have pretty much the entire game on your hard drive. It's only your interactions with it that are being sent back and forth between the server.

Well, I didn't say that it'll be done right tomorrow - in 5-10 years this model will be the future - the most perfect way to combat piracy.
And if you don't have a bandwidth for that - well, you won't play any games then, not my problem.

I think you missed the part where a LOT of people don't have the bandwidth for that. And, as I understand it, a lot of internet companies in America (where damn near every company basis their decisions on) still have data caps. And also the part where the game industry is a business.

Businesses exist to make money. They don't make money by taking decisions that cut out large portions of their target audience. Remember the XBOne launch? The always online thing there? Take all the problems of that and magnify it by...lets say a hundred-fold. Because now it'd no longer be merely a constant check-in but now it would be actively trying to constantly stream data down to your computer.

The people who would buy into such a system would be a relative minority. Because it would be literally unusable for a huge amount of people, and more wouldn't buy into such a system on general principle. It would be a disaster for any company that tried to do it.

As for your "5-10 years" argument. The XBOne was announced in May of 2013. Look at where the internet was then and look at where it is now, approaching three years later. And you think 5 years is a reasonable minimum time frame for such a development to become acceptable and the tech to be sufficiently stable worldwide?

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

DRM will never prevent piracy, but putting up smokescreens and pretending they are doing something about them has always been the real point.

Sure. But for this smokescreen to work DRM has to fail. But Denuvo isn't DRM and it works. It seems that FIFA 16 and Just Cause 3 are yet to be cracked. So those guys have perfected their system. Devs and publishers aren't that stupid.

Ultimately it's about the bottom line. Numbers don't lie if piracy rate is 0%. So let's say that you have a publisher who used Denuvo and still the sales numbers end up lower or just about what they'd expected even with piracy. When they look at the numbers there is literally only one conclusion they can reach. Sales are lower than expected or equal to what they'd expect even with piracy but they can't blame piracy. Which means that money spent on protecting their software with Denuvo is a waste. And businesses don't like losing money.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Very interesting article. I do however think that DRM can't win. It might take a while, but all things can be cracked. Obviously if the crackers give up, then yes, DRM wins, but my thought on this matter and all such things is very simple. Anything that has a legitimate way in, can be accessed illegitimately. If it has a keyhole, a login box, a retinal scanner, whatever, it can be cracked. Even if the method of access is to duplicate the legitimate entry method, any opening can be accessed. Ultimately, any game or software program has to be decrypted in RAM to run so any exe can be reverse engineered to remove any checks and encryption.

I remember one really clever and interesting copy protection method for some PS1/2 game, like Spyro or something like that. The game functioned normally in every respect but one. The player needed coins or something to proceed from one level to the next and the amount available would gradually reduce to the point where it's impossible to proceed beyond a certain level. Not dissimilar to the more recent Arkham Asylum method (Batman's wings don't open) or Game Dev Tycoon (game always ends in failure).

 

[dragoongfa]

Am I old for remembering the time when Starforce and Securom DRM were considered fully uncrackable?

Prince of Persia 3 had Starforce and it wasn't cracked for almost a full year but it was still cracked in the end; most importantly though the consumers hated Starforce with a passion because of how damaging to their DVD drives it was at the time. Same but to less extent was securom.

Everything gets cracked and every heavy form of DRM will draw the ire of the end consumer.

 

[Dirkie]

For me, yes, DRM will stop me from pirating gaming.
It also stops me from buying and playing it, and I will find a less intrusive way of spending my money, like GOG.com.
A little bit of a grey area when it comes to steam, because it's awfully convenient, but EA's Origin or Ubisoft are things I wont even start with.

 

[eberhart]

If Internet experiences some sort of a revolution and DRM-via-streaming becomes possible, then consumers will also be able to stream to each other. So, basically:

- remote desktop-ish tool,
- a way to safely and effortlessly set up a profile that gives no access outside of selected games,
- a service allowing people to form a community and eg. trade hours of their game X for credit they could spend accessing games Y or Z (or moving up in a queue to the nearest desired streamer).

Seeing how people are willing to seed every kind of data via torrents 24/7, there's no reason to doubt people would let others play. The only difference would lie in higher power consumption and, in certain cases, games needing more horsepower, therefore restricting their own simultaneous use of PC. But that's what different timezones are for.

As for legalese, it wouldn't be different from allowing someone to use your PC and have fun *in your house*. Especially when you can't use it at the same time.

 

[maninahat]

Even if that held true, it wouldn't mean more sales, just less people playing your games. Hell, it will likely result in less sales, considering how damaging DRM can be.

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.

I'm not sure that's even the point. After all, if a cinema was to put better locks on their back doors, thus preventing me from sneaking into the back of a cinema to watch free movies every week, I think it shows they are less concerned about me paying for tickets so much as stopping cheeky, cheapskates from taking the piss out of their business.

That said, I imagine they would appreciate it if I did start paying for movies in future.