Tuesday, February 6th 2018

Assassin's Creed Origins' Denuvo and VMProtect Bypassed

It was no coincidence that Assassin's Creed Origins was one of the most difficult Ubisoft titles to crack. The company learned from their past mistakes and was one step ahead of the pirates this time. Instead of just implementing the usual Denuvo and Uplay protections like in previous occasions, Ubisoft slapped VMProtect on top of both for good measure. The added security proved to be a great solution as the game remained intact for a little over three months which is a crucial time for sales. However, Ubisoft's triple-threat protection started to crumble when CPY discovered a way to bypass Denuvo 4.8 two weeks ago. The latest news from the Italian scene group confirmed that they've now bypassed Assassin's Creed Origins' last line of defense as well.

Assassin's Creed Origins has been widely criticized for being a CPU hog. Ubisoft claims that VMProtect has little to no perceptible effect on the game's performance. However, many still believe it to be the culprit. Now that the keys to the kingdom are out there, there's little to no point for Ubisoft to keep VMProtect in the game. This would be the perfect opportunity to prove the doubters otherwise. That is, unless they have something to hide.
Source: CrackWatch
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46 Comments on Assassin's Creed Origins' Denuvo and VMProtect Bypassed

#26
mab1376
This is for an older version of denuvo (4.0), but "voksi" shows the process of cracking the exe. Very cool stuff seeing some of the process. i'm sure CPY has different methods and techniques, but still worth a glance.


mods, if this violates any rules, please delete.
Posted on Reply
#27
megamanxtreme
PatriotAlright, I think I have clearly stated everything as I see it... I don't think chino said anything in misleading or biased way. Feel free to believe otherwise... I don't see further discussion as productive, have a good day.
I was mistaken, I only said that I agree if the comment is biased to go along with Duke Nukem's comment. (I'm stating a General Principle, not directly to the article). I apologize for that error.
ClaudioComparative Benchmark ...
LINK
Someone states that Denuvo with VMProtect are still working in the background, so it still affects, or just a snicker way to say that they don't agree with the non-changes.
Posted on Reply
#28
Nuke Dukem
PatriotNegatives include getting knocked out of a game because their servers go offline even though you are playing single player. Likewise owning the game and not being able to play because the authentication servers aren't working correctly. There are all sorts of negatives besides potential performance impacts that drm has. These harms are well known. The point stands, it's broken, it is only hurting, why keep it?
I was clearly talking about the performance side of things, hence I used percentages. The discussion wasn't about servers, it was about CPU overhead. Besides, do you honestly see them coming out saying "Hey, we were wrong. Let us remove this filthy DRM caca we baked in so you fine people can enjoy it. We're vewy vewy sowwy." - I certainly can't. They went to great lengths just to make it harder for people to pirate it, surely the won't just throw that away. They should, but they're a bunch of greedy stubborn fools.
PatriotTesting can tell plenty of lies... read an amd or nvidia review guide...
Cherry picking using specific settings and circumstances isn't independent testing. You know this as well as everyone else here.
PatriotYour wording paints users in a negative light assuming they are wrong, and shows ubi as a benevolent company who could only gain more loyalty with their actions and prove those stupid users wrong.
You see how hard tone is? You tried to be neutral and dry and still had tonal shifts to one side..
I described precisely why the original sounded biased. Return the favor, explain why I would sound biased to you.
PatriotAlright, I think I have clearly stated everything as I see it... I don't think chino said anything in misleading or biased way. Feel free to believe otherwise... I don't see further discussion as productive, have a good day.
That's the classic 'I said what I had to say and will now regard everything else you might have to say redundant, so just let me win by demanding to have the last word' attitude, way to go!
megamanxtremeI was mistaken, I only said that I agree if the comment is biased to go along with Duke Nukem's comment.
Who? What? I'm not Duke Nukem. I am Nuke Dukem! I'm here to argue about stuff on teh interwebz and chew bubble gum... and I'm all outta gum. :D
Posted on Reply
#29
Upgrayedd
Considering all their old and cracked games still have DRM. This will keep its DRM forever unfortunately. It might get removed in 15years.

I see some confusion about the DRM in this game and the crack. The cracked version still has DRM. It is just tricking the DRM into thinking nothing is wrong. There are still hundreds of checks every minute. If i remember right, the DRM checks itself everytime it detects player input (walking around.) This is why it is supposedly CPU intensive, the constant checking.
Posted on Reply
#30
Steevo
OSdevrI'm really starting to dislike TPUs tone on these articles.
DRM that features a Virtual Machine with known exploits, just to decrypt the games media libraries and uses at least one core and a significant amount of CPU time to do so is absurd.

It would be like paying for a 8 room house but only having access to 7 rooms, and you cannot know what's going on in the 8th room, and attempting to find out is illegal.
Posted on Reply
#31
Upgrayedd
SteevoDRM that features a Virtual Machine with known exploits, just to decrypt the games media libraries and uses at least one core and a significant amount of CPU time to do so is absurd.

It would be like paying RENTING for a 8 room house but only having access to 7 rooms, and you cannot know what's going on in the 8th room, and attempting to find out is illegal.
RENTING an 8-room house. Remember, you never own this shit.
Best way to solve that? Simply find a different renter.
Posted on Reply
#32
RichF
OSdevrI'm really starting to dislike TPUs tone on these articles.
Thank you for your concern.
Posted on Reply
#33
lexluthermiester
Nuke DukemBesides, do you honestly see them coming out saying "Hey, we were wrong. Let us remove this filthy DRM caca we baked in so you fine people can enjoy it. We're vewy vewy sowwy." - I certainly can't.
That can and has happened. The question is, will they realize that DRM is a waste?
RichFThank you for your concern.
:laugh: :lovetpu:
Posted on Reply
#35
Readlight
RejZoRWhat tone? Everyone is laughing at idiots like ubisoft insisting on screwing honest buyers while pirates are enjoying a care free experience. They should sell their games without these dumb DRM protections and instead use pirates as free PR. Also, being a honest company helps a lot. I'm gonna throw in CDPR again here. I'm sure their games get pirated, they all do, but even pirates often decide to buy it anyway because of convenience and a bit of regret (it's also why I've bought almost all GOG games I've played pirated decades ago). I don't even pirate games anymore because buying them is just more convenient. I do prefer GOG whenever I can because of DRM free policy. They respect me as customer and I respect them. Let me just say I don't play or buy any Ubisoft games, because they are greedy douchebags.
Sometimes games on disk are actually cheaper, but I, not happy whit product because of no native language, bugs, bad performance, and lighting. Skyrim is for 17 but I don't like some gameplay things in this game. I will not buy any more games who will haw Stem DRM.
Posted on Reply
#36
Vya Domus
megamanxtremeCompanies aim for income, or should we just be okay if 1 million buy it but 1 billion pirate it? If you guys can propose something, by all means, I'm interested in knowing what. If not, this Denuvo stuff is all they can currently muster.
DRM doesn't help companies get more sales , whoever pirates games wont be willing to buy them anyway even if they become uncrackable. DRM is a nice checkbox to tick to give the illusion that you are going to "sell more games".

You can bet that whenever the top brass go on to have a meeting and they ask why their game wasn't successful enough they will get the "it was pirated" BS right away instead of "maybe it was shit". Come on , are you really going to shed a tear for these poor multi billion dollar companies ? By the look of your comment the only thing I can think of is : How many shares have you got mate ?
Posted on Reply
#37
Parn
megamanxtremeSo, remove the protection so it is easier to be cracked or keep it and try to prevent piracy as much as possible. Only a small percentage of the people that get the pirated games will buy the game out of remorse, or just because they liked the game.
You said it yourself. By removing DRM, there is a chance for increased sales even if it's just a very small percentage. As for the other two groups of gamers, seasoned pirates and die-hard "1st day launch" buyers, DRMs hardly make any difference in terms of sales. So the overall sales figure favours DRM-free.

Now let's look at the victims of the battle between devs/publishers and pirates, the honest buyers. They have to pay more for their games to cover the cost of implementing n layers of DRMs. They may have to build more expensive PCs just to get adequate performance for an n-layer protected game. And when those DRM validation mechanisms stop working sometime in the future, their legit copies of the game will become nothing more than junk files hogging disk space.
Posted on Reply
#38
megamanxtreme
ParnYou said it yourself. By removing DRM, there is a chance for increased sales even if it's just a very small percentage.
web.archive.org/web/20160924191657/http://www.sigma-team.net:80/site-news/main-news/attack-of-robots.html
Vya DomusYou can bet that whenever the top brass go on to have a meeting and they ask why their game wasn't successful enough they will get the "it was pirated" BS right away instead of "maybe it was shit". Come on , are you really going to shed a tear for these poor multi billion dollar companies ? By the look of your comment the only thing I can think of is : How many shares have you got mate ?
Digital Rights Management or not, the object is to support the company that makes the games we play. I have no shares, but how much funding do you provide the cracking teams?
I can shed a tear for the little companies that are also left out due to piracy, as the link I posted above.
Still no answer to "What do you guys propose to combat Piracy, when these games will be craked regardless of these protections or not?" A.C. Origins was bad? Any thoughts as that being the reason?
Posted on Reply
#39
rtwjunkie
PC Gaming Enthusiast
megamanxtremeA.C. Origins was bad? Any thoughts as that being the reason?
I don't think we can operate from that premise. If not mistaken, Origins has ended up pretty highly regarded. We can operate under the idea that it's DRM was pretty intense and overkill. Players needed a pretty beefy CPU in order to not have any game slowdown.
Posted on Reply
#40
megamanxtreme
rtwjunkieI don't think we can operate from that premise. If not mistaken, Origins has ended up pretty highly regarded. We can operate under the idea that it's DRM was pretty intense and overkill. Players needed a pretty beefy CPU in order to not have any game slowdown.
Yet, where is the proof? Until then it is due to the optimizations of the game itself.
Sniper Ghost is another game, and affected loading times, so A.C.'s protection affecting the game usage still lingering in the air. Yes, I'm not denying that this is the culprit, either. (So, I"m not completely in the "Dark side.")
I'm neutral but seeing how everyone is hard-pressed to see D.R.M. gone, when it is implied for a reason, here, I feel like trying to defend it. Mainly because they don't put it with intention of bothering the gamers, but here we are affected, or in this case it is allegedly affected.

As for my comparison of C.G.I. being seen on a bad light:
Posted on Reply
#41
Parn
megamanxtremeweb.archive.org/web/20160924191657/http://www.sigma-team.net:80/site-news/main-news/attack-of-robots.html
That news post doesn't change what I just said: "you get increased sales from DRM-free". Those 100 mil pirates and 3 legitimate buyers in the post belong to the two groups, seasoned pirates and die-hard buyers I mentioned. They are unaffected by whether companies choose to implement DRM or not.

I don't have any issues with distribution platforms like Steam (which have promised to send out physical copies of the game should they shutdown in the future). But "pay to be the victims of intrusive and performance degrading DRMs", count me out.
Posted on Reply
#42
megamanxtreme
ParnThat news post doesn't change what I just said: "you get increased sales from DRM-free". Those 100 mil pirates and 3 legitimate buyers in the post belong to the two groups, seasoned pirates and die-hard buyers I mentioned. They are unaffected by whether companies choose to implement DRM or not.
This is from Google Play and no D.R.M. from the developer, so makes the D.R.M. part moot. (I don't have Android devices to know if G Play is free of this type of Management)
It's $3 and still 100X more pirates.
Also, you must've missed my post against Good Ol' Gamers. And I'm done being active in this thread, anyways, so Sayonara everyone.
Posted on Reply
#43
Vya Domus
megamanxtremeI'm neutral but seeing how everyone is hard-pressed to see D.R.M. gone, when it is implied for a reason, here, I feel like trying to defend it.
So you are clearly not neutral then and love DRM , why wouldn't I believe you own shares at these companies ? Why else would you care ?
megamanxtremeStill no answer to "What do you guys propose to combat Piracy, when these games will be craked regardless of these protections or not?"
Why would I care to give an answer to that ? Is it my job to conjure up solutions to boost sales of their games ?

Piracy can't be stopped and it's effect does not impact sales as much as people think. It's a fact that for some reason people don't want to accept. I find it interesting how companies like Ubisoft can bear this "unbelievable burden" that piracy is and still make truckloads of money. If say piracy would be gone , what do you think it will happen ? They'll make what , more truckloads of money ? Why would that make you happy ?

I see you are extremely concerned about this matter. How about being concerned with regards to the ridiculously small and underpaid teams that create these games which in return generate profits in the order of hundreds of millions of dollars. What about them ? Wake up , piracy does not affect the people that actually work hard to make these games a reality , it affects the money mongering suits and I find it astonishing that you don't realize that.
Posted on Reply
#44
Prima.Vera
mab1376This is for an older version of denuvo (4.0), but "voksi" shows the process of cracking the exe. Very cool stuff seeing some of the process. i'm sure CPY has different methods and techniques, but still worth a glance.


mods, if this violates any rules, please delete.
This is harder to understand than rocket science physics.
Posted on Reply
#45
mab1376
Prima.VeraThis is harder to understand than rocket science physics.
You you need an in-depth knowledge of assembly language to understand it, I took assembly 101, so I don't understand it. :D
Posted on Reply
#46
W1zzard
lynx29@Chino Would be interesting to see some benchmarks with it fully cracked vs not cracked on the same system, just to see if the performance hit is true. lol
Unfortunately it's not that easy. The cracks don't remove the protections, they just circumvent them. So the protection is still fully active which is why there is no difference in performance.

I'm not saying there should be a difference, just that such kind of testing is futile. The only way is to wait for the publisher to release a DRM free version.
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