Denuvo's Latest Version Resists Piracy's Attempts Entering 2018

[Raevenlord]

Denuvo may be one of the most controversial DRM systems out there - even though all of them are, in some level. However, the Austria-based company has developed that which is likely the most successful anti-piracy measure in recent times - despite news of its death. As we covered almost two months ago, piracy scene groups were claiming to have already figured out Denuvo, and hailed their cracking routines as being developing in such a way that (...) Denuvo protected games will continue to get cracked faster and faster." The new methods no longer involve reverse-engineering a game's executable to strip a game of its DRM software; now "[piracy] scene groups have found a way to get past [Denuvo's] encryption and keygen files in just a day. They do not crack Denuvo, they simply keygen it, so Denuvo thinks nothing is wrong on the pirated version."

However, news of Denuvo's death were an exaggeration, it would seem. The company's latest DRM version, launched with Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed origins, has eluded circumvention of its protection mechanisms - though in this case, there's an added layer of security, VMProtect, that works in conjunction with Denuvo's solution to make life harder for would-be crackers. Perhaps more telling, then, are the other games that make sole use of Denuvo's tech and still haven't been cracked. Such is the case for Sonic Forces, Injustice 2, Football Manager 2018, Need for Speed Payback and Star Wars Battlefront 2. After all is said and done, it's always just a matter of time before protection mechanisms get bypassed. But Denuvo always has just aimed for a "protection window", anyway, and it seems the company is back to guaranteeing it.



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[RejZoR]

No one cares. DRM is a pestilence. Literally every single older retail game I own doesn't work on Windows 10 because stupid copy protection SecuROM driver just doesn't work on the new OS. I need to use No-CD cracks on a game I legally purchased. It has been like this with literally every single major OS release. Same reason why no game made for Windows 98 worked on Windows XP. It wasn't because the game was incompatible, it was because copy protection drivers were old and not supported by OS. Denuvo is the exact same cancer. Be gone! You'll never stop pirates from doing what they do, but you absolutely piss off people who PAY for the games and then have to deal with this crap non stop. Blaming pirates for it is just stupid, pirates are just a part of software ecosystem and they aren't necessarily a bad one. As many studies have proven so far.

 

[lexluthermiester]

No one cares. DRM is a pestilence. Literally every single older retail game I own doesn't work on Windows 10 because stupid copy protection SecuROM driver just doesn't work on the new OS. I need to use No-CD cracks on a game I legally purchased. It has been like this with literally every single major OS release. Same reason why no game made for Windows 98 worked on Windows XP. It wasn't because the game was incompatible, it was because copy protection drivers were old and not supported by OS. Denuvo is the exact same cancer. Be gone! You'll never stop pirates from doing what they do, but you absolutely piss off people who PAY for the games and then have to deal with this crap non stop. Blaming pirates for it is just stupid, pirates are just a part of software ecosystem and they aren't necessarily a bad one. As many studies have proven so far.

All excellent points! And to those should be added; How long do they think this will work? Software crackers will see this only as a challenge, not an obstacle. My guess is less than a month before this is cracked and broken wide open. Denuvo, you are as relevant as are successful(for those not keeping score, Denuvo's success level equals exactly zero).
Game devs/publishers don't seem to understand the dynamic of reality. They will never stop thieves. Ever. All they're doing by trying is slowing them down by a few hours/days. What you are most definitively succeeding in is irritating and alienating the rest of us honest gamers and motivating us to take our gaming money elsewhere.

 

[_JP_]

inb4 games are converted into actual VMs, installation file is a single bitlocked .vhdx and only your Steam/Origin/Uplay/<InsertStoreHere> account UUID can unlock it.

 

[Readlight]

They help to test game, most of them are full of errors, unfinished games, bad performance. Windows also works shity, when I install Steam I get a blue screen. For little interesting game, it's not worth to pay so much. Electricity costs a loot. Game system requirements need always better computer. For good quality, product people pay like in restaurant you pay only after eating. If the game has been god in pirates then i bay it in Steam, If price satisfies me.

 

[eidairaman1]

DRM only affects law abiding citizens just like archaic gun control laws.

One drm tactic i hate is phoning home, suppose my connection is offline I want to play the game that I PAID FOR!

 

[_JP_]

One drm tactic i hate is phoning home, suppose my connection is offline I want to play the game that I PAID FOR!

Current mentality described in the EULA: "You bought a licence to use our service. Our service requires an internet connection. If you've got no online connection, though luck".

 

[HimymCZe]

No one cares. DRM is a pestilence. ...

I would like to also add, how IT IS OBVIOUSLY OK release a game in 2018, which could run on Core2Duo(2006/2008), but DO NOT, cause it needs 100% load on 6 more cores (+ >100W) just to run DRM.

 

[OneMoar]

GO AWAY Denublow

 

[qubit]

I so won't touch a game infected with this garbage. There's a lost sale right there and the developer is the one that caused it.

 

[ExV6k]

I would like to also add, how IT IS OBVIOUSLY OK release a game in 2018, which could run on Core2Duo(2006/2008), but DO NOT, cause it needs 100% load on 6 more cores (+ >100W) just to run DRM.

Really? Games released in 2018? Running on a Core 2 Duo? Come on, even an Apple A10 has better IPC than this thing.

 

[64K]

DRM only affects law abiding citizens just like archaic gun control laws.

One drm tactic i hate is phoning home, suppose my connection is offline I want to play the game that I PAID FOR!

Steam, the largest DRM service out there, does that too. Of course with one major difference. If you have spotty internet service you can pretty much stay in Offline Mode the majority of the time with Steam. Not so with Denuvo.

I would like to also add, how IT IS OBVIOUSLY OK release a game in 2018, which could run on Core2Duo(2006/2008), but DO NOT, cause it needs 100% load on 6 more cores (+ >100W) just to run DRM.

Depends on the game but expecting to be able to run modern AAA games on a Core 2 Duo is a fail in so many ways whether a game has Denuvo or not. Some games won't even start with a modern dual core CPU. Most need at least an i3 or better. I will agree with you that Denuvo does put some burden on the CPU though. A while back (I can't recall the game) but a hacker, after cracking the Denuvo, said that it was making an average of 30 verification checks per second and slowing the game down as a result.

The biggest concern I have about Denuvo, and why I am firmly against it is that no one knows what the future will bring. What will happen if Publishers stop using Denuvo in the future as some already have? Without an income for the Developers of Denuvo how will they keep their verification servers up and running? How will we play the games that we have paid for after that? Publishers might be nice and remove Denuvo from their older games at that time but some might not even bother.

 

[RejZoR]

If every publisher ensured DRM crap was removed with a patch 1 year after release (when game stops being the hot stuff), I'd potentially be ok with it. Lone pirates after a year wouldn't affect sales much unlike that happening on release day. But we know that cannot ever be ensured and only ones taking a hit from it are honest buyers.

I much prefer Croteam's approach where they included a cheating NPC which kills you constantly randomly in the game if you're playing a pirated game. I don't know how they do the checks, but they aren't dependant on external drivers. It's just so funny watching idiot pirates making fool of themselves whining how hard the game is, not knowing they are exposing themselves as pirates.

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

Im glad I just mostly play wow and BF1 these days. Dont have to deal with it.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

The sad part is Denuwhoever are citing games that have done poorly. DRM takes away from game frame rates, so whose fault is it when you cant even get 25 FPS, the game developers or Denuwhoever? Who do you complain to to fix it?

 

[TheGuruStud]

Citing the other games besides AC:O is pointless. No one wants to play them LOL. If they can't be cracked with their automated process, then I don't see them investing much time into those.

And don't worry, they'll embarass ubitards, again. If ubi spent the time, money and effort on MAKING A GAME THAT DOESN'T SUCK, then they wouldn't need to be try hards with CP, b/c people would buy it. They've been blaming piracy for EVERY one of their blunders for over 15 yrs, now. They've basically killed Beyond Good & Evil 2, b/c they're so incompetent they scheduled one of the worst releases in history (BGE is literally one of the best games of all time). For people that don't know, it released around multiple AAA titles with basically no advertising (had they waited a few months and marketed, it likely would have been a smash hit). And no, I don't see #2 actually releasing without being gutted and filled with money schemes, plus how many delays and rewrites...

 

[eidairaman1]

Drm causes so many glitches due to unnecessary overhead it is not funny

 

[Steevo]

inb4 games are converted into actual VMs, installation file is a single bitlocked .vhdx and only your Steam/Origin/Uplay/<InsertStoreHere> account UUID can unlock it.

Wireshark all the authorization traffic, copy, pasta and even that becomes breakable.

The real issue is the more intrusive they make the DRM by brute force, or with performance penalty the more people hate it. Do you really want a core or two only used to decrypt the game files on the fly instead of being used for gameplay?


What kills me at this point is how fucking greedy the companies are, they expect us to pay $60 for a DRM filled "incomplete" pay to win game, if they gave the game away for free with no DRM beyond a few core file checks and then featured micro transactions they would make as much if not more money.


Where is me eye patch.......

 

[Vya Domus]

DRM is nice checkbox to present to investors to ensure them that their product will be bought.

It will never go away.

 

[64K]

DRM is nice checkbox to present to investors to ensure them that their product will be bought.

It will never go away.

I believe there is a good bit of truth to that and helps to explain the persistence of DRM with some Publishers. For example Ubisoft claimed about 5 years ago that around 95% of PC gamers were pirating their games. What do you tell the shareholders? That a pirated game doesn't always equal a lost sale? That doesn't make sense unless you're in the gaming hobby and know what's really going on so they tell the shareholders "we're doing everything possible to fight the thieves using various DRM schemes". Meanwhile almost all of their games are getting cracked anyway and imo the majority of pirates are people that are too poor to pay $60 for a videogame anyway so those aren't lost sales. They won't be buying AAA games to begin with and will just pirate some other games that have been cracked.

 

[eidairaman1]

I believe there is a good bit of truth to that and helps to explain the persistence of DRM with some Publishers. For example Ubisoft claimed about 5 years ago that around 95% of PC gamers were pirating their games. What do you tell the shareholders? That a pirated game doesn't always equal a lost sale? That doesn't make sense unless you're in the gaming hobby and know what's really going on so they tell the shareholders "we're doing everything possible to fight the thieves using various DRM schemes". Meanwhile almost all of their games are getting cracked anyway and imo the majority of pirates are people that are too poor to pay $60 for a videogame anyway so those aren't lost sales. They won't be buying AAA games to begin with and will just pirate some other games that have been cracked.

I stopped wasting time when games reached 60 usd on consoles, 40-50 was max, if it was that special 50 usd otherwise forget it. Same for PC.

Bills and Work before games always

 

[natr0n]

The quality of most games now is not great. They are basically putting protection on garbage.

Sometimes you might think if a game has heavy protection on it must be good. Nope.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

The money they spent on Denuvo would be better spent on marketing. Getting more eyes on a game is a better long term investment than stopping players that already know about your product from playing it for free. Most people that pirate games would buy them if they could afford them. Expanding the market through marketing increases the number of pirates but it also increases the number of sales, especially when the price is at full retail.

 

[close]

Maybe Star Wars Battlefront 2 wasn't crack because nobody gives a damn about it .

 

[RejZoR]

The quality of most games now is not great. They are basically putting protection on garbage.

Sometimes you might think if a game has heavy protection on it must be good. Nope.

That's the thing. Those who can't afford the game are a non existent profit either way. If they don't buy the game you have no profit and if they pirate the game you have no profit. However, if they talk about the game and praise it, they are essentially a free PR. They haven't bought the game themselves, but because they'll probably praise the game, more people might actually buy it. Some are not in the mood of searching for pirated copies and deal with cracks and stuff. They'll just go to Steam and buy it because it's more convenient. And that's what all the publishers whining over piracy entirely ignore and neglect. Pirated game doesn't equal to a lost sale. It might in turn create the opposite effect, increased sales.