The Denuvo DRM Thread

[JarlFrank]

If a company can get away with this practice, others will emulate it, and it will become a normal thing, and that's fucking terrible because it leads to the permanent loss of products people paid for, and a permanent loss of old cultural items, because yes, games are a cultural item.

And someone, at some point, might want to examine multiplayer FPS from the early 21st century, and he won't be able to get any first hand experience of some Battlefield games just because the publisher decided to shut it all down and it had always online DRM.

Meanwhile the first game in the series can easily be played with dedicated local servers.

Anything that leads to permanent loss of games is terrible and should be heavily discouraged, no matter the quality of the game in question.

 

[Immortal]

And someone, at some point, might want to examine multiplayer FPS from the early 21st century

pfbfbfbfbfbffbf hahahahaaha

 

[Citizen]

people who buy ea games deserve it

EA owns a couple of good series like titanfall, dead space, mirror's edge, that are worth playing/buying

 

[Tacgnol]

And someone, at some point, might want to examine multiplayer FPS from the early 21st century

pfbfbfbfbfbffbf hahahahaaha

The permanent loss of even a bad game is no good thing in the long term.

Imagine the revisionists down the line claiming something was good and that it was hated for other reasons. Better to let these things survive so they are able to self-evidently display their poor quality.

 

[JarlFrank]

And someone, at some point, might want to examine multiplayer FPS from the early 21st century

pfbfbfbfbfbffbf hahahahaaha

The permanent loss of even a bad game is no good thing in the long term.

Imagine the revisionists down the line claiming something was good and that it was hated for other reasons. Better to let these things survive so they are able to self-evidently display their poor quality.

And games with harsh DRMs are the only type of media that can be lost forever despite best efforts to conserve it.

A book? As long as you have a printed copy or a digital scan/ebook of it, it survives. There's no DRM on books. We still have surviving literature from 3000 BC because people back then wrote on clay tablets and these things last forever (unless they get smashed).
A movie? As long as you have a copy on VHS, DVD, film roll, or a digital copy on your hard drive, it survives. There's no DRM on movies. And even if there were, it would be super easy to pirate a movie for preservation purposes: if the DVD has some kind of region lock or whatever, you can just use a camera to film the screen while it runs, leading to a bad but servicable preservation copy. Or you can use screen recording software while the movie runs on a computer. Bam, you got yourself a DRM-free preservation copy that lasts forever.
With older games, you also have no issues. You can find an old floppy disk or CD-ROM, install the game, and play it. You may need an emulator or virtual machine to get it to run because modern OS are incompatible with old software, but as long as you got that kind of middleware, you can just install and play the game. No barriers. If there's DRM, it's either some kind of "look up word X in line Y on page Z of the manual, that's the password" thing, or it's a CD-key, or you have to keep the disk in the drive. Not a big deal, and most of these are easy to bypass for an experienced cracker anyway.

And then you got always online games. You have the game on DVD. You can install the game. But then you can't play it. Either it gets stuck in the main menu with none of he "Start Game" options working, or it won't even launch in the first place. You have a physical piece of media from which to install it, you have all the necessary files on your computer, but it's impossible to play due to the online authentication system no longer working.

That's utter fucking dogshit and anyone who thinks this is even remotely okay is a bottom-tier retard.

 

[Hirato]

A movie? As long as you have a copy on VHS, DVD, film roll, or a digital copy on your hard drive, it survives. There's no DRM on movies. And even if there were, it would be super easy to pirate a movie for preservation purposes: if the DVD has some kind of region lock or whatever, you can just use a camera to film the screen while it runs, leading to a bad but servicable preservation copy. Or you can use screen recording software while the movie runs on a computer. Bam, you got yourself a DRM-free preservation copy that lasts forever.

Sorry to disappoint, but DVDs, Blurays, and a lot of digital versions of movies are full of DRM.
DVDs used a method called "Content Scramble System", which is a very weak encryption system that only approved players got access to.
People were able to break it and brute-force it for all keys without too much trouble, with the infamous DeCSS.

Blurays are more complex.
Players enforce these stupid 'HDCP' schemes, which stops you from taking screenshots and other recordings of the stream; if you try you'll typically get a green rectangle.
And honestly, I'm pretty disgusted and more and more of this keeps getting implemented into the Linux ecosystem, with the ultimate goal of allowing people to watch their DRM encumbered netflix shows
HDCP can usually be bypassed by buying super-cheap splitters from china; these splitters will strip the HDCP crap, and will usually take shortcuts and liberties with no encrypting stuff on the other end.

Also, there's the encryption on Blurays.
It uses AACS; this is secure enough for it to be impossible to brute force the keys, and like DVDs, only approved players have access to these keys.
And then the Blurays themselves contain updated lists of keys, which the player will then transparently use to update itself, and even revoke other keys; This process is irreversible, if a key is revoked in this manner, it is revoked forever.
There is a massive database of these keys available on the internet, I couldn't tell you how up-to-date they are, but there's over 112K of them.

 

[JarlFrank]

Yeah but it's still easier to rip a movie than to make an always-online game work offline.

Especially if you don't care about ultra HD bluray quality (I don't even have a bluray player).

 

[flyingjohn]

And someone, at some point, might want to examine multiplayer FPS from the early 21st century

pfbfbfbfbfbffbf hahahahaaha

The permanent loss of even a bad game is no good thing in the long term.

Imagine the revisionists down the line claiming something was good and that it was hated for other reasons. Better to let these things survive so they are able to self-evidently display their poor quality.

And games with harsh DRMs are the only type of media that can be lost forever despite best efforts to conserve it.

A book? As long as you have a printed copy or a digital scan/ebook of it, it survives. There's no DRM on books. We still have surviving literature from 3000 BC because people back then wrote on clay tablets and these things last forever (unless they get smashed).
A movie? As long as you have a copy on VHS, DVD, film roll, or a digital copy on your hard drive, it survives. There's no DRM on movies. And even if there were, it would be super easy to pirate a movie for preservation purposes: if the DVD has some kind of region lock or whatever, you can just use a camera to film the screen while it runs, leading to a bad but servicable preservation copy. Or you can use screen recording software while the movie runs on a computer. Bam, you got yourself a DRM-free preservation copy that lasts forever.
With older games, you also have no issues. You can find an old floppy disk or CD-ROM, install the game, and play it. You may need an emulator or virtual machine to get it to run because modern OS are incompatible with old software, but as long as you got that kind of middleware, you can just install and play the game. No barriers. If there's DRM, it's either some kind of "look up word X in line Y on page Z of the manual, that's the password" thing, or it's a CD-key, or you have to keep the disk in the drive. Not a big deal, and most of these are easy to bypass for an experienced cracker anyway.

And then you got always online games. You have the game on DVD. You can install the game. But then you can't play it. Either it gets stuck in the main menu with none of he "Start Game" options working, or it won't even launch in the first place. You have a physical piece of media from which to install it, you have all the necessary files on your computer, but it's impossible to play due to the online authentication system no longer working.

That's utter fucking dogshit and anyone who thinks this is even remotely okay is a bottom-tier retard.

You don't even have to use online only description for games anymore.Almost all games today use online drm.
Most games on steam require steam to be online regardless of valve says.You can patch it out though.
Also any game using denuvo or any type of store launcher are online only.And that accounts for 80+ percent of modern aaa games.
Epic also doesn't even allow for some games to have offline dlc options.

The only popular offline store is gog. Everything else you will loose access to in about 10+ years.

 

[JarlFrank]

You don't even have to use online only description for games anymore.Almost all games today use online drm.
Most games on steam require steam to be online regardless of valve says.You can patch it out though.
Also any game using denuvo or any type of store launcher are online only.And that accounts for 80+ percent of modern aaa games.
Epic also doesn't even allow for some games to have offline dlc options.

The only popular offline store is gog. Everything else you will loose access to in about 10+ years.

Yeah which is why I'm fundamentally against DRM.

I don't buy games that have restrictive DRM like Denuvo, unless there's already a crack out for it. I won't lose access to any of my games since for the ones that do have some form of DRM, I have cracks.

Steam has plenty of indie games that don't have any DRM at all, you can just copypaste the install folder to a different PC and play. Sadly, GoG has a retarded curation policy that means many of the games I'm interested in aren't available there. Also, the generic Steam DRM can be bypassed with a universal steam api dll crack, so that's not an issue at all.

Denuvo is basically "always online" DRM because it requires constant authentication from an online server. Anything that prevents you from playing your single player game offline is "always online" DRM.
Denuvo is a piece of shit and I genuinely hope the company goes bankrupt and the people who came up with this shit lose their jobs. It's pure evil.

 

[Raghar]

Major problem with raping users by DRM is killing rights of a PC user. A standard PC user should have rights of both administrator and computer manufacturer, especially users who assembled theirs PC themselves, or prove on bag of components before testing committee they are able to make functional PC. It's totally amoral locking out an owner from his property.

But frankly DRM are working on principle of locking functionality of PC, and preventing PC (designed as perfect replicating machine) from doing function it was designed to do. Thus an user paid for expensive HW, possibly paid for a game, and then some third party basically enters his property behind his back, and lock part of his property from him. Totally amazing behavior aside of a small fact that:

Copyright law was created to increase creativity, and to allow commercial activity with INTENTION of result of that activity would eventually become available to EVERYONE, without ANY license fees.
Original copyright law was designed to prevent PHYZICAL BOOK PUBLISHERS to undercut each other, and authors said when book publishers have PROFIT big enough to pay workers, they can pay original author some small fee as well.
Then after short period, the book should lose copyright protection, and would be allowed to be published without anyone paying copyright fees. Ideas of paying copyright fees permanently was quickly dismissed because every school used old Greek authors, and nobody wanted to pay Greece national budget.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Imagine a DRM protected car. You buy the car, buy gasoline, but to drive it you have to authorize on manufacturer server every time. It's in your best interests, dear client! If your car gets stolen hijacker wouldn't be able to drive it! Install DRM on your car today!

And if some protests or somesuch similar happens in your country your car is getting automatically blocked so you wouldn't drive outside due to government decision

 

[lightbane]

And someone, at some point, might want to examine multiplayer FPS from the early 21st century,

Doubtful, seeing that nowadays normies have been trained to CONSUME PRODUCTS! (TM) and most previous and current-gen games are identical, especially PS3-PS4 ones. Who will care about Assassins' Creed number 12131st when they all play the same? At best they'll make "remakes" to extract more cash from gullible consumes, but most likely by paying more than they should and missing features to boot, intentionally or not (see Mass Effect "remaster" for an example).

 

[Raghar]

Imagine a DRM protected car. You buy the car, buy gasoline, but to drive it you have to authorize on manufacturer server every time. It's in your best interests, dear client! If your car gets stolen hijacker wouldn't be able to drive it! Install DRM on your car today!

And if some protests or somesuch similar happens in your country your car is getting automatically blocked so you wouldn't drive outside due to government decision

Already happened, cars have chips for engine control, and all it takes is put car into a network, and then a government locking out the car if they don't have a forced insurance payment. Nobody wants noninsured car moving around. And nobody wants police chase. Simply shut down engine, and it's easy and trivial.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

Finally the codex can discuss the RPG of the year AC:Valhalla.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Imagine a DRM protected car. You buy the car, buy gasoline, but to drive it you have to authorize on manufacturer server every time. It's in your best interests, dear client! If your car gets stolen hijacker wouldn't be able to drive it! Install DRM on your car today!

sorry man, all the cars, every car, all of them, use a dongle protection. if you ask me, it's even more limiting and annoying than an online check with satellite surveillance (which also is encouraged and well received for the most expensive road vehicles).

 

[karoliner]

.nfo art was better in the past. Another sign of the decline of western civilization.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

crackers who beg and have a public contact. o tempora! o mores!

 

[orcinator]

Can't complain when all the other groups either have no idea how to get through denuvo or got bribed.
Checking the linked reddit board and it does't get my hopes up.

 

[Tacgnol]

.nfo art was better in the past. Another sign of the decline of western civilization.

Cracking was a much more civilised art in the days of proper scene groups. Seems to be very few scene groups around these days, mostly p2p groups.

Shame a lot of the ex-scene crackers got jobs at Denuvo.

 

[karoliner]

 

[Perkel]

Hory shittu.

Looks like Empress figured out automatic denuvo cracker. They claimed Yakuza will be the next game and "test" of their automated cracker.

 

[Tacgnol]

Hory shittu.

Looks like Empress figured out automatic denuvo cracker. They claimed Yakuza will be the next game and "test" of their automated cracker.

They should keep that to themselves. Denuvo are pretty pro-active about fixing exploits in their newer versions.

Indeed if you wanted to be really cunning, I'd put a random gap between releases so it looks like you're still having to crack things manually. Release one game two days after release, another with the same version of denuvo two weeks later.

If they start Day 1'ing everything Denuvo will react a lot faster.

 

[flyingjohn]

You would think that a multi million dollar corporation could buy out a deranged money hungry tranny.

 

[deama]

Hory shittu.

Looks like Empress figured out automatic denuvo cracker. They claimed Yakuza will be the next game and "test" of their automated cracker.

They should keep that to themselves. Denuvo are pretty pro-active about fixing exploits in their newer versions.

Indeed if you wanted to be really cunning, I'd put a random gap between releases so it looks like you're still having to crack things manually. Release one game two days after release, another with the same version of denuvo two weeks later.

If they start Day 1'ing everything Denuvo will react a lot faster.

I think they might be doing it so Denuvo indeed reacts quick to bolster security to make cracking for them more challenging, some of these guys live for the challenge.

 

[Alex]

Hory shittu.

Looks like Empress figured out automatic denuvo cracker. They claimed Yakuza will be the next game and "test" of their automated cracker.

They should keep that to themselves. Denuvo are pretty pro-active about fixing exploits in their newer versions.

Indeed if you wanted to be really cunning, I'd put a random gap between releases so it looks like you're still having to crack things manually. Release one game two days after release, another with the same version of denuvo two weeks later.

If they start Day 1'ing everything Denuvo will react a lot faster.

I think they might be doing it so Denuvo indeed reacts quick to bolster security to make cracking for them more challenging, some of these guys live for the challenge.

Makes sense, I guess. I mean, the games themselves nowadays are hardly worth the effort...