The Denuvo DRM Thread

[Raghar]

I hope that nothing happens to the guy,he did nothing wrong,it will be a shame if our people cucked to the western greed. Still it is not much of a lose(the crack),it is not like i play any AAA games anyway.

Actually he screwed up. He send a letter to Denuvo BEFORE consulting with lawyer and prosecutor. Now if prosecutor would use it against him he would be fucked.

 

[fantadomat]

I hope that nothing happens to the guy,he did nothing wrong,it will be a shame if our people cucked to the western greed. Still it is not much of a lose(the crack),it is not like i play any AAA games anyway.

Actually he screwed up. He send a letter to Denuvo BEFORE consulting with lawyer and prosecutor. Now if prosecutor would use it against him he would be fucked.

I don't know about it,the prosecutor could be an avid pirate. I do hope that he gets away,an evil such as denuvo should be stomped out not endorsed.

 

[mondblut]

Latest innovations in software protection technology: track the hackers and ruin their life. Denuvo is the industry leader for a reason.

 

[Raghar]

Latest innovations in software protection technology: track the hackers and ruin their life. Denuvo is the industry leader for a reason.

They have fine tradition. Before they changed theirs name, it was the company that physically screwed up my DVD-Burner. (Yup finding uninstaller of theirs DRM, and removal of theirs stuff and reboot didn't help. I was forced to drain all electric charges from my DVD-Burner to make it work flawlessly again. Well it taught me to not borrowing legally owned DVD and risking my disability aid again.)

 

[Vorark]

Actually, Denuvo was born from the ashes of Securom (developed by Sony DADC). Starforce was the one which messed up DVD drives, used on Eastern European countries most of the time. Let's not forget Games for Windows Live or its UWP incarnation.

I thought once Steam (lesser of the evils, imo) got popular enough, publishers wouldn't deploy such crapware to their clients and for awhile it was true. Alas, nothing good lasts forever. They now follow the very same modus operandi Securom once did, not long ago. The Monster Hunter World Steam page, for example, mentions:

Incorporates 3rd-party DRM: Denuvo Anti-tamper
5 different PC within a day machine activation limit

Really, who fucking cares how many machines someone play this? Isn't being locked down to a Steam account enough? Why impose such limitations to a paying customer? Securom had a despicable "5 machine activation" and if you forgot to deactivate before uninstalling the game, too bad.

Things like these are dispiriting.

 

[DalekFlay]

Steamworks doesn't stop day one piracy like it used to. The whole goal is to keep the full game off torrent sites for as long as possible so impatient people buy it. Even delaying the pirated version a few days can dramatically increase sales from what I have read, let alone delaying it a month or more. Steam doesn't do that, Denvo often (not always) does. That's why companies pay for it and use it.

Like I said before, what I don't get is why it isn't patched out once it's cracked. Then very few would complain about it.

 

[flyingjohn]

Master hacker keeps everything incriminating by his side,wow.
Also master hacker doesn't use vpn and discloses his real information on the web,double wow.

 

[unfairlight]

Steamworks doesn't stop day one piracy like it used to.

Has Steamworks ever stopped day one piracy? I mean, Valve themselves have admitted multiple times that it's barely even meant to be DRM. https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/drm

 

[Perkel]

Really, who fucking cares how many machines someone play this? Isn't being locked down to a Steam account enough? Why impose such limitations to a paying customer? Securom had a despicable "5 machine activation" and if you forgot to deactivate before uninstalling the game, too bad.

Things like these are dispiriting.

Family sharing. Though you can't use it at the same time as primary account plays game on steam.

 

[DalekFlay]

Has Steamworks ever stopped day one piracy? I mean, Valve themselves have admitted multiple times that it's barely even meant to be DRM. https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/drm

I've never really sailed the high seas so I can't speak of my own experience, but my understanding is it used to at least delay full torrent releases by a little bit. I would guess the process of removing it and building a new installer is now so simple it basically doesn't exist.

You're right though, Steam's thing has always been adding features to the legit version to incentivize purchases, rather than try to kill piracy. The reason to use Denuvo then comes back to companies simply finding that it delaying the cracked version brings in more sales than Denuvo costs to use.

 

[unfairlight]

but my understanding is it used to at least delay full torrent releases by a little bit

I cannot remember any point of time that happened. Almost all Steamworks titles got day one aside from obscure indie shit that no one cared enough to release.

 

[epeli]

Yes, the reason slavery is a thing of the past is because of abolishionists. Grandstanding TODAY against slavery is retarded. That's why the anti-DRM crowd TODAY is a bunch of laughable hipsters.

Phew, what a thread. The topic is about videogame DRMs, but you should know that DRM today is worse and more widespread than it was in the old good days when it was merely malware (SecuROM, StarForce) bundled with videogames.

Let me give you an example that probably touches the everyday life of you and everyone you know. Today, there is practically no way to send digital video signal without DRM hindering the process. HDMI, DisplayPort and even old good DVI use a DRM called High-Bandwith Digital Content Protection (HDCP). HDMI in particular is so bad that the flaws in its DRM have created whole fringe industries, thanks to its ubiquity. You know how uneducated laymen buy ridiculously expensive HDMI cables when they have issues with their HDMI connections? That whole scam industry was born from HDCP issues that are still present even today. As anyone with basic understanding of digital technology knows, changing the cable should do nothing if the original cable works at all. But sometimes a new and expensive HDMI cable will solve the issues for the suckers who buy them. So what's going on? Let me tell you what. It's an issue with HDCP authentication handshakes. Sometimes receivers/transmitters from different manufacturers (or even the same manufacturer) are not perfectly compatible despite supporting the exact same versions of the protocol. This leads to the handshakes occasionally failing and the signal being blocked by DRM while the legality of the connection is being renegotiated. Unplugging the cable and rebooting both transmitter and receiver usually fixes that, which is why suckers think wasting their money on cables helped. What actually solved the issue was simply restarting the DRM connection from scratch.

Another facet of the digital video signal example that doesn't directly concern you (excluding the indirect extra cost you've paid in all your devices), is the fact that all device manufacturers who want to build devices capable of legally transmitting or receiving HDCP-protected signals must pay protection money (quite literally) to the HDCP mafia. Thanks, Intel! This is why even simple devices like HDMI splitters are significantly more expensive than VGA splitters. Not because the technology is innately more expensive. Not because they are more expensive to manufacture. Just ridiculous and wholly unnecessary protection fees.

And guess what's the best part? HDCP master key was reverse engineered eight years ago. It's been absolutely useless as a DRM system ever since then. But every one of us still has to pay that sweet DRM premium whenever we buy a HDCP device, we get unnecessary display lag from the DRM overhead, AND we get to participate in the HDCP handshake compatibility lottery that adds a potential point of failure making the connection more unreliable than it would be without.

tl;dr: DRM is a cancer that is burdening the progress of technology and you are a fucking idiot.

 

[unfairlight]

That''s a really good post.
HDCP is the worst shit imaginable. Manufacturing HDMI devices is also awful thanks to the HDMI/HDCP cartel, since they take a large cut of the money per manufactured device and manufacturers are basically forced to adopt HDCP since their fees for manufacturing them go down by a considerable amount if they do. Thanks, Intel. I can only hope that Displayport can eliminate this bullshit.

 

[Tacgnol]

DRM in general is one of those slippery slopes.

Whilst it may all start as an innocuous attempt to protect a product, it always end up escalating into an arms race with crackers. Eventually you end up with dumb shit like always online requirements and hardware keys. Even worse, you often end up with products that can't be used due to DRM services being dead.

In the end it never benefits a legit consumer.

 

[JarlFrank]

The only one DRM actually benefits is the people who create the DRM. No-one else. Not the consumers and not even the developers who pay money to the DRM producer to implement it in their own product.

 

[cvv]

hurr

An informed, exhaustive and completely retarded post bc we're talking specifically about videogame DRM you autistic imbecile.

 

[Tacgnol]

hurr

An informed, exhaustive and completely retarded post bc we're talking specifically about videogame DRM you autistic imbecile.

Whilst not related directly to video games, epeli's post raises some perfectly valid concerns.

Remember when Intel were talking about making a CPU based DRM chip for "software protection"? Imagine if game developers said you required X CPU to play their games due to anti-piracy measures. Whilst highly unlikely, crazier things have happened.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Steamworks does not in any way delay piracy, there are universal steam emulators that work for every game and require minimal setup (i.e. SSE), you don't even need a cracked executable.

 

[Tacgnol]

Steamworks generally stops pre-day 0 piracy, as a preload is entirely encrypted until release date.

Day 0 is generally the worst type as sometimes people can get hold of the game before it is actually released.

 

[cvv]

Whilst not related directly to video games, epeli's post raises some perfectly valid concerns.

Yeah, being concerned about starvation is also valid but also completely unrelated to this thread which, as the title discreetly points out, is about Denuvo.

My whole point was to call out poseurs who whine about being hampered by videogame DRM when in fact that has not been a thing for many, many years. I'm not broadly defending everything on Earth related to someone overprotecting something ffs.

 

[Jaedar]

Steamworks generally stops pre-day 0 piracy, as a preload is entirely encrypted until release date.

Day 0 is generally the worst type as sometimes people can get hold of the game before it is actually released.

Eh, not necessarily. I've seen releases where the pirates publish the preload, then when the game is out they release the decryption codes for the preload (along with potential missing files + crack), allowing you to unzip it. Essentially, this makes preloading possible even for pirates

 

[DalekFlay]

My whole point was to call out poseurs who whine about being hampered by videogame DRM when in fact that has not been a thing for many, many years. I'm not broadly defending everything on Earth related to someone overprotecting something ffs.

I'm only worried about it in the area of wanting these games to work in 20 years when my old ass is feeling nostalgic. I pretty routinely play 20 year old games today, I want to play 20 year old games in 20 years. DRM risks that, especially if it gets more and more effective at being irremovable.

 

[Tacgnol]

Steamworks generally stops pre-day 0 piracy, as a preload is entirely encrypted until release date.

Day 0 is generally the worst type as sometimes people can get hold of the game before it is actually released.

Eh, not necessarily. I've seen releases where the pirates publish the preload, then when the game is out they release the decryption codes for the preload (along with potential missing files + crack), allowing you to unzip it. Essentially, this makes preloading possible even for pirates

Exactly.

when the game is out.

The worst possible thing is a game cracked and released BEFORE release date.

 

[whydoibother]

RIP Voksi, I hope they offer him a deal where they just release him on the promise to not get involved with piracy (or else). Would be a shame if a young guy loses his future for this.
As for Denuvo, I haven't paid money for any game that uses it, and I may or may not have pirated a couple. I just stop following the development and marketing for a game that announces it will have Denuvo, out of principle. Its a large investment of money to include it, and you probably lose more than you gain from having it in your game. Publishers need to stop assuming that every torrent download is a lost sale, a lot of people would never buy a game and would only pirate it; if piracy were impossible they just wouldn't touch your game anyway.

 

[Jaedar]

The worst possible thing is a game cracked and released BEFORE release date.

This is true, but iirc that sort of thing has almost always been because of staggered release dates. Thankfully those are mostly a thing of the past now anyway.