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Pirates Finding It Harder To Crack New PC Games (engadget.com)
schnell writes: Engadget reports that a few recent top-tier video game releases using updated DRM technology have gone uncracked for more than a month and left DRM hackers stymied thus far. The games FIFA 16 and Just Cause 3, using an updated DRM system called Denuvo, have thus far frustrated experienced Chinese crackers' best efforts far longer than the usual 1-2 weeks it takes for most games to be cracked. Although the article is light on technical details about what makes the new DRM system harder to defeat, it does note that "Based on the current pace of encryption tech, 'in two years time I'm afraid there will be no free games to play in the world,' said one forlorn pirate."
... because then the studios won't have a boogie man to blame when their crappy game doesn't sell.
Studio Exec: Oh noes, our awesome game isn't selling because people are pirating it instead.
Random Underling: Sir, no one has cracked our DRM yet....
Studio Exec: Oh shit, hurry up and leak a crack before the shareholders notice our 80 million dollar game sucks
Metal Gear Solid V.
Took forever to get a crack out, and when a crack did come out by 3DM it took a few more days for a version 2 to be playable. Only when you set your timezone to a chinese one were you able to play. Sometimes on a specific set of hardware you needed a new crack made. You had to skip certain chapters of the game because they crashed.
And after 5 days or so? Music started playing. Shifty crack, even in the pirate world, never fully working scene release even to this day.
As a pirate, I can only salute the guys who made Denuvo.
Don't know why parent was modded down so much. He/she should be modded up.
I don't agree with DRM, but the proper response to DRM'd games (if you don't believe in DRM) is simply not to buy them. It's not to steal them.
Probably because he sounds like a "tough on crime" advocate. Putting marijuana users in jail was bad enough. If you put every pirate in jail, then half of the US would be in jail right now. I'm not sure how you'd fund that.
"OMG, The Horror of expecting to be able to run a game I've paid for, but the DRM mess up so I can't and have to rely on third party cracks to get it to run"
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
It's not currently possible to play pirated PS4 games.
The PS4's security does appear to have been at least partially compromised, however. A recent video appears to show Linux running on a PS4, along with a version of Pokemon. Note that we don't yet have independent verification of this, so there's a chance (albeit probably a slim one given the track record of the group in question) that this is a hoax.
It's still a long way from being able to play pirated games, although it is certainly a first step on that road. More to the point, however, it is even further from being able to make full use of pirated games, given the extent to which the full functionality of many PS4 games is tied to online features. History (e.g. the situation with the Xbox 360) suggests that console manufacturers are pretty good, over time, at detecting consoles running pirated software when they connect to online services and locking them out of said services. A PS4 which can't access the PSN is not much of a PS4.
As for pirated games on the PS3, it was possible. Sort of. There was a specific firmware version which, if you didn't update past it, could be tricked into running pirated games (via a USB dongle, if I recall). However, you should note that firmware updates on the PS3 were mandatory both to use online services and to play games released after that firmware version was issued. So in other words, if you had an old PS3 you kept at the right firmware version and never tried to use it online, you could play pirated games which did not require a more recent firmware version. So it was of limited use for most people and was only ever really a proof of concept.
Requires the stolen object to be missing.
Pirating is copyright infringement. Why does the government even protect copyright?
Many people would rather live in a world without copyright.
In that sense I think anarchy would be great. Those who want copyright can live in a city where those monopolies are protected.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
Probably because he sounds like a "tough on crime" advocate. Putting marijuana users in jail was bad enough. If you put every pirate in jail, then half of the US would be in jail right now. I'm not sure how you'd fund that.
The problem is how you define "pirate".
Personally, I believe that everyone should pay for the content that is consumed be it a game, video, music, digital book, etc. Where I disagree over DRM is a combination of fair use and public rights. The DRM laws, as they stand today, are in direct conflict with the fair use doctrine and they prevent creations from becoming part of the public domain when abandoned. Under the current law, anyone bypassing DRM for these otherwise legal uses would still be branded a "pirate".
So, while I agree with the stance that crime should not pay, I can't, in good conscience, agree with the "tough on crime" stance given the current bad laws.
Except that most pirates are nothing like Jessie James. In fact, most evidence i have seen, both from studies and from my own experience is that the same teen and 20something pirating games 20 years ago is paying top dollar today now that he has a job and less time to play games.
In fact, the only people I have seen continueing to pirate much past that point have been both poor and physicaly disabled. Leaving them no extra money but plenty of time to consume volumes and volumes of media.
So basically.... as far as I can tell very little money is lost to piracy because anyone who can afford the game and wants to play it buys it. The only people who pirate it are the ones who wouldn't have otherwise bought it, generally because they couldn't afford to anyway.
So I can't imagine this issue actually matters at all, since the net result of it being different is almost 0.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Perhaps that is their goal. If the bulk of the sales revenue comes from the first month or so after launch, it might be worth their while to implement DRM even if they know it will get cracked eventually.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
I raise you a blog post by the head of an actual game development company: http://www.lar.net/2012/01/02/...
Donate free food here
Not only that, but there are so many -cheap- games out there as well. And regular Steam sales--I spent about $20 and got 9 games during the winter sale. Stuff that was highly acclaimed when it came out, too.
You just have to be willing to pass on new releases and get them when they go on sale. By that point you can generally get the GOTY edition with all DLC as well.
I look forward to playing Fallout 4 for $15.
I'm not so sure. A dev I know has been using a certain copy pro package for a few years now and since starting it, has yet to have a crack show up in the wild. And yes, it's a well known app that is a classic target for cracking, and no, the copy pro isn't remotely obnoxious or privacy-shattering since the dev is a privacy aficionado. I think the tech is getting there. Add to this that many games offer real benefits to network connectivity and you might see AAA cracks go away. Then there's the awesome Witcher devs, who simply flip the bird to copy pro altogether, I still see cracks(aka copies, in this case) show up for witcher 3 but the game has done fabulously, simply because it's awesome, everyone loves them and wants to see them be successful for making something so wonderful and for steadfastly refusing to be dicks about DLC. That's the best copy pro of all.
Piracy getting harder? That's not a problem.
Videogame abundance and the mass-move towards indie-development makes pirating obsolete anyway.
I get all my Games for 10 Euros or less out of the bargain bin. The occasional totally DRM-free 15 Euro download for Shadowrun Hong Kong (Kickstarter Project / Indie Game) adds to that. I'm OK giving 15 Euros for a very neat DRM-free game to an indie studio. It's still dirt-cheap.
Currently I'm playing Deus Ex:Human Revolution for XBox 360. Cost me 9.99 for an original mint copy of the directory cut special edition. Awesome game, pricepoint is a steal.
No one needs piracy or the triple-a publishers in a time where Gamedevs are going indie left, right and center (Hideo Kojima anyone?) and games drop hard off the 60 dollar benchmark as soon as they're published on non-current gen platforms or mobile or the novelty effect has worn off.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
^^^ THIS! ^^^
I have troubles understanding why most game/software devs can't get this through their thick skulls. These days a lot of piracy is do to the crap DRM that publishers put on titles. I've known several people that download and run pirate version of software even though they have a legal copy because they actually fucking work! I've even done it myself with multiple version of MS Office, even though I had legal copies as it didn't start giving me activation errors every 26 or so days. (Enterprise licences.) The other pirates that don't have a legal copy aren't going to miraculously go to the store a pay retail price for something because the DRM is tough. They'll either wait for the crack, sneak through a licensing hole or go without. They aren't going to buy your fucking product, period.
Software devs, get this through your thick skulls!
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
Copyright infringement is NOT theft. Read the legal definition of theft:
"n. the generic term for all crimes in which a person intentionally and fraudulently takes personal property of another without permission or consent and with the intent to convert it to the taker's use (including potential sale)."
To be the legal definition of theft, you must remove the item from the person's possession. That is why legally, it is called copyright infringement instead of "petty theft" or "grand theft" which would be the charges if it met that legal definition. So, for the hard of understanding, if I come and take your physical copy of your software without your permission, depriving you of its use, then it is theft; if I make a copy of your software, with or without your permission, but, do not deprive you of its use, then it is copyright infringement. Many companies have tried to make a case that copyright infringement is theft to the courts and they have failed to convince even one court that it is theft. Which is why they cannot use the term theft when talking about pirates because that is libel or slander (depending on the medium) as they would be accusing them of a crime they did not commit.
As far as the lost sales, the RIAA and MPAA's own studies showed that piracy does not typically hurt profits. Often the most pirated titles are also the highest grossing titles and the most prolific pirates are also their highest paying customers. There are exceptions such as bad movies, music and software. Once people realize how horrible something is, they're not going to pay money for it. Thanks to the internet, it is much harder to pedal garbage and make a profit. Between the internet and Germany changing their tax laws, it broke Ewe Bowl's business model. He couldn't make a profit on crap movies anymore so he went into the lawsuit business (extortion) instead.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
Yes, the article is having a dig at Chinese people. The inclusion of "Chinese crackers" was wholly gratuitous, as crackers are an international team, and the best game crackers are still from the US.
Fuck you, racist submitter.
Ever since game devs started using Denuvo, I've refused to buy anything that uses it on the grounds that it unfairly punishes the paying end-user. The devteam behind Lords of the Fallen, which was one of the first games to use Denuvo, admitted that they were sacrificing large amounts of performance (as much as 10 to 15 percent framerate) in order to use it. There were also a lot of concerns from SSD users, because Denuvo uses up a ton of read/write operations due to constantly encrypting and decrypting files, putting far more stress on an SSD than a non-Denuvo game does.
If game developers are going to sacrifice performance and the potential for mod support to use the most draconian DRM they can find, I'm not going to be buying it.
Besides which "cracker" is a racist name for caucasians not asians.