'Rime' Developer Keeps Promise, Removes Denuvo DRM After Game Gets Cracked (cinemablend.com)

An anonymous reader quotes CinemaBlend: Tequila Works and Grey Box had previously announced that the DRM for the PC version of Rime would be removed if it were cracked. Well, in just five days the DRM was cracked and a cracked version of the game was made available online. So, now the DRM will be removed...

Five days after the PC launch of Rime, the cracking scene managed to get into the executable and spill all of its guts, removing the DRM and putting the exe back together so it could be distributed across the usual sites. One of the things noted by the cracker was that he found Denuvo executing hundreds of triggers a second, which caused major slowdown in the performance of Rime on PC. This form of digital rights management resulted in every legitimate customer having to deal with a lot of slowdown and performance hiccups... The sad reality was that those who pirated Rime and used the cracked file essentially gained access to a game that had improved performance and frame-rates over those who actually paid for the game.

Comments

Can we stop calling it digital rights managment?

[Anonymous Coward]

Digital restrictions management is so much more appropriate.

By far not the first time

[Opportunist]

I remember a certain audio editing program that used to be a standard that actually came with its own virtual machine that ran some of its code which was a bastardized version of x86 assembler code, which was reverse engineered and "cleaned up" by crackers. The net result was that that cracked code, that would now run on the x86 CPU rather than the (poorly written) virtual machine was actually faster and more stable than the DRMified code.

I also remember quite a few legitimate users who cracked their legitimately bought software because it improved performance and stability...

Re:By far not the first time

[Dutch Gun]

There's no doubt that some sales are going to be lost to piracy, but it's just stupid to ruin the experience for your paying customers. Being a game development myself, and one who's put years of work into a self-funded indie game (and hopefully released soon), I'm sure it will be disheartening to see people passing it around without paying for it. Hopefully there will be enough people who enjoy the game and would like me to make more of them, and so willingly purchase the product even though they'll have every chance of getting a free copy if they really wanted to.

The way I figure it (and have heard other game devs more eloquently argue the point) is that people who pirate the game probably aren't my customers anyhow. Or, at best, I should perhaps think of them as potential future customers. At some point, I think you just have to write that off as a cost of doing business on open platforms.

Instead, game developers need to engender goodwill and support among their customers, especially on platforms where it's easy to make and distribute copies without paying. Hopefully enough people understand that they have to actively support developers whose games they enjoy if they want to see more like that.

Re:By far not the first time

[sjames]

I soon discovered that cracking the game was more fun than playing it.

Re:Now read what they actually said

[ckatko]

Except that's the entire fuckin' point of Denuvo. To prevent cracking.

If the game is already cracked, why would you shit on your existing users?

This sounds very much like a case of "The Publisher DEMANDED us use Denuvo and we hate it."

Why the hell else would they go out of their way to ENCOURAGE crackers to crack their game by telling them "As soon as it's cracked, we'll get rid of that thing you hate."?

Next time, before you tell the world your genius insight, spend an extra 5 seconds and thinking it through.