Denuvo's DRM Now Being Cracked Within Hours of Release (arstechnica.com)

Denuvo, an anti-tamper technology and digital rights management scheme, isn't doing a very good job preventing PC games from being copied. According to Ars Technica, Denuvo releases are being publicly cracked within a day of their launch. From the report: This week's release of South Park: The Fractured but Whole is the latest to see its protections broken less than 24 hours after its release, but it's not alone. Middle Earth: Shadow of War was broken within a day last week, and last month saw cracks for Total War: Warhammer 2 and FIFA 18 the very same day as their public release. Then there's The Evil Within 2, which reportedly used Denuvo in prerelease review copies but then launched without that protection last week, effectively ceding the game to immediate potential piracy. Those nearly instant Denuvo cracks follow summer releases like Sonic Mania, Tekken 7, and Prey, all of which saw DRM protection cracked within four to nine days of release. But even that small difference in the "uncracked" protection window can be important for game publishers, who usually see a large proportion of their legitimate sales in those first few days of availability. The presence of an easy-to-find cracked version in that launch window (or lack thereof) could have a significant effect on the initial sales momentum for a big release. If Denuvo can no longer provide even a single full day of protection from cracks, though, that protection is going to look a lot less valuable to publishers.

Comments

The Gambler's Delusion

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM is like the delusional gambler. No matter how much money he loses he refuses to quit, because quitting would be and admission that he has failed and lost all his money. And, he is convinced that if hes sticks with it long enough he will eventually hit that big jackpot.

And I don't expect the companies using DRM to change their minds any time soon.

Denuvo isn't going to just quit and go away. Next year, Denuvo will will promise the game companies them that they have developed a new and improved DRM. It will be a lie. It will be nothing more than digital snake oil, just like all DRM, and the game companies will buy it, because they are just like the delusional gambler.

Re:The Gambler's Delusion

[Z80a]

Which is quite sad, as it goes against the very thing that is working for em, that is the online distribution.
Before steam/gog/etc.. acquiring a pirate game was a lot easier than getting the legal copy, as it didn't depended on convoluted mail schemes or having to hope the physical store have the game you actually want etc.. which made the pirate games "better" than the legal copies.
But with online distribution, now it is actually easier to get the legal games than it is to pirate it, which makes the legal copy better than the pirate, unless the game have some horrible DRM that decrease the performance or make modding impossible or add a "expiry date" to your game, which pushes the pirate cracked version without those issues back to the top.

Re:The Gambler's Delusion

[lucm]

DRM is like the delusional gambler. No matter how much money he loses he refuses to quit, because quitting would be and admission that he has failed and lost all his money.

DRM doesn't work as a bullet-proof system to prevent motivated people to use commercial content for free, but it does work in making it difficult enough that mainstream users will pay for it.

For instance, as a casual gamer I'm not going to fuck around downloading cracks (that are probably lost in an ocean of fakes infected with malware), I find it easier to pay for the game on Steam. In fact almost all games I play come from sales on Steam or PS4. Meanwhile, I have many gamer friends so if there was no DRM whatsoever I'd probably do like I used to in the 90s, use shared copies.

It's the same with any kind of software. I don't recall ever paying for MS-DOS 6 or Windows 3.1, but today if I needed Windows I'd probably buy a copy at Best Buy rather than deal with the endless patching and cracking.

Doesn't mean I endorse DRM, but it works.

Re:ever damn thang is cracked

[Mashiki]

Well that's not really true. Denovo really held out for a while there like starforce did, think it was right up around a year when it was first released(same with starforce) before the first cracks started showing up. With denuvo v4 there were multiple vulnerabilities because they used someone elses vmware kit, v5 is apparently in-house and several of the latest titles use it. Those games were cracked in under 10 hours no less, they had a good run but CDProjekt showed how wrong the whole DRM scheme is. If you make a good game people will buy it, if you make shit people won't. Ask CliffyB just how well his latest shit game is working out if you need an example though.

Good game sell

[DrYak]

Those games were cracked in under 10 hours no less, they had a good run but CDProjekt showed how wrong the whole DRM scheme is. If you make a good game people will buy it, if you make shit people won't.

Yup I totally agree.
If you've made a good game and there are tons of fan liking it, they'll line up to buy it EVEN if it is DRM-free.

A cracked game, if the game is good won't necessarily cause a big drop of sales.
(Some people might decide not to pay for it, but it's going to be a small fraction of the fans. On the other hand another fraction of the fans might finally decide to buy it, now that there's a way to take their legit copies and "disinfect it" from the DRM : that might end up being my case regarding Sonic Mania and Denuvo)

If your game is shitty, it's a stupid excuse to blame it on piracy.

Re:ever damn thang is cracked

[Anonymous Coward]

"but CDProjekt showed how wrong the whole DRM scheme is."

You mean the people who champion DRM-free policies, but attach DRM to their own Witcher games for the initial launch? Sure they removed it eventually (And were even up front about their intention to remove it once initial launch sales were over), but they're not exactly puritans of faith so to speak.