Pirates Crack Microsoft's UWP Protection, Five Layers of DRM Defeated (torrentfreak.com)

A piracy scene group has managed to get past the five layers of DRM in Microsoft's Unified Windows Platform UWP -- which enables software developers to create applications that can run across many devices. From a report: This week it became clear that the UWP system, previously believed to be uncrackable, had fallen to pirates. After being released on October 31, 2017, the somewhat underwhelming Zoo Tycoon Ultimate Animal Collection became the first victim at the hands of popular scene group, CODEX. "This is the first scene release of a UWP (Universal Windows Platform) game. Therefore we would like to point out that it will of course only work on Windows 10. This particular game requires Windows 10 version 1607 or newer," the group said in its release notes. CODEX says it's important that the game isn't allowed to communicate with the Internet so the group advises users to block the game's executable in their firewall.

Comments

Congratulations!

[Anonymous Coward]

Kudos to CODEX for this impressive feat! They are a living reminder that hard work, diligence, and persistence will ultimately lead to success!

Effort

[alvinrod]

I wonder how much human effort is devoted to both construction and circumvention of DRM schemes. We've seen time and time again that it doesn't work and is ultimately defeated rendering the entire exercise ultimately futile, and yet so few seemingly try to do otherwise. If all of that effort were put to some other use, I'm curious about what could be accomplished. The individuals who work on this stuff on either side must be some incredibly intelligent people to do what they do, so I suspect their talents are utterly wasted on something as pointless as this.

Re: Effort

[Anonymous Coward]

Not wasted. Now it is time to upgrade UWP. It had a good run.

People who download and use software, books, movies or music without permission from that digital contents creator necessitate this cat and mouse game. If those people didn't try to circumvent payment for the digital content they want, there would be no DRM.

Re: Effort

[Sarten-X]

This is pretty much dead-on correct. Sorry, folks, but we live in a capitalist society. You aren't entitled to anything just by right of being able to copy, take, or otherwise acquire it.

If you can't afford (or don't want to pay for) some piece of software, don't use it. It's that simple. In many cases there are FLOSS alternatives that will do the job (perhaps not as easily or effectively, but well enough to pass muster), or especially in the case of games, the software itself is a luxury that you can simply do without. I'm terribly sorry if you feel you just can't live without your Zoo Tycoon Ultimate Animal Collection, but that's the way the world works. You don't get to cheat and get off scot-free.

Re: Effort

[alvinrod]

I don't necessarily buy that argument. There are plenty of games that I could just go out and pirate, but websites like GOG (make it easy for me to buy those games instead. It's mostly a lot of older games that have run their course, but newer titles like those in the Witcher series or some of Obsidian's newer releases have been made available there on release without any DRM and those companies are managing to be financially successful.

At some point, you probably start spending more on DRM than you gain by through sales that are lost to piracy. I suspect that a lot of piracy of software is done because it's the most convenient way to consume or in some cases the only way to consume. If you're not providing a legal way for digital distribution to occur in some countries, it's little surprise that willing consumers will revert to pirate copies. The other side comes down to economics. You can't sell a $60 game or a $20 movie into a market where those values constitute a monthly wage. Piracy in those territories does not represent a lost sale because it could never have been on to begin with. If you want to sell into those markets, you need to drop prices to a few dollars and it's very likely that you'll get some paying customers.

If you spend $200,000 on developing, implementing, and supporting (you know, when it invariably fucks over a paying customer and they're calling tech support) DRM, but the inclusion only generates an extra $50,000 in revenue then it's a waste. Everyone wants to believe that they're potentially losing millions, but it's clearly not that much. If you use Hollywood's figures for piracy the amount comes out to something larger than the GDP of the entire planet, which should tell you how baseless the calculations are.

Re: Effort

[Kjella]

This is pretty much dead-on correct. Sorry, folks, but we live in a capitalist society.

Funny you should say that since DRM is the jack-booted thug enforcing licenses which is a war on ownership and exactly the opposite of traditional capitalism. What we're heading for is more like modern serfdom where you own nothing and license all your software and media subject to the whims of global mega-corporations who decides when they're altering the terms and when your rented experience expires and whether you've violated some sort of rule in that 100-page EULA you didn't read. And with IoT and self-driving cars on the horizon that concept will probably soon be extended to hardware too. Sure you can always say no... in which case you get no security updates and/or everything stops working, it's not like you have a real choice. The "buying and selling" model is on the way out...