Hitman 2's Denuvo DRM Cracked Days Before the Game's Release (arstechnica.com)

thegarbz writes: Denuvo, the darling of the DRM industry was once considered by publishers to be the final solution to piracy. Slashdot has documented the slow decline of Denuvo from stories in 2014, and 2016 where publishers were praising Denuvo's success at mitigating piracy for weeks, to its slow decline last year where games were being cracked within "hours" of release. The popular wisdom of publishers in the past considered DRM worth while as it thwarts piracy during the critical sales spike when games are first released. Last week saw Hitman 2, the latest Denuvo protected game get cracked in a short time. The kicker, the game isn't officially released until this Thursday.

Publishers are now eroding the potential sale day advantage of DRM through the latest practice of offering games for early release in an attempt to secure an ever larger number of pre-orders for popular titles. This leads to the obvious question: Does DRM make financial sense to include in titles if they risk being cracked before release date? Conversely, does releasing games early to selected customers make financial sense if it results in the DRM being cracked before release?

Comments

Re:Simple solutions

[DRJlaw]

When the game boots have some data structures with critical assets that must be loaded from data that is only available on servers.

We've found our next publisher-industry consultant folks, call off the search. "New idea" that retreads concepts that have been in use for years -- product activation and/or required-all-the-time internet access -- CHECK. Consumer hostile mechanism that ensures that once the publisher loses interest and takes down the servers, the consumer loses their ability to use what they've purchased -- CHECK.

Release day should also be the day that a new protection layer is introduced, so even if the pre-relase DRM had been cracked, somehow; folks would have to start over after release.

Updating DRM on the release copy while magically thinking that the previous version wouldn't have roadmapped how to defeat it -- CHECK.

You're the trifecta, man. Get your resume out there.