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

It's all bullshit...

[blahplusplus]

... the reason Denuvo is even possible is because the internet fundamentally alterated the relationship between PC game buyer and PC game seller. Developers and publishers have all the power now since customers are 100's of miles away and can't simply storm their offices and force the drm and evil server locks out of their AAA games. High speed internet was the biggest cheat code ever granted to game companies by the laws of our universe. Once they make a game they can just keep it on their servers while giving you only half the game you paid for, while giving you the big shit sandwitch.

The tech industries (and hence game industry) eternal quest was to get rid of software ownership and to take control of the customers PC/software to exploit them for profits. They've been doing a remarkable job and this all began with Ultima RPG's on the PC back in the 90's, they rebadged RPG's as mmo's to get a gullible gaming public to pay monthly for the same fucking game because they know the public is stupid and illiterate as fuck.

Denuvo, mmo's and steam could only exist in a world where the average person is bumfuck retard level stupid in the head. All the cool things we used to get in the 90's like QeRadiant for quake and level editors have been dialed back completely because, the worlds technology illiterate got locked down smart phones and high speed internet.

That enabled companis to put gambling interfaces into software and reach the 3% of the population that is, the super rich, the super dumb and super impulsive. Let's remember League of legends model has a conversion rate of less than 3%, so that means most gamers aren't stupid enough to hand Riot money. The same thing you see on Mobile games where these mobile games have a gambing/gacha interface. THe internet allowed game companies to simply keep the software and disposess the public from owning and controlling the software so they can just exploit the 3% willy nilly and make super profits.

Watching this all go down for 20 years was pretty alarming, I never thought the camel getting it's nose into the tend would mean the entire game industry would clean up 20 years later because of locked down smart phones gave the access to the global population with too much money and people with impulse control problems, allowing game companies to be incentivized to never give people the full software they are paying for ever again.

False premise for DRM.

[Ecuador]

The basic premise for the need of DRM is false. It assumes people who would buy the game the moment it comes out are the same group as the people who would pirate it. Which is quite sad, the companies basically believe their customers are pirates and they would not pay if they were given the chance. Which has been proven false in many ways. In fact, from personal experience, the people who would pay for a game would only pirate it if there is a reason, like DRM making their life difficult.
I know I am just preaching to the choir here...