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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?
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?
I seem to remember several folks tracing performance problems in Batman Arkham Knight to Denuvo, but I could be wrong. I know they swear it doesn't impact performance but I find that tough to believe given how it works (it encrypts the entire game and decrypts it on the fly).
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... 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.
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...
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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.
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.
Does DRM make financial sense to include in titles if they risk being cracked before release date?
The purpose of DRM is to prevent unauthorized redistribution of digital media and restrict the ways consumers can copy content they've purchased. So no.
Conversely, does releasing games early to selected customers make financial sense if it results in the DRM being cracked before release?
They keep doing it, so it must be worth it to them. The inverse of this would be to ask: "Does it make financial sense to purchase a game, if it's just going to get old (boring) later anyway?"
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The only thing DRM does is turn away paying customers. If you don't want me to buy your game, the first thing you should do is disrespect me; treat my PC as if you owned it, everything I do on it, everything associated with it.
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I understand why the publishers -want- DRM, but why are they still surprised when it's cracked wide open? They always were, always will be.
It's worth noting that the publisher/developer DID REMOVE Denuvo from the 2016 HITMAN at some point after release, so they're at least a little more responsible than other publishers who leave that crap there forever, losing my business in the process.
It's also worth noting that the 2016 HITMAN had a great Linux release by Feral Interactive (who have done Linux versions of other notable AAA titles, like Rise of the Tomb Raider, Mad Max) and there's no Denuvo for Linux (thankfully).
Anyone who wants to avoid Denuvo should follow the relevant curators on Steam. Also be sure to read the EULA on the game's store page and use ctrl+F to find Denuvo or DRM.
With most simple locks the door to say your bed room can be easily opened, however 99% of the time, if it is locked people will do the bare minimum to open it. Turn the handle and push on the door. It didn't work, then they stop.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
One of my favourite gaming authors has an insightful appraisal of Denuvo and how effective it is. His conclusion is that it's already proven all the publisher's claims about piracy to be lies and in doing so has made itself redundant.
If you want to learn more about what Denuvo is and how it works from a games programmer and (good) author, then it's well worth a read.
Here's the main thrust of the article:
> On the other hand, I stand by the point I made four years ago: Denuvo is so good it proved it was useless.
>
> For years, consumers complained about intrusive DRM. It locks you out of your legitimately purchased product.
> It creates bugs and slowdowns. It’s a hassle. It makes it impossible to run the game years later when the servers
> go down. It punishes legitimate customers while doing nothing to inconvenience the pirates.
>
> In response to these concerns, publishers would tell us that strong DRM was necessary because of rampant piracy.
> Piracy was blamed for high prices, or for a refusal to port games to the PC. Developers claimed that between 90%
> and 95% of players were using pirated copies. This led publishers to make absurd claims that game prices would be
> lower or that they wouldn’t need to close so many studios if there weren’t so many dang pirates,. The assumption was
> that if 90% of players are pirates, then games would make ten times as much money if we could stop piracy. All those
> pirates would run out and buy legitimate copies and it would usher in a golden age of low prices and profitability.
>
> Tomb Raider 2013 pre-dates Denuvo. Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider were both protected
> by Denuvo. And yet we haven’t heard about any miraculous sales spike that caused the second two games to massively
> outsell the first. If Denuvo makes any difference at all, it must be very slight. Is it even enough to offset the loss of
> potential customers? If Denuvo was actually making a measurable difference in terms of sales, wouldn’t all games be
> using it by now?
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As always DRM makes life difficult for paying customers while pirates enjoy a hassle-free experience. The last example on the list is EA titles which allow you to change your hardware configuration only 5 times during a 24-hours period, so GPU/CPU reviewers end up buying ... several licenses just to be able to carry out their battery of tests across dozens of HW configurations.
Then we have the usual fuck-ups when companies shut down their DRM/multiplayer servers which makes it impossible to play uncracked games. Then there are games which require a stable internet connection, so that always-on-DRM could work, so you can't get anywhere once you got disconnected for various reasons. The list goes on and on.
you're thinking like an adult with a job. As a kid I'd pirate because it was easier than begging for new games. Kids are still a significant amount of game sales.
To be fair though I'd be free to play, especially Fortnight, is hurting way more than piracy every did in that market.
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There's a relatively easy, straightforward solution to the piracy problem, but manufacturers are too greedy to consider it. Simply don't release a game at all until a pre-defined number of paid orders has been received. Deal with updates in a similar fashion. Nobody gets that great new weapon until enough people have bucked up for it.
Step two would be a free release with a few not-too-annoying nags built in to encourage people to pay. Stay under the threshold where average gamers decide it's worth pirating rather than playing the slightly disadvantaged legal/free version, or buying the game outright.
These people need to learn that the days when putting a game on the market was a ticket to perpetual royalties is well and truly over.
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that ensures that once the publisher loses interest and takes down the servers, the consumer loses their ability to use what they've purchased
This doesn't have to be customer hostile. Since we're primarily concerned about protecting the software at release --- how about delivering a patch scheduled for 1 year after release that removes DRM to ease the maintenance burden and load on the servers.
We can avoid requiring "continuous internet access" by "downloading such and such data payload for offline use" but maintaining it in encrypted forms taking advantage of the hardware TPM module on gamers' PCs to perform a hardware-secured authorization over the internet to issue a credential that is valid for a specified period of time to authorize access to certain bits by a trusted agent system.
Updating DRM on the release copy while magically thinking that the previous version wouldn't have roadmapped how to defeat it -- CHECK.
Only if people trying to crack the software are content running a before release version of the game.
At least daily within the first few weeks of release then weekly, then monthly there should be planned updates, and those running a cracked version of a new title will find themselves hindered or be missing out severely.
That is by design the original code will not be as intended, and there may even be bugs designed in to render progression impossible that will have a timed update rollout before we expect the first players to reach that point in the game ---- and the updates/patches will of course include planned re-generation of certain security sections rendering cracked games unable to work with the updates.
It's been tried many times, and many people cry out "always on internet drm sucks". Microsoft tried it for an entire console, too. And nevermind the likes of Ubisoft which proposed doing it for all their games.
Maybe all the PC needs is to drop the AAA games and live on with indies, online and free to play. It's not unusual, since that was the general state of most gaming pre-Denuvo with MMOs being particularly popular.
at launch. A lot of times the patches remove the DRM, since they charge per install and why keep paying for DRM 3-6 months after launch day when the pirates have moved on. But that means I'm buying on Gog or on sale, and a lot of games don't launch day 1 on Gog if at all.
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This is hardly "proof" though. It seems entirely plausible that a lot more people might have been more excited by the combination of "next gen"+nostalgia for the 2013 reboot than there would be people excited for subsequent, more incremental iterations.
Don't get me wrong, I think most DRM is snake oil and have certainly railed against some implementations of it (eg music CD "DRM" which hampered legitimate purchasers while MP3s abounded) in my time. But without some view into an alternate universe it's surely difficult to say categorically, or even probably, what effect DRM has on sales.
Of course, any publisher claiming that reducing piracy would "usher in a golden age of low prices and profitability" is probably lying as much as the many DRM snake oil sellers. Price is almost entirely determined by what people will pay.
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There aren't many bright crackers left today. I guess the really smart and active guys can be counted on one hand.
I think it would be cheaper and more efficient to pay every Top10-Cracker some $1000 per day as long as the game stays uncracked.
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