Wasn't there only like a handful of games that truly had issues with Denuvo? I doubt the performance impact is that large.
Most of it is fairly anecdotal, a comparison between the demo leaked FF15 and the release version saw no performance difference
It's a preview game for Life is Strange part 2. They're using Denuvo just to keep people from getting into the asset files and discovering spoilers.
Shouldn't have put those files there in the first place then, huh?
there's gotta be better obfuscation methods
They did a terrible job, people (even idiots like me) were ripping character models, strings and sound files on the day it came out.
The world of software protection RE is a very, very small one. (I'm a hobbyist) An old RE buddy from years prior became the interim CTO of Denuvo last year, got in contact with me again, and offered me a job
From a business perspective, taking out one good person from a team has huge results. Adding one good person has the same effect. There's just so few people out doing this.
(I did decline mind you all
It's actually more simple than that. Final Fantasy XV was cracked before release thanks to demo exe. You can figure out the rest.
bypassing DRM alone shouldn't be a crime. If there's software on your computer you should be able to modify it freely, if there's software on your tractor and the company puts DRM on it you should be able to edit it to fix it, especially since DRM layers often hide built in malware that spies on you, breaks the item as a part of planned obsolescence, or prevents you from using aftermarket parts for repair.
Actually pirating something sure make laws against that, but making cracks should be completely legal as it's essentially mandatory for our internet security apparatus to function at all. DRM thats illegal to crack can be levereged in many ways by companies to fuck over consumers, makes security research impossible, and violates basic ideas of ownership of your physical property .
https://irdeto.com/news/suspect-arrested-following-collaborative-denuvo-hacking-investigation-by-bulgarian-police-and-irdeto.html
Following an initial investigation by Irdeto into the hacking of Denuvo Anti-Tamper software, the findings were passed to the Bulgarian Cybercrime Unit and resulted in the raid on a premises in Dimitrovgrad, Bulgaria on Tuesday.
Its amazing how they paint him as some sort of terrorist that has finally been stopped.
How he is a mad hacker that ruins the games for everybody.
if I kiss the boots of Denuvo maybe they'll let me install my game on an extra PC
Most but not all. Pretty recent example is Sonic Mania which was not working offline for quite a while because of the Denuvo. And after Encore DLC release there is/was performance issues and various issues. It was confirmed by Voksi that most of the problems cause by Denuvo.
Denuvo shouldn't be causing slowdowns ideally, but apparently there are bad implementations occasionally that have measurable effect.
Is there any proof of these performance issues with denuvo? I remember seeing people say it with like lord of the fallen but never saw any proof.
Most of it seems to be, for the lack of a better word, propaganda.
There always seems to be reports of it when a game launches, but it dies down pretty quickly afterwards.
The reason why there'n no noticeable performance increase is because cracks only avoid Denuvo, not disable or delete it outright. In case of GTA V, which has its Arxan anti-tamper piece of crap completely removed by RELOADED, there is a noticeable performance increase.
The proper Denuvo implementation does its magic during non-performance critical times. Such as intializing game engine etc. The only noticable if any performance impact will be during these times.
Although yeah, there were some games that had legit horrible performance due to Denuvo, but that was caused by game's devs not bothering to even read documentation and inserting Denuvo stuff on start/end of each game frame etc. These games are probably the ones from which DENUVO performance killer myths came from.
I don't see how this "critical launch window" is relevant.
If someone doesn't want to pay $60+ for a newly released game they're not going to buy it during this critical launch window no matter what. They'll either wait for it to go on sale, or they'll wait for it to be cracked.
If someone is going to pirate it anyway they'll wait for the crack. No one who prefers to pirate games over buying them (or can't afford the price in the first place) goes "Oh well the crack is taking longer than expected I guess I'll shell out the cost of one or more tanks of gas for a video game rather than wait"
And the kind of people who WOULD buy a game during this 'critical launch window' wouldn't pirate it anyway because they either don't want to, don't know how, don't want to break the law, or don't care about the cost.
Maybe if video games didn't cost so much and didn't have such ridiculous "PROVE THAT YOU BOUGHT IT" checks they'd be pirated less. It was easy to justify spending $20- $40 on a video game back in the day but now that all new releases from major publishers START at $60 and go up from there it's hard to justify dropping that kind of money. Especially when you consider:
1) Almost everything is digitally distributed now, which was supposed to cut down on our cost but instead it only cut down their bottom line, price didn't change
2) Games are getting less and less unique and are feeling very similar, especially from the same publisher (e.g. Battlefront vs Battlefield vs COD)
3) The cost of literally everything else is rising steadily while wages are NOT rising to match, so entertainment is falling to the wayside.
I can't say about other games but in case of Sonic Mania devs give sega compiled exe and people at sega apply denuvo on top of it. So it's not integrated into the codebase for this game.
My current take on games piracy is "price for delivery". Without going in detail, "how much less can I spend to get almost the same experience"?
Is $60 worth saving for delay (blindly waiting for a crack), social pressure, downloading from a potentially terrible host, risking infection, and probably no multiplayer?
Some would gladly spend the money after pirating to "upgrade" or "legitimize" their experience, often referred as demo.
To save money, some aren't hesitant to buy from cd key sites, despite minor risks. Ethical concerns play a small part, but not entirely.
Saying that nobody would give in if piracy isn't an option would be anecdotal. Yet, the suits are obviously convinced the other way, by data that we do not have.
Funny enough, piracy has provided some that legit copies don't, such as availability, 'ownership', all DLC, offline play and such.
It has become a trade-off instead of disadvantaged.
isn't reverse engineering for compatibility explicitly allowed by the EU? all you would have to do is prove that Denuvo prevented you from using a product you purchased on a platform.
Not sure how it is in other european countries, but here atleast its up to Judge whether reverse engineering in specific case falls under compatiblity umbrella. And considering that Voksi bragged about cracking and never mentioned anything about compatiblity I don't think this would ever go through.
Denuvo pleases publishers and as long as it does that they wont really give much crap about the negative press or the performance issues from rushed implementations.
Thats probably the worst thing about it, even though I would say that the amount they pay for it probably does not even break even from the delayed cracks.
Majority of illegal downloads are not lost sales as much as publishers like to think they are since they would never be sales to begin with.
From random surveys and whatnot, most pirates also have no problems with waiting that extra time.
Annecdotal but piracy probably caused a lot of sales that wouldn't have happened if people couldn't demo it with pirating it beforehand.
DRM is generally shit, speaking from experience. The only DRM I haven't found much fault in (as far as the DRM function goes) is Steam which at this point has evolved beyond its initial purpose. Perhaps developers should realise that DRM which hurts paying consumers will only encourage people to pirate the games, it's the same reason I stopped buying any Ubisoft games after FC3 and WD because Uplay is an unreliable piece of shit rhat stopped me from playing the games I bought for up to a week whilst pirates could play on the day of installation.
Not to mention shit like StarForce DRM in the past which actually caused damage to some users' hardware.
I've only personally had issues with a few games DRM to be honest, and that was about 5 years ago.
As far as I understand, only the recipient of the software may make modifications in the case of errors or lack of interoperability between it and other software. Because Denuvo games technically work under the conditions they were advertised with, e.g. internet required, minimum system requirements - this law may not apply right now. However, if the Denuvo servers would go down you should be well within your right to crack the software. Either way, only the person who has bought the software/game is authorized to make these changes on their personal copy. Distribution of a modified binary (or delta patcher) would still be illegal due to copyright infringement.
So if Voksi merely posted a tutorial on how to break protection, he might have been in the clear. :V:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32009L0024
I think people such stop focusing on the practical aspects of DRM and look at the ethical ones, GDPR is a good example of what good laws can do, hopefully in the future DRM such as denuvo is outlawed.
Well the only unethical aspect of DRM is that games protected by it stop working if the DRM company goes defunct. I do believe it's best if companies patch out Denuvo after some years just to prevent this from happening. But nothing else about this form of DRM is unethical. People who purchase the game can play it just fine. Sure, you have to be online, but you are completely aware of that when you purchase the game. It's not a right to play specific video games. If you don't agree with these practices, or don't have an internet connection, you're free to not purchase the product.
Anyway, I see no reason why DRM should be outlawed, especially relatively invisible DRM like Denuvo. If anything, piracy is the unethical thing here.
Entirely banning DRM would be a catastrophe for single player games and all paid software alike. Yeah, things eventually get cracked. But you can't take a AAA title and immediately download it functioning on day one, much like you can't share the newest solidworks with your friends. That's a good thing.
DRM can be a pox, but it seems like this one is actually working , in that it's fairly strong and has had no meaningful performance impact. Further, the few times it did freeze out players resulted in a fast patch.
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