Denuvo gets day 0 cracks for both Total War: Warhammer 2 and FIFA 18
85 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Geikkamir;52733765]For probably the millionth time, piracy and theft are not equivalent.[/QUOTE]
Piracy and [I]physical[/I] theft.
Piracy is still a form of theft, until you buy the product.
[QUOTE=FlakTheMighty;52733776]Piracy and [I]physical[/I] theft.
Piracy is still a form of theft, until you buy the product.[/QUOTE]
No, it isn't. You aren't stealing anything. You're violating a copyright.
[QUOTE=Mitchel.;52733734]And how is letting piracy go on okay?
As an small indie dev, seeing pirated copies of my game floating around is very disheartening.
[/QUOTE]
If most devs acknowledge that there is a small subsection of users who will simply always pirate their games, and that subsection does not shrink too much with the advent of DRM like Denuvo, wouldn't it make more sense to just factor in piracy to all the games you'll ever make and focus on creating a more consumer friendly and appealing experience for those who wish to actually buy your games?
I don't know, I think I'm making a flawed argument there, but some of the more pro-DRM arguments in this thread have painted this picture of piracy being simply inevitable, with the pirates you can stop being a minuscule number compared to paying customers and inevitable pirates. It feels like DRM is more of a feel good measure than anything.
I have a feeling this is all getting too muddled because we created a lot of laws before digital storage and media got as advanced as it is today. It's hard to decide if it's morally wrong to get a completely free, harmless copy of a great work of art. We've decided it is because you should pay for it, but I just have a feeling the future is gonna see some radical reexamination of that concept. Because piracy really does seem like the unbeatable problem. If you can commit the victimless crime of copying a 1:1 edition of the hottest new movie, game or TV show, people are going to do it. No matter what. So should the effort be put towards developing convoluted DRM methods to delay that process for the sake of capitalism, or maybe should we take a look at how we handle IP, copyright and the distribution of media/art.
[QUOTE=WillerinV1.02;52733853]If most devs acknowledge that there is a small subsection of users who will simply always pirate their games, and that subsection does not shrink too much with the advent of DRM like Denuvo[/QUOTE]
They [i]do[/i] acknowledge that that subset exists. It's just that the population that regularly pirates games they would never buy is smaller than the subset that will buy the product if piracy is inconvenient enough to make it not worth the hassle.
DRM doesn't address the former because developers don't care about the former group. DRM is aimed squarely at the latter, and in particular for the crucial days immediately after release where that latter group is the most relevant to long-term sales.
Again, the recent EU study on piracy talks a lot about this: the largest subset of pirates by far are opportunists who want the product and would be willing to pay, but will take the product for free if it's easy enough. Making a better/more convenient service and implementing DRM go hand-in-hand, in that they make piracy less attractive than a legitimate copy.
[QUOTE=WillerinV1.02;52733853]If most devs acknowledge that there is a small subsection of users who will simply always pirate their games, and that subsection does not shrink too much with the advent of DRM like Denuvo, wouldn't it make more sense to just factor in piracy to all the games you'll ever make and focus on creating a more consumer friendly and appealing experience for those who wish to actually buy your games?
I don't know, I think I'm making a flawed argument there, but some of the more pro-DRM arguments in this thread have painted this picture of piracy being simply inevitable, with the pirates you can stop being a minuscule number compared to paying customers and inevitable pirates. It feels like DRM is more of a feel good measure than anything.
I have a feeling this is all getting too muddled because we created a lot of laws before digital storage and media got as advanced as it is today. It's hard to decide if it's morally wrong to get a completely free, harmless copy of a great work of art. We've decided it is because you should pay for it, but I just have a feeling the future is gonna see some radical reexamination of that concept. Because piracy really does seem like the unbeatable problem. If you can commit the victimless crime of copying a 1:1 edition of the hottest new movie, game or TV show, people are going to do it. No matter what. So should the effort be put towards developing convoluted DRM methods to delay that process for the sake of capitalism, or maybe should we take a look at how we handle IP, copyright and the distribution of media/art.[/QUOTE]
Let me just outline how insane DRM has gotten for movies.
If I wanted to watch a 4K Blu-ray on my PC I would have to have a 4K Blu-ray drive (not too bad, you need a drive to put a disc in, no shit, but the scummy bit is they're all by one manufacturer), a 7th generation Intel processor (can't even use the i9 despite it being newer) a reoccurring subscription for software that allows playback of 4K Blu-ray, a graphics card that supports HDMI ouput and HDCP 2.whatever, a monitor or TV that supports HDMI input and HDCP 2.whatever, and Windows 10.
Or Mr Pirate can download his 4K rip and watch it in Windows Media Player on Windows XP with an outdated AMD CPU, on a CRT if he wanted to.
[QUOTE=catbarf;52733880]They [i]do[/i] acknowledge that that subset exists. It's just that the population that regularly pirates games they would never buy is smaller than the subset that will buy the product if piracy is inconvenient enough to make it not worth the hassle.
DRM doesn't address the former because developers don't care about the former group. DRM is aimed squarely at the latter, and in particular for the crucial days immediately after release where that latter group is the most relevant to long-term sales.
[/QUOTE]
Sure, but what happens when the methods they use to tackle that group begins to fail, like it has in this case? Denuvo's effectiveness is on it's way out, do we just wait for the next uncrackable DRM and start signalling the end of conventional piracy?
My main thought was that if it's becoming harder and harder to fight piracy, and developers and publishers have already accepted that there'll be some measure of piracy you can't beat, [I]and[/I] if piracy falls into that "victimless crime" category...
There needs to be a change, is my main point. This type of system doesn't seem sustainable or realistic. FlakTheMighty's post outlines some of the more ridiculous results of this game of constant one-upping.
I used to download no cd cracks for some of my favorite games like zoo-tycoon and rollercoaster tycoon because my cd drive didn't open anymore, my friend showed me how to download them and that was like when we were 12, convenience was and still is king in my eyes. If I have the money for a game I'll buy it for the sake of not having to deal with shady downloads and painstaking work arounds. Although if I could uninstall uplay forever then I would do that in a heartbeat.
If the DRM is more of a hassle than pirating a game then you're doing it wrong.
[QUOTE=WillerinV1.02;52733901]Sure, but what happens when the methods they use to tackle that group begins to fail, like it has in this case? Denuvo's effectiveness is on it's way out, do we just wait for the next uncrackable DRM and start signalling the end of conventional piracy?[/QUOTE]
They'll keep trying. They'll keep working on new systems and fighting a constant, expensive arms race, because this, the overwhelmingly most common scenario:
[QUOTE=slapdown3;52733903]If I have the money for a game I'll buy it for the sake of not having to deal with shady downloads and painstaking work arounds. [/QUOTE]
only holds true as long as the downloads are shady and the workarounds are painstaking. If piracy is easy enough that it's just as convenient as a legitimate copy, then free is always going to beat paying. There's no way to compete with that.
They've already accepted that there's some piracy that you can't 'beat'. Those are the people who pirate games they would never buy, or pirate games they can't afford. But those aren't the biggest subset of pirates by a long shot, and at the moment it remains cost-effective to make piracy inconvenient. Now, if that changes, and the costs of implementing DRM start to exceed the ROI, you'll start seeing more and more games released DRM-free- or, more likely, you'll start seeing more and more games force multiplayer, microtransactions, and always-online gameplay focus to try to circumvent piracy as a risk.
[QUOTE=catbarf;52733248]And how has Valve solved that particular problem? They've gone to microtransaction-driven, always-online products, providing the service that piracy can't match. Is that really the model you want to follow?[/QUOTE]
That's about Valve games. The quote is about Steam as a platform. What are you even on about?
Furthermore, what's your point? If that portion of people are always going to pirate something, they're not going to suddenly buy the game just because piracy isn't an option. They'll just outright skip the game entirely. Either way you're not making a sale.
[QUOTE=hexpunK;52732194]"offering a better servcie" are just weasel words used to justify piracy.
[/QUOTE]
It's a statistically provable fact that's supported by a metric ton of various games. Your "it's just an excuse from pirates!!" excuse is rampant drivel with no facts to back it up.
Notch also worded the second half of the equation at some point by mentioning that a good solution against piracy is a constant influx of new content and updates. It's more difficult to keep up a pirated copy up to date when a game updates on a very frequent basis, which happens to constitute one of the reasons why Minecraft sold so well at the peak of its popularity: you kind of had to buy the thing if you wanted to keep up with updates and there used to be like one every week.
As little value as anecdotal evidence offers (still a step above your own shitty, baseless arguments mind you) I'm still going to put up my own. Prior to GOG being around there was kind of a fuckton of games I simply had zero legal and reasonable access to. Them being abandonware or generally speaking just being old as a geriatric ballsack meant they were stupidly rare to find on the internet or otherwise and just as likely to work at all. Then GOG comes along and allows me to buy these old games, and on top of that lets me play updated versions which natively work on modern Operating Systems. I went from buying 0% of my pre-2003 games to buying 100% of them because [I]one website[/I] offered me a better service than grabbing these games on DDL sites or on piratebay or wherever else and jerry-rigging the living shit out of them to make them work on Win7 or Win10. Ain't that some shit.
[QUOTE=SebiWarrior;52732172]Piracy is never going away
You gotta offer the best services in order to minimize illegal downloading of your game. Which also means, stop restricting it in foreign countries and the like, no always-online, etc[/QUOTE]
If we ever enter the dystopia world of game streaming becoming popular, that's when piracy becomes impossible. You won't be running any code locally, just streaming video and sending out your control inputs.
[QUOTE=Zezibesh;52734620]If we ever enter the dystopia world of game streaming becoming popular, that's when piracy becomes impossible. You won't be running any code locally, just streaming video and sending out your control inputs.[/QUOTE]
Until the US (and places like Australia) gets better internet, this isn't even viable for us :v:
[QUOTE=WillerinV1.02;52733853]If most devs acknowledge that there is a small subsection of users who will simply always pirate their games, and that subsection does not shrink too much with the advent of DRM like Denuvo, wouldn't it make more sense to just factor in piracy to all the games you'll ever make and focus on creating a more consumer friendly and appealing experience for those who wish to actually buy your games?
I don't know, I think I'm making a flawed argument there, but some of the more pro-DRM arguments in this thread have painted this picture of piracy being simply inevitable, with the pirates you can stop being a minuscule number compared to paying customers and inevitable pirates. It feels like DRM is more of a feel good measure than anything.
I have a feeling this is all getting too muddled because we created a lot of laws before digital storage and media got as advanced as it is today. It's hard to decide if it's morally wrong to get a completely free, harmless copy of a great work of art. We've decided it is because you should pay for it, but I just have a feeling the future is gonna see some radical reexamination of that concept. Because piracy really does seem like the unbeatable problem. If you can commit the victimless crime of copying a 1:1 edition of the hottest new movie, game or TV show, people are going to do it. No matter what. So should the effort be put towards developing convoluted DRM methods to delay that process for the sake of capitalism, or maybe should we take a look at how we handle IP, copyright and the distribution of media/art.[/QUOTE]
DRM is actually publitized as a feel good measure, but in reality it's done to control how you can access stuff you paid for.
[editline]1st October 2017[/editline]
[QUOTE=Matthew0505;52734922]A world where the average consumer internet has the latency and bandwidth for that isn't a dystopia.[/QUOTE]
He's talking about it becoming popular, having a good connection for streaming doesn't mean streaming is fine.
Valve games aren't always online, just multiplayer (mostly), you can play them offline.
[QUOTE=Geikkamir;52733785]No, it isn't. You aren't stealing anything. You're violating a copyright.[/QUOTE]
Also reminder that all DRMs (including Steam) mean you don't buy a game; you buy the right to play that game, like a subscription. You don't actually own the games you're buying, and therefore it's even less of a theft to pirate them.
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;52731921]Research done back in 2013 shows that game demos actually tend to hurt game sales as opposed to having a good marketing campaign.
The goal of Denuvo isn't to convince you to buy a game either, it's to strong-arm you into a blind purchase. There's a reason it was used so much with shitty PC ports, if your game runs like utter garbage because you outsourced the port to the cheapest team you could find you're gonna have to find some other way to make people buy your shit.[/QUOTE]
Basically the gaming industry relies on deception and blind trust to sell their games now, and have no interest in letting you try it. A demo let you see if you'd like it, see the state of the game, see if it would run on your rig. Of course that would hurt sales more than help. Ain't no room for honesty
[QUOTE=TheTalon;52736446]Basically the gaming industry relies on deception and blind trust to sell their games now, and have no interest in letting you try it. A demo let you see if you'd like it, see the state of the game, see if it would run on your rig. Of course that would hurt sales more than help. Ain't no room for honesty[/QUOTE]
Demos for good games had problems too. Such a lot of people deciding that they've got their fix from it, I did this with crysis for example, I played that shit for hours, and then didn't buy the game until years later when it was on sale.
Really, the only winning scenario with demos IS deception. As in, a good demo for a bad/mediocre game. Everything else either had no statistically significant effect, or they hurt sales.
[QUOTE=Loadingue;52735104]Also reminder that all DRMs (including Steam) mean you don't buy a game; you buy the right to play that game, like a subscription.[/QUOTE]
I gave you that old red "x" not because I disagree with this notion specifically, but because it doesn't only apply to DRM packed games, it applies to damn near every game. Crack open any game manual and skim through the legal bits, you'll find a piece of info that says more or less the same thing as what you said. It's always been this way, the only difference is physical disks don't have an "off switch" akin to DRM stuff.
This comes from my old '06 game "Maelstrom":
[quote]... THE PROGRAM is protected by copyright laws of the United States, international copyright treaties and conventions and other laws. [B]The Program is licensed, and not sold,[/B] and this Agreement confers no title or ownership of the Program or any copy thereof. ...[/quote]
[QUOTE=TheTalon;52736446]Basically the gaming industry relies on deception and blind trust to sell their games now, and have no interest in letting you try it. A demo let you see if you'd like it, see the state of the game, see if it would run on your rig. Of course that would hurt sales more than help. Ain't no room for honesty[/QUOTE]
The problem is that trailers actually excite the interest of players and keeps it up relatively. A demo will get the interest of someone but as soon as they have played it they may have been satisfied with the experience and not bother with the full game. You could argue that a good demo for a good game would bring them to come back but then you're taking the risk of people playing the demo in a loop and getting sick of the game before it ever reaches a full state.
The exact same effect can be seen in some people with early access. Some will buy their games early and will play it in its earlier stages of development and will get tired of it long before it hits its official release.
I love a good demo as much as the next guy, but I don't understand how it's your only deciding factor - aren't we forgetting about the go-to methods that are reviews & refunds? I don't think demos were ever the primary solution, and I get that more demos would be nice, but I'm tired of pretending that without them or piracy we must buy things blind.
[QUOTE=Talvy;52737751]I love a good demo as much as the next guy, but I don't understand how it's your only deciding factor - aren't we forgetting about the go-to methods that are reviews & refunds? I don't think demos were ever the primary solution, and I get that more demos would be nice, but I'm tired of pretending that without them or piracy we must buy things blind.[/QUOTE]
I personally don't like reviews because I've at times read ones that recommended games that I ended up not really liking. I like Steams refund system though, seems like a good way to do demos without the developers having to bother cutting out parts of their games
Best way to ethically incite a purchase is to give a playable "demo" that has content/story specific to the demo itself, that leaves you wanting more. Something like a "prequel" to the main game.
This way you don't get any story content from the full game so replaying those sections when you buy it is not an issue, you entice people to play the demo because of the exclusive story, you can craft the demo for the short playtime to include gameplay that normally would be drip-fed to you throughout the game (give em some high end weapons or characters for a brief bit), and overall you give a taste of the gameplay/story but leave the player wanting more.
Now if your gameplay is total garbage that's not going to help, but a good game can really shine with a good demo. Then, if people enjoy the demo and can afford/have access to buy the game, there's no excuse to pirate other than draconian DRM.
[QUOTE=ubersoldier;52736693]I gave you that old red "x" not because I disagree with this notion specifically, but because it doesn't only apply to DRM packed games, it applies to damn near every game. Crack open any game manual and skim through the legal bits, you'll find a piece of info that says more or less the same thing as what you said. It's always been this way, the only difference is physical disks don't have an "off switch" akin to DRM stuff.
This comes from my old '06 game "Maelstrom":[/QUOTE]
EULA means shit over the laws of personal ownership
[editline]2nd October 2017[/editline]
[QUOTE=Talvy;52737751]I love a good demo as much as the next guy, but I don't understand how it's your only deciding factor - aren't we forgetting about the go-to methods that are reviews & refunds? I don't think demos were ever the primary solution, and I get that more demos would be nice, but I'm tired of pretending that without them or piracy we must buy things blind.[/QUOTE]
Refunds are a hassle, and others reviews are often not reviewed from your personal perspective.
[QUOTE=ubersoldier;52736693]I gave you that old red "x" not because I disagree with this notion specifically, but because it doesn't only apply to DRM packed games, it applies to damn near every game. Crack open any game manual and skim through the legal bits, you'll find a piece of info that says more or less the same thing as what you said. It's always been this way, the only difference is physical disks don't have an "off switch" akin to DRM stuff.
This comes from my old '06 game "Maelstrom":[/QUOTE]
This is true of any and all software that sells you a license to the software. Because selling you the rights to the actual software is a fast track to fucking death as a company.
Selling someone the rights to a piece of software means they now own the software too, which gets messy in terms of ownership and means their resale of your software cannot be stopped easily. Selling them the rights to use the software instead prevents that.
