[HN Gopher] Denuvo-Protected Games Rendered Unplayable After Dom...
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Denuvo-Protected Games Rendered Unplayable After Domain Expires
Author : forlorn
Score : 131 points
Date : 2021-11-08 14:23 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (torrentfreak.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (torrentfreak.com)
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > After sending a set of questions to two of our usual contacts
| at the company, we received a pair of automated emails stating
| that our correspondence was "undeliverable", that the messages
| had been "bounced by administrator" and as a result had
| permanently failed.
|
| Wtf? What ever happened to journalistic principles like
| protecting your sources?!
| whoopdedo wrote:
| The emails were forwarded to "support@codefusion.technology"
| crtasm wrote:
| These are likely PR people, not anonymous sources.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| In what way is saying emails bounced endangering their sources?
| Finnucane wrote:
| "we tried to contact the company and couldn't for technical
| reasons" isn't revealing any big secrets.
| corobo wrote:
| "We sent this amount of messages and they bounced with these
| specific error messages" would give a mail admin enough
| information to find the sources
| adolph wrote:
| Commoditize your complements strikes back
| kayson wrote:
| Has anyone ever done an a analysis on whether Denuvo (or DRM in
| general) is actually a wise investment of capital? I imagine it
| probably does have some impact on early sales in that it will
| prevent early customers from pirating to try it rather than
| buying it. But at the same time, you have things like Steam's
| return policy, the general dislike of DRM, and the
| publicity/image cost when something happens preventing everyone
| from playing the game. Not to mention that it seems inevitable
| these days that it either gets cracked or removed by the
| publisher anyway.
|
| I always wonder if the resources spent on Denuvo would be better
| spent on the game itself, or marketing the game, allowing the so-
| inclined to pirate it more easily at launch, but offsetting that
| with better sales overall driven by better reception, more word
| of mouth, etc.
| bool3max wrote:
| If it wasn't a vise investment, publishers and developers of
| AAA titles wouldn't invest in it. But they do.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Do you want to risk your job by saying DRM isn't worth it? If
| you report to the board, do you think the shareholders think
| it's meaningless? If you report up, do you think your bosses
| want to stick their necks out?
|
| Fundamentally, they're spending other people's money as
| insurance to avoid losing their job following a flop that can
| be spun as due to piracy.
| logfromblammo wrote:
| This assumes that companies do not make unwise investments,
| when counterexamples are legion.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| As phrased, that's a weak argument. Whoever is calling the
| shots will have some bias and weigh different conceivable
| outcomes in a subjective manner that an outside observer may
| consider unsound. I mean, "publishers and developers of AAA
| titles" also somehow brought us the disastrous releases of No
| Man's Sky or Cyberpunk 2077. Or any of the PR disasters of
| $random_AAA_game.
|
| I agree that it's overwhelmingly likely that someone ran the
| numbers about using DRM at these companies. But it's not
| unlikely that they over- or under-estimated certain factors.
| They will have more information than we do, but certainly not
| perfect information (see also above).
| tialaramex wrote:
| > I agree that it's overwhelmingly likely that someone ran
| the numbers about using DRM at these companies.
|
| I wouldn't even go that far. It's _very_ rare for anybody
| to run the numbers. Humans are too lazy. At most they 'll
| eyeball it. Unless somebody _requires_ hard numbers and
| they start digging up your process so that it 's easier to
| actually do it than to fake it, no "running the numbers"
| will happen.
| lostcolony wrote:
| I'd go one further (in the other direction). If someone
| "ran the numbers", I'm quite sure they would have made
| them public. Because no consumer wants DRM (some are
| ambivalent, some hate it, but no one is like "oh, thank
| goodness, DRM"), and the inclusion of DRM by other
| companies does not threaten your market share, a company
| has nothing to lose, and only to gain (good will) if they
| were to release those figures and explain to their
| customers with cold hard data why DRM is included.
|
| None have done so. Ergo, I am quite sure no one has "run
| the numbers"; they have, as mentioned, eyeballed them and
| used them to justify their own biases, as humans are wont
| to do. And either do not have enough of an analysis to
| release, or realize it is so easy to poke holes in that
| they shouldn't.
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| That doesn't really follow. Companies are run by people, and
| people have a bit of a history of doing unwise things, often
| repeatedly.
|
| I would suspect that it probably offers some reduction in
| casual piracy around release time (as compared to a game with
| no DRM that you can install anywhere you want as many times
| as you want with no need to work around anything), though
| that's probably hard to measure since there's no control
| group for AAA titles - most of them have some sort of DRM.
|
| The downside is it probably causes significant damage to
| customer goodwill and willingness to buy future titles, but
| from the companies' perspective, that's both really hard to
| measure and it applies to financial results for future
| quarters, not this quarter, so it might as well not exist.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I love this assumption that those actors are rational
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Well used, Denuvo is not that bad. It is misuse that cause
| games to become slow or unplayable. And generally, it only
| serves to protect the first few months of sales, it is not
| uncommon to strip out DRM after that.
|
| Indie games often don't need it (and don't do it). AAA games
| are a different story. Including DRM is a significant expense
| in a low budget game, these games are usually cheaper, and
| people are often more sympathetic to small studios. Also, indie
| games need exposure first, and they get at least that from
| pirate copies, AAA games rely on advertising for that and run
| close to market saturation so pirate copies are more of an
| opportunity cost.
| shmde wrote:
| > Well used, Denuvo is not that bad.
|
| Ubisoft admitting that Denuvo ( idk why they used the term
| third party lol ) causes PC stuttering.
|
| https://gamerant.com/ubisoft-third-party-software-pc-
| stutter...
|
| Resident evil 8 runs better when it is stripped off its
| denuvo protection. As confirmed by Digital foundry's video.
|
| https://youtu.be/UXZGCwAJpbM
|
| https://www.pcgamer.com/resident-evil-village-drm-denuvo-
| stu...
|
| You will now see a huge influx of video games being stripped
| of denuvo because it literally shits itself in 12th gen Intel
| chips and games become unplayable with denuvo.
|
| > And generally, it only serves to protect the first few
| months of sales, it is not uncommon to strip out DRM after
| that.
|
| Nope, disagree. The only time they strip Denuvo out is when
| the game is cracked by warez scenes or if the cost of paying
| denuvo gets bigger than the people actually paying for it.
|
| Some video games which are out for well over an year but just
| got denuvo removed in the last 2-3 months out of the blue. It
| is because of denuvos incompatibility with win11.
|
| 1.Shadow of Tomb Raider (3 years)
|
| 2.Rise of tomb raider (6 years )
|
| 3.Injustice 2 (4years)
|
| 4.Jedi fallen order (2years )
|
| 5.Nier replicant.
|
| 6. Tekken 7 (6years).
|
| > AAA games rely on advertising for that and run close to
| market saturation so pirate copies are more of an opportunity
| cost.
|
| Trust me when I say people who pirate are usually the ones
| who never ever buy video games. Pirates can never be
| considered an opportunity cost. Not trying to glorify
| pirates, but people waited patiently for over an year to play
| RDR2 till it got cracked, so that they don't have to pay
| outta their pockets.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Ubisoft is notorious for misuse of DRM. I believe you have
| to disable virtualization from the BIOS to even be able to
| play some of their games. They also reverted back to
| needing an always on connection for some of their games.
| What confuses me is that their use of DRM seems really
| inconsistent, and they keep it on even for old games.
|
| Stay away from Ubisoft on PC.
| bluesign wrote:
| > Trust me when I say people who pirate are usually the
| ones who never ever buy video games.
|
| It is not like black and white. There are a lot of people
| in between pirate and pre-order player.
| lostcolony wrote:
| I mean, "never ever" is extreme. But the point is "does
| leaving a game easy to pirate, vs making it hard to
| pirate, actually decrease sales".
|
| And unfortunately it's kind of impossible to test that.
| shmde wrote:
| > It is not like black and white. There are a lot of
| people in between pirate and pre-order player.
|
| I can tell with confidence its not the case with my
| country. People who are well off, who are desperate
| enough to play it do pre-order vidya. And the other half
| don't spend money on video games because they think its a
| waste of money, why ? because its gonna get cracked
| anyway why pay for it now ? People are willing to wait
| for a few months for it to get cracked if it means that
| they can save that money. I know it sounds strange but
| when it comes to piracy its quite black and white over
| here.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Denuvo, like most game DRM engines have libraries that can
| be called from anywhere inside the game code and perform a
| variety of checks. If the developers are overzealous and
| make frequent, complex checks, it will result in
| stuttering. If I remember well, RE8 has a check when a
| zombie spawns, resulting in mid-gameplay slowdown. They
| could have put checks only in naturally slow events, like
| loading a map, and no one would have noticed.
|
| And I kind of agree about pirates never buying games, I
| don't remember buying a single game during all my student
| days. And I have now mostly stopped piracy, DRM or not,
| mostly because I earn enough money, play less, and
| platforms like Steam are really convenient.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| I did not do the analysis myself but I saw some numbers and
| they make it a very good investment. Unfortunately I cannot
| share.
| Izkata wrote:
| This is just one point, but I started pirating games during
| college because of DRM, after whatever they used in _Spore_
| destroyed Windows so badly I had to do a full reinstall and
| lost a bunch of stuff. Before that I reliably bought all my
| games.
|
| I don't pirate games anymore, but that's only because I stopped
| playing computer games entirely and stick to consoles, to avoid
| DRM screwing with my stuff.
| toxik wrote:
| I'm not trying to be rude here but going from PC gaming to
| consoles because you dislike DRM is like buying a sports car
| because you think trucks pollute too much.
| acdha wrote:
| It depends on whether you object to the concept on
| principle or to the negative impact on your computer. In
| the latter case, his actions make total sense.
| LegitShady wrote:
| I don't think he's saying to avoid DRM, rather to avoid DRM
| on his computer, which playing via console would do.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Consoles are all about DRM aren't they?
| MisterTea wrote:
| Consoles are DRM.
| tommek4077 wrote:
| Yes, but they would not ruin his PC again.
| nottorp wrote:
| Afaik both Sony and MS (yes, even MS) do some internal QA
| before allowing a game to be published on their consoles.
|
| Plus they don't allow (single player?) games to require
| registering with the publisher. So on the rare occasions
| I'm interested in a game from the top user hostile AAA
| publishers, I get it for console.
| stiray wrote:
| Yes.
|
| "The European Commission paid EUR360,000 (about $428,000) for a
| study on how piracy impacts the sales of copyrighted music,
| books, video games, and movies. But the EU never shared the
| report--possibly because it determined that there is no
| evidence that piracy is a major problem."
|
| TLDR: https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-
| that-...
|
| Study: https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-
| upload/2017/09/displacement_s...
| agilob wrote:
| >But the EU never shared the report
|
| I remember the day it was published, it hit some news, I made
| a backup of that PDF from EC domain (still have it!), 2 or 3
| hours later the PDF was 404.
| solveit wrote:
| What did it say?
| agilob wrote:
| The same pdf is now hosted on netzpolitik, link above,
| but no longer available on EC website
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| You left out the money quote from the Gizmodo article:
|
| > The report found that _illegal downloads and streams can
| actually boost legal sales of games_ , according to the
| report. The only negative link the report found was with
| major blockbuster films:"The results show a displacement rate
| of 40 percent which means that for every ten recent top films
| watched illegally, four fewer films are consumed legally."
|
| (Emphasis added.)
|
| So, if anything, game companies should literally be putting
| their stuff up on torrent sites themselves!
| vimda wrote:
| I suspect that a lot of that 40% are people who pirate it
| to try it out before purchasing. What ever happens to demo
| disks and the like? I miss that
| agilob wrote:
| Yup, the only two companies I can trust with game quality
| are Sega and Valve, all the rest either have toxic
| communities or had major fuckups with quality,
| performance or plots, and I don't trust them with $4.99
| at all.
| hota_mazi wrote:
| The "general dislike of DRM" is a non issue because it's only
| shared by a minuscule portion of game players. And most of
| those who have a dislike for DRM still won't let that get in
| the way of them playing a game they really want to play at
| release time.
|
| Denuvo seems to be extremely effective at delaying piracy for a
| few months, during which the publishers of the game make most
| of their sales.
| dageshi wrote:
| It's really only to protect the launch window. Most games will
| be discounted later on to the point where they're more or less
| affordable to everyone. But if someone pirates on release
| they'll never be inclined to buy at that lower price later on.
| novok wrote:
| This is the reason why I've mostly heard. TBH it would
| probably be a good ideas for vendors to remove DRM after a
| game has been out for a few years and has stopped getting
| patches for a year+.
| dageshi wrote:
| I think a lot of them do. It's not uncommon to hear of devs
| removing DRM after a certain number of months. Especially
| nowadays where after a certain point they just want people
| to play the game ready for when the sequel comes out.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Not only this but for some games, the launch window is all
| they'll have because the game is terrible. This works as
| insurance to make sure they make _some_ money.
| shmde wrote:
| > But if someone pirates on release they'll never be inclined
| to buy at that lower price later on.
|
| Just a personal anecdote. I have pirated a shitton amount of
| video games when I was young and didn't have money. You know
| what was one of the first thing I did after getting my salary
| ? I bought burnout paradise. I now own almost 1/2 of all the
| video games which I played as a pirate on steam and epic.
|
| And also people who generally take the pirate route to play
| video games, never ever generally pay for it. So expecting a
| pirate would give in to buy a video game which he thinks will
| definitely get cracked in the near future is not really a
| good idea.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| This should immediately make it legal to apply a crack in my
| opinion. I hope this is the case.
| csnover wrote:
| In the United States, the 2021 DMCA anti-circumvention
| exemptions do include this case[0]:
|
| > (17)(i) Video games in the form of computer programs embodied
| in physical or downloaded formats that have been lawfully
| acquired as complete games, when the copyright owner or its
| authorized representative has ceased to provide access to an
| external computer server necessary to facilitate an
| authentication process to enable gameplay, solely for the
| purpose of: (A) Permitting access to the video game to allow
| copying and modification of the computer program to restore
| access to the game for personal, local gameplay on a personal
| computer or video game console;
|
| However, these rules are currently renewed every three years,
| instead of being permanent, so it could not be the case in the
| future.
|
| [0] https://public-
| inspection.federalregister.gov/2021-23311.pdf
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Furthermore, the DMCA 1201 exemption process only applies to
| the act of applying a crack to a game, not the act of
| distributing it. So if a game's DRM fails the only legal way
| to make use of the exemption is to figure out how to break
| the DRM yourself - you can't distribute the resulting
| cracking tool to anyone without violating DMCA 1201, even if
| it has a lawful use.
| breakingcups wrote:
| > However, these rules are currently renewed every three
| years, instead of being permanent, so it could not be the
| case in the future.
|
| That's a lovely meta-commentary on this situation. Not just
| the DRM domains expire, so do the laws that allow their
| circumvention when they do!
| paxys wrote:
| Is it anyways illegal to "crack" a game you have purchased?
| krageon wrote:
| You don't own the game, you own a license to play it for
| however long the publisher wants. Whether or not it is legal
| really shouldn't matter, it should just be done as a matter of
| course for such games.
| skyeto wrote:
| Wouldn't that depend on local laws? My assumption is that it
| would be covered by the recent EU court ruling that allows
| reverse engineering to fix bugs[0].
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28809559
| Mindwipe wrote:
| It definitely would not be because that ruling does not
| overrule other bits of legislation, such as the prohibition
| against distribution or importation of tools to circumvent
| technical protection measure that all EU countries have.
| skyeto wrote:
| The parent comments were talking about applying a crack
| to a legitimately obtained copy (which I assume the case
| covers) and not the act of distributing a cracked copy
| (which it definitely doesn't cover).
| White_Wolf wrote:
| it does if the software is not working(like in this
| case). "the legitimate purchaser of a program is entitled
| to decompile that program in order to correct errors
| affecting its operation"
|
| https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=f5b1193c-f
| 423...
| harha wrote:
| (Not a lawyer) You could probably sue in some jurisdictions,
| since a main aspect of the contract was not clearly
| advertised.
|
| If it has a buy button for game xyz you should assume you're
| buying the game, not a license, even if the fine print says
| otherwise. For multiplayer games it would probably be ok to
| not perpetually run the servers, for single player the server
| isn't an aspect that is crucial to the functioning. There may
| be an issue with how long ago the purchase was though.
| Spivak wrote:
| These kinds of arguments don't make any sense to me. You
| can't buy copyrighted works[1], only licenses to them. So
| Steam changes the button to "Buy License" and literally
| nothing changes. Are you happy now? Of course not. Because
| that's not the issue. The thing you have issue with is the
| terms of the license, not the license itself.
|
| [1] Okay fine you can but nobody who buys Skyrim thinks
| they are buying the rights to the whole Skyrim media
| property. But hey, I hope I'm wrong and you all owe me lots
| of royalties.
| harha wrote:
| You buy a copy of the game that is expected to run with
| the hardware defined - no end date.
|
| If they'd change the button and add an explanation that
| the license can be revoked at any time without notice or
| reason, then my argument would be invalid, but users
| might not be willing to pay as much any more.
|
| Edit: because they now openly know the significant terms
| and know they're potentially being screwed. It's already
| bad enough to pay full price without the ability to
| resell or pass on (not sure how games are right now, but
| that's why I don't use a kindle, along with it being tied
| to my other Amazon account and everything that goes with
| it)
| WmyEE0UsWAwC2i wrote:
| DRM doesn't work in games, go to a torrent site to see all the
| failed attempts. 1. It costs money 2.
| It makes the product worse(slower, less portable,etc...) for your
| _ paying _ customers. 3. It doesn't work if the game is
| good.
|
| Just add a copyright note on the corner and make sure to have
| good distribution.
| kevinh wrote:
| Denuvo has been very successful at protecting games in the
| launch window the past couple years. Last I heard there was
| only one person willing and/or able to crack it and their
| throughput wasn't high.
| dmix wrote:
| As others have mentioned it's probably only helpful on release
| date or the first weeks.
|
| Ideally it should just automatically expired after x amount of
| time.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| It works to boost preorders and the crucial first week to get
| into sales charts.
| JCWasmx86 wrote:
| If I understand correctly: If I had been fast enough to buy this
| domain, I would be able to break Denuvo for a long time?
| dharmab wrote:
| At least until the registrar intervened per their abuse policy
| lrae wrote:
| No, it never fully dropped.
|
| > Updated Date: 2021-11-08T14:45:58Z
|
| > Creation Date: 2014-09-24T14:45:19Z
|
| > Registry Expiry Date: 2022-09-24T14:45:19Z
| kuroguro wrote:
| Most registrars have a grace period of 30-40 days, where the
| original owner can still reclaim it IIRC.
| recursive wrote:
| So if I buy the domain, and give it the original DNS records
| for 45 days, _then_ I could take control?
| corobo wrote:
| Reclaim as in renew their claim. Not reclaim as in claw
| back
|
| No, you could not have purchased the domain
| JCWasmx86 wrote:
| > Following the failure to renew, the domain then went into a
| grace period but when that expired too, it appears to have
| been removed from DNS records.
| kuroguro wrote:
| Oh wow, didn't see that. How did nobody notice...
|
| Well there should still be a redemption and "pending
| delete" period [0]. I believe the original owner can still
| reclaim during those.
|
| [0]
| https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/dns/glossary/expired-
| dom...
| jackorange wrote:
| That's right. After grace period it goes into a period
| called redemption where they can still get it back but it
| cost like $120.
|
| Source: Used to work at registrar.
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