Denuvo DRM Draws a Big D..as a Grade

Total Warhammer 2 had its Denuvo DRM cracked in less than a day, likely a few hours according to Torrent Freak. It is a damn shame that game pirating is destroying the market. Thanks skydriver.


Denuvo, the world's most feared gaming anti-piracy mechanism, was deployed yesterday on the brand new Total War: Warhammer 2. Instead of the months, weeks, or even days of protection usually offered by the system, the whole thing collapsed within hours.

It's been slowly speeding up with each release. So either they need to go back to the drawing board and completely rework everything, or pack it in. Because sub-1day cracking is like having no protection at all.

The whole idea of Denuvo was to give a lead time from release (at one point, it was so good it'd take months).

It's just become a metagame at this point. How fast can it be defeated? Get your name on the cracking leaderboard.

Denuvo: the Firestrike of cracking.

I wonder how much money would have been saved if they made no investment into DRM.

Isn't denuvo required by contract to return payment to the developer if their protection is broken within a certain amount of time?

I hope this is still the case.

*I'm actually glad this happened, I'm a huge total war fan but they have been raping their fan base with all these "dlc". Want the complete game, you're looking at over $100.

NeghVar said:

I wonder how much money would have been saved if they made no investment into DRM.

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Probably a lot. DRM beyond that inherent in buying from digital outlets IMO is completely misguided. It doesn't solve the problem, and actually creates more problems, including for the actual company trying to protect their IP. I feel people should get money for the things that they create, but I also think that the people who are going to buy the product are going to buy the product, and the people who aren't probably won't. Sure there are some line-straddlers, but you're not really going to change the ratio of one side to the other in any significant way.

The key is to realize you're not going to lose out on sales to your ACTUAL customers, and you're not going to gain any from your NON-customers. In the end, you just have to put out the best product you can, and let it speak for itself. If it's good, people will buy it. If it's good, yes, some people will still pirate it. But at least you made all the sales you could from the people that don't. Good word of mouth, and customers who aren't pissed off, probably goes a lot further.

There are a lot of people on Steam, and a lot of them own a lot of games. That should be a half-decent indicator. (not to mention GoG and the like)

J3RK said:

Probably a lot. DRM beyond that inherent in buying from digital outlets IMO is completely misguided. It doesn't solve the problem, and actually creates more problems, including for the actual company trying to protect their IP. I feel people should get money for the things that they create, but I also think that the people who are going to buy the product are going to buy the product, and the people who aren't probably won't. Sure there are some line-straddlers, but you're not really going to change the ratio of one side to the other in any significant way.

The key is to realize you're not going to lose out on sales to your ACTUAL customers, and you're not going to gain any from your NON-customers. In the end, you just have to put out the best product you can, and let it speak for itself. If it's good, people will buy it. If it's good, yes, some people will still pirate it. But at least you made all the sales you could from the people that don't. Good word of mouth, and customers who aren't pissed off, probably goes a lot further.

There are a lot of people on Steam, and a lot of them own a lot of games. That should be a half-decent indicator. (not to mention GoG and the like)

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Well in the EU their not really loosing any money in fact it seems they make money due to pirates.

https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/22/eu-suppressed-study-piracy-no-sales-impact/

Killerxp according to an article on kotoku, I don't remember when, they don't offer refunds, it was just a rumor that they did if it was cracked within 3 months.

A blow to Denuvo is a blow to the mentality of the implementation of DRM (with the flawed logic that one download equals one cash sale). That's a good thing to me. I will still say piracy has zero effect (or near zero) on dollars coming in. Either the ones that pirate a game buy it anyway or would never have bought it in the first place. For the ones that fall between the cracks, the cost of DRM implementation is going to cancel that out. Then there is the free advertising. None of this is factored in to whatever formula the big boys use to come up to tell everyone how much money they losing. Very flawed and inaccurate. Whenever I see a Denuvo game cracked, I do fist pump. Not against the work involved and all parties making the game (cause I don't believe they are actually losing anything), but to the greedy establishment that came up with the crap to begin with. If they had their way and could figure out how to do it, our credit cards would be wireless plugged into radio stations and we would be charged each time we listened to a song.

Mike89 said:

A blow to Denuvo is a blow to the mentality of the implementation of DRM (with the flawed logic that one download equals one cash sale).......

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Well said, I've always found it completely mind boggling that the studios (Game, Movie, Music, etc) all feel and apparently win the argument in court that 1 download equals 1 loss payment. No no no no, I can tell them for fact that every person I've ever met who's ever downloaded anything for free has done so because it was free, they were never going to purchase whatever it was to begin with. Still not right to do so, but in no possible way is that equal to a lost payment.

Maybe I'm just behind on the times or disconnected. Why bother with DRM when it's your company VS the whole damn planet? I used to pirate software all the time when I was younger but now the only time I do it is to try something that I find to be a risky purchase. If I like it, I buy it. DRM shit is just too hit and miss.

I laugh every time someone makes the claim that piracy is destroying the entertainment industry, but the sad truth is, is that the entertainment industry is destroying the entertainment industry making crappy ass movies, games (buggy, half-assed, etc.), etc. Until they change, they deserve to have their products pirated so consumers can make an informed choice instead of spending money on movies that may be terrible or games that are broken (Mass Effect: Andromeda) or really buggy before purchasing anything.

Piracy isn't destroying the industry. But I still think pirate should be kicked in the nuts. They are nothing but leaches. If not for people paying for product they would not have anything to pirate. So fuckem.

Edit. DRM is a flawed solution, but its existence is really only around because of pirates. So once again fuckem.

Killerxp100 said:

Isn't denuvo required by contract to return payment to the developer if their protection is broken within a certain amount of time?

I hope this is still the case.

*I'm actually glad this happened, I'm a huge total war fan but they have been raping their fan base with all these "dlc". Want the complete game, you're looking at over $100.

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LOL, clearly you haven't tried getting into their miniatures. $100 is a fucking bargain in comparison.

opfreak said:

Piracy isn't destroying the industry. But I still think pirate should be kicked in the nuts. They are nothing but leaches. If not for people paying for product they would not have anything to pirate. So fuckem.

Edit. DRM is a flawed solution, but its existence is really only around because of pirates. So once again fuckem.

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Well I guess I'm a leach, I always download games now to try them out, after pre-ordering Watch_Dogs/Homefront: The Revolution/The Crew I found I'm just not in any hurry.
I got a big Steam backlog, and not much time, so I take my sweet time. I could do the Steam refund way, but it's easier to download and no two week refund window (the ISOs usually sit around for a few weeks).
That said I did just buy Heat Signature without trying it out first, but I'd watched a few dev videos, and played Gunpoint. I wouldn't mind getting a copy of NeiR, but I'm not paying 40-60 bucks (CAD) for a buggy game without a single patch (I don't count paid DLC as patches).


Edit:

cthulhuiscool said:

Kyle, did you just wake up out of a coma or something? Pretty sure pc gaming has the largest share of the market it has had in decades.

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*whoosh*
You may want to click that link on the news page (it doesn't show up for the forum page
https://www.hardocp.com/news/2017/0...o_evidence_piracy_affecting_video_game_sales/

cthulhuiscool said:

Kyle, did you just wake up out of a coma or something? Pretty sure pc gaming has the largest share of the market it has had in decades.

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Maybe you should read the news page and click the links.

Killerxp100 said:

Isn't denuvo required by contract to return payment to the developer if their protection is broken within a certain amount of time?

I hope this is still the case.

*I'm actually glad this happened, I'm a huge total war fan but they have been raping their fan base with all these "dlc". Want the complete game, you're looking at over $100.

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They are not. They do allow publishers to remove Denuvo from their game after it is cracked though. I believe that also comes with a refund of the fee, but I'm not sure. Don't count on Sega doing that though.

You know what I miss? Demos. Thanks to Doom releasing a demo, I bought the game. Project Cars? No interest in racing games but it was beautiful. Bought it. Back in my day a demo encouraged people to buy games. It's a perfect way to convey your art in small samplings to make the masses want more. Meh. I'm not very good with words.

For the record Steampunks have been more or less using work arounds to access denuvo titles whereas CPY actually breaks the DRM for a proper crack. minor details ect.

Theres viewing and listening devices for aqua sonar, archealogy rock formations, and locksmith vaults. It is only a matter of time before hackers wised up and used it on the hardware side of things.

opfreak said:

Piracy isn't destroying the industry. But I still think pirate should be kicked in the nuts. They are nothing but leaches. If not for people paying for product they would not have anything to pirate. So fuckem.

Edit. DRM is a flawed solution, but its existence is really only around because of pirates. So once again fuckem.

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I've pirated.. A LOT in my life...
I'm not recommending it but lemme tel ya bout living in europe, but not in EU which is kinda interesting, this probably apply to many many countries out there.
Your favorite artist comes with new songs, you want to listen to it and you have spotify, itunes and who knows what and it'll sometimes tell you: this is not available in your country.

What should I do then?
Buy the album? from where?
Even music on youtube will do that to ya.. Fun stuff!

Then you're in the position of : riiight, I'll pirate it and eventually it ends up on spotify or whatever.

Games see so little piracy compared to before.
Nowaydays when I torrent games it is cause DRM fucks the game downright.
Movies is a nightmare, absolute nightmare - Whole internet may have spoken about a movie and 6 months later it arrives here on Blueray through order from Britain( which isn't my country neither) and then 12 months later maybe a streaming service allow it in my country.

Fix cross country licensing crap, get us delivery models that work.
If I get told off from buying then I am going to illegally download\stream or whatever but I have checked for legal ways... It's easier buying drugs than getting media content legally sometimes and drugs here isn't really anywhere as common as US.

Thanks to Amazon Prime, Netflix, Spotify, Cruncyroll +++ for enabling content easily but we still have a long way to go, I feel I've done everything I can to support content creators but I ain't the one to feel the pain of broken business models.

Example of crushing piracy:
Spotify also have almost demolished piracy.
2007-2008 when still in beta I think Sweden saw a 70% music piracy decline.. 70%!!! 10 years later and music piracy is practically history.

Steam: practically demolished piracy too so my finger goes mostly out to movie industry and then somewhat to music industry too.