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Bethesda apparently broke its own Denuvo protection for Doom Eternal

arstechnica.com

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Re: Bethesda apparently broke its own Denuvo protection for Doom Eternal

#51

Post by vidarh »

roywiggins wrote: post #36
vidarh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a poor example. Most locks - like most DRM - does not stop the most determined people from gaining access. It makes it slightly harder, more time consuming and/or more resource consuming to get access, with the hope that it will deter the most opportunistic attackers, and slow the more determined ones "enough" where "enough" is a function of the cost of the protection vs. the benefit of delaying access. We ac…

A lot of DRM isn't like locks because a crack can be applied by casual enthusiasts, not just experts. Keygens are not hard to use, whereas lockpicks require a bit of skill, time, and equipment that you can't just download. (Some DRM does actually act more like a lock, such as console DRM that require hardware mods and would void the warranty)

What you are betting on with a lock is not primarily stopping a lock-picker, but that most people are hesitant to force the door or break a window.

Re: Bethesda apparently broke its own Denuvo protection for Doom Eternal

#52

Post by kllrnohj »

Retric wrote: post #38
kllrnohj wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't have to be free for it to be worth it. Let's take that 80,000 number. After Steam takes its cut that's $42 going to Bethesda's pockets per unit sold (worst case, ignoring the lowered fees as units sold increases). There's no further distribution costs, so that's a straight 80,000 * $42 = $3.3M of revenue. If Denuvo costs even $100k then it's already paid for itself 30 times over. As for the 80,000 number,…

Denuvo likely costs vastly more than 100k, and the difference in samples are unlikely to hit 80k. Using 2 million for the software and 20k net sales I hit a net loss of 1.1 million. Yep, those numbers where picked from thin air, but ”As of August 2018, the company employs 1,000 people“, so that math only works if their licenses are freaking expensive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denuvo

> Acquired in January by digital platform security firm Irdeto, Denuvo has essentially grown from a company of 45 people to over 1,000.

I believe that's saying that Irdeto has 1,000 employees, not that 1,000 people work on Denuvo itself. Instead it sounds like Denuvo "only" needs to cover the salary of around 50 people unless they've grown substantially since the acquisition as pre-acquisition they were 45 people.

I'm guessing they didn't jack up the licensing costs 10x since they were acquired, so using numbers for ~50 people a cost of $2M seems way too high. In 2017, so pre-acquisition, there were around 50 games using Denuvo: https://www.game-debate.com/games/gamesWithDenuvo

I'm sure the scale of the game influences costs and a AAA would be more than an indie release etc... but the math still works for numbers far lower than $2M licensing costs. And presumably Bethesda & others have done these analysis and concluded the licensing costs are worth it.

Re: Bethesda apparently broke its own Denuvo protection for Doom Eternal

#53

Post by Agentlien »

dmix wrote: post #42

This is good news, Denuvo (the evolution of SecureROM DRM) was found to cause performance issues in games, inlcuding spiking the CPU and tons of excessive writes, which may reduce the lifespan on SDDs: https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/282924-denuvo-really-does...

Interestingly, Denuvo was the cause of one of the most annoying bugs I've ever had to look at. A crash bug which only appeared after applying their patch to the executable.

Re: Bethesda apparently broke its own Denuvo protection for Doom Eternal

#54

Post by danudey »

Plasmoid2000ad wrote: post #20

Anyone remember the Unreal Tournament 2003 (or was it 2004?) Demo, which had an exe that was compatible with original retail release as a DRM free copy. Of course, Unreal Tournament was a mostly online multiplayer game, and relied on cdkeys as well. I'm surprised with everything i've heard about release pressure and crunch time that this doesn't happen more often.

I remember installing a copy of QuarkXPress (3.1 I think?) way back in the day. It was an upgrade copy, so it wouldn't install unless I pointed it to an existing QuarkXPress executable, but it was a freshly installed system so I didn't have one handy (and didn't fancy digging out the original floppies for 3.0).

On a whim, I pointed the installer to the application on the install floppy, which it happily accepted and proceeded with the installer.

TL;DR bad DRM has existed since DRM existed.

Re: Bethesda apparently broke its own Denuvo protection for Doom Eternal

#55

Post by zelon88 »

Anyone else remember the DOS days where you would start an application and it would tell you in a cryptic font "Pg351, P2, Ln3, Ch3 thru 10" and you would just have to know that meant you had to open the user manual to page 351 and type characters 3 through 10 from line 3 paragraph 2.

Then there were some creative ones like B-17 Flying Fortress which had a paper decoding tool where you slid the paper rings to match the symbols on the screen. This revealed another symbol through a hole in the paper that you selected on the computer from a list to "prove" you had a legitimate copy of the game.

Re: Bethesda apparently broke its own Denuvo protection for Doom Eternal

#56

Post by brewtide »

zelon88 wrote: post #55

Anyone else remember the DOS days where you would start an application and it would tell you in a cryptic font "Pg351, P2, Ln3, Ch3 thru 10" and you would just have to know that meant you had to open the user manual to page 351 and type characters 3 through 10 from line 3 paragraph 2. Then there were some creative ones like B-17 Flying Fortress which had a paper decoding tool where you slid the paper rings to match t…

Oh man! If I recall correctly, Prince of Persia was perhaps this way on the Mac? I have the vaguest memory of some stapled , crinkled, photocopied pages as reference...

Re: Bethesda apparently broke its own Denuvo protection for Doom Eternal

#57

Post by Nihilartikel »

zelon88 wrote: post #55

Anyone else remember the DOS days where you would start an application and it would tell you in a cryptic font "Pg351, P2, Ln3, Ch3 thru 10" and you would just have to know that meant you had to open the user manual to page 351 and type characters 3 through 10 from line 3 paragraph 2. Then there were some creative ones like B-17 Flying Fortress which had a paper decoding tool where you slid the paper rings to match t…

Old XCOM-UFO Defense had this too. Also my first experience with a hex editor to remove tedious DRM by setting the expected words in the binary to 'xxxx'.

Re: Bethesda apparently broke its own Denuvo protection for Doom Eternal

#59

Post by RealStickman »

pradn wrote: post #14
Jyaif wrote: post #7

This is going to cost them tens of millions of loss in sales.

A good number of people will buy this on Steam, which is a bigger lock-in than any other DRM.

Based on how many games using only the in-built DRM in Steam are cracked I'd guess that "lock-in" is really not that big of an issue, if at all. Other DRMs are far more invasive than the Steam DRM.

Re: Bethesda apparently broke its own Denuvo protection for Doom Eternal

#60

Post by RealStickman »

google234123 wrote: post #17

Who ever is in responsible on or for the team that made this mistake twice should be fired. Doing the same hugely expensive mistake twice in a row is ridiculous.

I would not say that this will necessarily be hugely expensive. People who would have waited for a crack would not have paid anyways. The only impact is them getting to play the game at the same time as everybody else.
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