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Denuvo has been cracked in all single-player games it previously protected

tomshardware.com

181–190 of 292 posts

Re: Denuvo has been cracked in all single-player games it previously protected

#181
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can , but that seems to be more related to poor implementations by the game devs, and not inherent to it. There are plenty of examples of games with Denuvo that still run fine (give or take your opinion on whether the presence of DRM is inherently "impacted performance").

The games run terribly on release because they have Denuvo, and then when the sales volume no longer justifies the licensing costs of Denuvo, the devs strip it out and sell it to the players in patch notes as "optimizing performance." Someone else mentioned GTA getting more aggressive copy protection out of nowhere. It's not out of nowhere. With GTA6 ads out for a while, sales of GTA5 are up as people either play it…

> Do you really believe that year after year game developers and game engines get worse and worse at performance? Of course not.

If you strictly want to blame Denuvo then that assumes game developers cannot think of a way to spend their extra performance either. Which is obviously not the case.

Re: Denuvo has been cracked in all single-player games it previously protected

#182
post #116

During the time of the Soviet Union, it was an urban legend that during supply shortages, Soviet factories would have no real work, but workers needed to keep up the appearance of working, so they would have one line of workers continuously assembling devices, feeding into another line that would continuously disassemble them, all in a loop where nothing gets produced. In many ways, it feels like we are seeing this t…

The “keep up the appearance of working” story feels like a misleading comparison to me, because the motivations are pretty much reversed. In the hypothetical factory, there's an external social element requiring the appearance of working, some observer to whom it looks good that this is happening: the way I read it, the assemblers and disassemblers may well be cooperating with each other to produce that appearance, s…

DRM authors and implementors know it doesnt work. The decision is made by people in suits based on traditional business culture that doesnt fit the digital world. The same people making denuvo are also the ones breaking it.

Re: Denuvo has been cracked in all single-player games it previously protected

#183
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can archive the installed files from Steam though. An example is the pixel art program Aseprite. The devs said just to copy the binary out of the Steam folder and place it elsewhere if you wish.

But it won't launch without being logging into your steam account

It will if it's DRM-free. The login check is an optional call that the developer has to intentionally use. Usually if you're a small developer releasing a DRM-free game you'd make your game degrade gracefully if Steamworks doesn't work, so you can publish the same builds on Steam and on any other store.

Re: Denuvo has been cracked in all single-player games it previously protected

#184
post #119
post #55

Do any of the legit scene groups sign their binaries? How do you know a release isn’t tainted?

Info from veeery long ago because I have been out of this stuff for over a decade: The release will have an .sfv file with a CRC32 checksum for each rar file. The FTP server checks them after the upload completes. Back in the day glftpd with zipscript was a very popular tool to manage an FTP site. This Readme sums it up well: https://github.com/pzs-ng/pzs-ng The sfv can be tampered with but the propagation of release…

A) there is no real scene any more

B) no one is getting “proper scene releases” from “proper sources” any more.

Re: Denuvo has been cracked in all single-player games it previously protected

#185
post #116

During the time of the Soviet Union, it was an urban legend that during supply shortages, Soviet factories would have no real work, but workers needed to keep up the appearance of working, so they would have one line of workers continuously assembling devices, feeding into another line that would continuously disassemble them, all in a loop where nothing gets produced. In many ways, it feels like we are seeing this t…

That assembly line workers are constantly being kept fresh on their skills and processes. If you can't get some component for 3 months, new units can almost immediately be pushed out of the factory when the component does arrive. If you bring on new workers, you train them on the disassembly process first and then move them onto the assembly line once they understand the construction.

The only downsides are paying the factory workers to spin their wheels and the 2x wear and tear on tools and replacement costs of any components damaged by the constant handling.

The US does something similar with the national defense manufacturers. We don't necessarily need more of a vehicle but if that factory sits dormant for 2 years until we do need replacements, it's going to take a long time to train workers. And you run a risk of losing any tribal knowledge those workers carried. You can lower production rates so you aren't buying too many things at once but keeping a small crew busy will allow you to quickly ramp production if necessary.

Re: Denuvo has been cracked in all single-player games it previously protected

#186
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, goddamn hammers needs to be way softer, do you know how many thumbs worldwide have been hurt by them? Clearly the fault of the hammer.

If I have you hammer with a wax coated handle then it will regularly slip out of your hand. One could blame the user for not "just" holding it right. Or alternatively reconsider if the handle should have a grippy coating instead.

More modern version: No you are holding your iPhone wrong, it is not a design fault that makes a ground loop in the antenna if you hold two metal surfaces with your hands.

Re: Denuvo has been cracked in all single-player games it previously protected

#187
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can , but that seems to be more related to poor implementations by the game devs, and not inherent to it. There are plenty of examples of games with Denuvo that still run fine (give or take your opinion on whether the presence of DRM is inherently "impacted performance").

The games run terribly on release because they have Denuvo, and then when the sales volume no longer justifies the licensing costs of Denuvo, the devs strip it out and sell it to the players in patch notes as "optimizing performance." Someone else mentioned GTA getting more aggressive copy protection out of nowhere. It's not out of nowhere. With GTA6 ads out for a while, sales of GTA5 are up as people either play it…

I would assume the cache misses alone will destroy any performance.

Re: Denuvo has been cracked in all single-player games it previously protected

#188
post #67
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger problem with Denuvo is that it appears to significantly impact game performance as well

It can , but that seems to be more related to poor implementations by the game devs, and not inherent to it. There are plenty of examples of games with Denuvo that still run fine (give or take your opinion on whether the presence of DRM is inherently "impacted performance").

Isn't Denuvo actually implemented in a game by the DRM developers, though? I remember reading that they have a process where the game dev sends Denuvo an unprotected executable, who adds the DRM to that executable and sends it back.

Thus, I believe the poor implementations are directly the fault of Denuvo.

Re: Denuvo has been cracked in all single-player games it previously protected

#189
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What games that are on GOG without DRM have DRM on, say, Steam? (Many Steam games have no DRM.)

Very few games on Steam are without drm.

Total number of DRM-free games: 1,744 out of 41,266 games in total.

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games_on_...

Re: Denuvo has been cracked in all single-player games it previously protected

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Valve isn't the worst company when you buy on GoG you support a company dedicated to keeping things DRM free and preserving older games. Plus fight the Steam monopoly.

If GoG starts supporting linux I'll be happy to support them.

They do, there will be a Linux penguin on the supported OSes list if the game has native support for Linux. If the game doesn't have native support, and you buy the game on a Linux machine, it will warn you about possible incompatibility.

In any case the reality is that every game I've bought on GOG has worked pretty much perfectly on Wine, I use winetricks. The main problem with Windows games these days is the DRM which on Wine will crash. Good thing GOG games don't come with any.

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