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

tomshardware.com

211–220 of 292 posts

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

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a user argument for anti cheat as a user = less cheater. There is no user argument for DRM, if anything there are many against it = higher game price/less money for the actual game and devs, indirect funding of DRM software, worse performance, higher system requirements, worse preservation, worse privacy, longer loading times, online requirements, worse usability, machine activation restriction, bugs...

Pretty strong to say there's no argument. I don't agree with it, but I imagine people would say reducing piracy leads to more money for the studio, which means more resources that can be put toward the game. Lots of people believe that, and we don't have a lot of data on opportunity costs for games including Denuvo. I personally just hate it and think Piracy is overblown. The only other industry I've seen be this hos…

>but I imagine people would say reducing piracy leads to more money for the studio

they be wrong, there have been multiple studies even by the EU on how piracy does not reduce revenue.

Besides that studios continue to pay for denuvo even after there game has been cracked. The article literally is about how all games with denuvo get bypassed on the day of the release, which means they pay for nothing except a worse experience for there paying customers. At this point it's just a compliance checklist by corporate suits and actual people working on games and paying customer pay the price.

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

#212
post #208
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…

I have a slightly different story, told by a Romanian coworker who was old enough to have worked in a factory under Ceaucescu: the workers stole from the factory, all the time, at every level. Managers would be able to take away complete items for "testing"; ordinary line workers would be limited to what parts they could plausibly conceal in their overalls at the end of the shift, then assemble them in their own time…

In Soviet times in Russia there been rhyme:

   Тащи с завода каждый гвоздь - ты здесь хозяин а не гость.
Which is literally translates as:

   Take every nail from the factory post,
   You aren't a visitor, you are the host!
And yeah almost everyone was stealing even if it would be things they absolutely not needed. Then you can change it for something you need or use it weird way in your home repairs.

This is how some people end up with parts of ICBM or space ships as part of their country datcha landscape design.

After all propaganda loved to tell that everything is owned by people's.

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

#213
post #208
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…

I have a slightly different story, told by a Romanian coworker who was old enough to have worked in a factory under Ceaucescu: the workers stole from the factory, all the time, at every level. Managers would be able to take away complete items for "testing"; ordinary line workers would be limited to what parts they could plausibly conceal in their overalls at the end of the shift, then assemble them in their own time…

> the workers stole from the factory, all the time, at every level.

I think the context is important. These were people in poverty, in an extremely mismanaged society. You could get very little from actual shops. Most things would have to be bartered for. Stealing from the state accounted for a very important part of peoples' sustenance. My grandfather would try to explain it like this: even if you had money, there wasn't anything to buy. In that sense, even the factory managers were poor. Sarah C. M. Paine says that, in terms of buying power, the First Secretary of USSR's wife was poorer than an average American middle-class wife.

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

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really want an installer, just pack the files into a self extracting archive. But IMO the loose files are easier to work with than an installer. Or are you misunderstanding the fact that you can just copy/back up the Steam game and play it anywhere. That's why I say many people have that misconception about Steam games

The real difference is that for Steam the bulk of the catalog is made up of DRM games and that sends a message. As far as I know Steam isn't actively doing anything to promote "DRM free" in general, they just don't say no to the opportunity to sell those games too. GOG on the other hand takes an active stance on promoting and supporting DRM-free games. Once storefronts like GOG disappear I don't think Steam will pick…

> the bulk of the catalog is made up of DRM games

Is it? Is there even a list of them? I know some are, some aren’t. Sometimes it’s even mixed (e.g. Pathfinder Kingmaker is DRM free, the DLCs use Steamworks DRM). As you say, they aren’t promoting it, but I’m not sure they expose that information at all.

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

#215

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.

That's still not "archiving" though. It's one thing to download the installer, and quite another to install the game and copy the files hoping it will all still work. Especially on windows when registry entries are involved.

You have no clue what you are talking about. Registry entries that are required by games are like a thing of the past for like 25 years or something.

I am a heavy pirate and I my favorite games come as raw files torrents with the crack pre-applied. Games these days (with DRM removed) simply execute no matter where you copy and move them they just work. The cracks themselves do not modify any registry entries or make the game write them new or differently because they simply do not use the registry. Games write their savegames in AppData or Documents and THAT IS IT. Installers are glorified copy machines with ads on them (GOG) for example. They copy files and put a shortcut in your start menu and desktop and THAT IS IT, they do not write special registry entries for a game to work. Again this has not been a thing for like 25 years. I think it was when SecureROM was a thing.

So yes some steam games actually come DRM free, and you do not even have to move them out of the original steam install folder you just need to execute the EXE without steam running and they work. So indeed it is in fact achieving if you simply keep the files somewhere. For game with basic steam DRM you can use a crack or use steamless that basically removes the steam DRM that is very basic from the exe and use Goldberg Steam Emu to emulate steam. You do all this after the fact so you CAN for all the game that to not have some advanced DRM like Denovo just achieve the games files and make them work later on without Steam.

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

#217
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of games that use that sort of protection can be cracked in about 5 minutes by simply copying a steam emulator library into the game folder.

thus is not truely DRM free. I love steam but even if it can barely be called a DRM, it still is. People not into computer science will have no clue how to do it, and that's what matters when talking about owning your own games, you should not require knowledge to keep something you paid for

"Not into computer science" lol. I knew how to copy a damn crack at 13 years or whatever and a barely figured out windows by that time. You act like people are stupid. Sure there are some console gamers who only use their phone for social media and are clueless about computers in 2026, but most people know how to copy some damn files over. They do not need to be in "computer science".

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

#218
post #208
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…

I have a slightly different story, told by a Romanian coworker who was old enough to have worked in a factory under Ceaucescu: the workers stole from the factory, all the time, at every level. Managers would be able to take away complete items for "testing"; ordinary line workers would be limited to what parts they could plausibly conceal in their overalls at the end of the shift, then assemble them in their own time…

most games make a very good chunk of their lifetime revenue during their first weeks. If you can avoid piracy during that period (through wishlisting, preorders and such) piracy is not going to eat into your revenue significantly.

On the other hand, having strongly anticonsumer DRM will certainly affect sales. If you have a loss of performance or make it too much a hassle (mandatory connections, updates, etc) that will eat into your revenue, and twice as you are paying money to third parties to have consumers be shun away.

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

#219
post #213
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a slightly different story, told by a Romanian coworker who was old enough to have worked in a factory under Ceaucescu: the workers stole from the factory, all the time, at every level. Managers would be able to take away complete items for "testing"; ordinary line workers would be limited to what parts they could plausibly conceal in their overalls at the end of the shift, then assemble them in their own time…

> the workers stole from the factory, all the time, at every level. I think the context is important. These were people in poverty, in an extremely mismanaged society. You could get very little from actual shops. Most things would have to be bartered for. Stealing from the state accounted for a very important part of peoples' sustenance. My grandfather would try to explain it like this: even if you had money, there w…

Yes. Hence the stories of people (Brezhnev?) being astonished and baffled at simply walking into an American supermarket.

Of course, one reason why there wasn't much on the shelves was it had been already stolen by other people closer to the source ...

(something of a generic problem of low trust societies, not specific to Communism. I think we sometimes don't appreciate how valuable a high trust society is to us in the West, which is why people trying to destroy it by looting from the top are particularly dangerous: the rot spreads from the top)

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

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally any game you can buy on GoG is also DRM free on Steam. I mention since many people have the incorrect notion that all Steam games have DRM

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.

GOG and CDPR are not the good guys. They released a complete disaster of an unfinished game with CP2077, and they KNEW it was broken and still shipped this gigantic pile of trash. Their promo also included a bunch of made up hype trash that was completely just artificially created in video, and they made it seem like it was gameplay. So they LIED to hype their unfinished trash game. Much of that never made it to the game.

Also even the fixed game now is just a silly boring sandbox game, what makes it good is the story, but It's for sure overrated. I enjoyed it but still overrated.

They also censor for the CCP, the removed the game Devotion because it had a JOKE inside that was not even visible to the normal player you needed to get out of your way to see some devroom or something with it. The BLACKLISTED a game simply because they make a JOKE of the Chinese president.

All big companies are EVIL by definition. Do not act like they are the good guys because they grift of selling games without DRM, they sell them at higher prices to make big money. They grew into this immoral dirt megacorp.

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