Denuvo Anti-Cheat, another new StarForce

[Koeshi]

1 hour ago, JoostinOnline said:

Also, as anyone who's ever tried to pirate a Denuvo game knows, the cracked version runs significantly worse (I may or may not have tried it when I couldn't get my disc based version working). A cracked version doesn't mean Denuvo is removed, it means it's being counteracted. You also don't get any bug fixes.

I'm sorry but where on earth are you getting that from?  Performance impact is one of the main reasons people hate Denuvo in games.  While the impact varies between games, it is basically just accepted that Denuvo has a negative performance impact.  I have seen plenty of times people recommending to play the cracked version even if you have paid for a copy just for the performance improvement it brings.

 

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/282924-denuvo-really-does-cripple-pc-gaming-performance

https://www.techpowerup.com/246648/denuvos-impact-on-game-performance-benchmarked

https://www.game-debate.com/news/22656/denuvo-pc-performance-impact-tested-doom-benchmarks-with-and-without-denuvo-drm

[JoostinOnline]

12 minutes ago, Master Delta Chief said:

I personally have much less of a problem with people pirating a game than cheaters.

Wow, you have a way bigger problem with something that you've got a financial investment in?

10 minutes ago, Koeshi said:

I'm sorry but where on earth are you getting that from?  Performance impact is one of the main reasons people hate Denuvo in games.  While the impact varies between games, it is basically just accepted that Denuvo has a negative performance impact.  I have seen plenty of times people recommending to play the cracked version even if you have paid for a copy just for the performance improvement it brings.

 

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/282924-denuvo-really-does-cripple-pc-gaming-performance

https://www.techpowerup.com/246648/denuvos-impact-on-game-performance-benchmarked

https://www.game-debate.com/news/22656/denuvo-pc-performance-impact-tested-doom-benchmarks-with-and-without-denuvo-drm

There's a huge difference between a cracked version and a version with Denuvo removed.  Developers usually remove Denuvo once it's been cracked (as there's no reason for it to be there anymore).  That really improves performance.  When it's cracked, it's just counteracted.  All the Denuvo code still runs.  Cracking it places an even bigger burden on performance.

[Koeshi]

21 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

When it's cracked, it's just counteracted.

I think you are misunderstanding either how Denuvo or cracking works.  It just obfuscates the game code, the process of cracking is deciphering it what is happening underneath so that they can provide the pure executables without the obfuscation.  That is why cracking teams have a history of bragging about their versions running better than the official one.

[jagdtigger]

8 hours ago, JoostinOnline said:

They are getting better at it, but again, my point remains.

Your point is busted, no pirate cant wait 5 days for the crack.

[JoostinOnline]

9 hours ago, Koeshi said:

I think you are misunderstanding either how Denuvo or cracking works.  It just obfuscates the game code, the process of cracking is deciphering it what is happening underneath so that they can provide the pure executables without the obfuscation.  That is why cracking teams have a history of bragging about their versions running better than the official one.

You should try a cracked version of a Denuvo game (one that doesn't have Denuvo removed).

 

And no they don't. They typically make it clear the performance issues are because Denuvo is merely cracked.

[jagdtigger]

@JoostinOnline

IDK whats funny, do you really think that 4 days will force anyone to buy that game? Are you really that blind?

[Thaldor]

10 hours ago, JoostinOnline said:

There's a huge difference between a cracked version and a version with Denuvo removed.  Developers usually remove Denuvo once it's been cracked (as there's no reason for it to be there anymore).  That really improves performance.  When it's cracked, it's just counteracted.  All the Denuvo code still runs.  Cracking it places an even bigger burden on performance.

Removing Denuvo isn't really that common (not the most up-to-date list but what I know there only couple games that are missing "removed"-status). The common time for Denuvo game to be cracked is around 1 week to bit over 3 months with +3 months quite being well negated by <1week cracks when looking through Crackwatch lists.

 

I think there would be DRMs even if there wasn't any piracy, after all we have seen that companies have will to restrict use of their product through DRM. Microsoft and WB Games being probably the best remembered example of this with Batman: Arkham Asylum (and IIRC Arkham City also) originally having restriction of 3-5 activations through Windows Live with game asking reactivation even after big changes in the HW. Also I would remember some later versions of SecuROM also having restrictions on install times.

These are from gaming world, DRM and general software world are completely different story with just mindless restrictions through DRM even if the software was the like that you will get 100% surely caught if using without license. Like we are talking about softwares that can cost thousands to tens of thousands and you only get one activation and even that needs USB-security key to which that activation is locked in and if your PC says goodbye and dies, the seller welcomes you to buy a new software license and security key. And we talk softwares like, for example, some CNC-machine controlling software that works only with those machines and well, if you are using their machine you should have the software license, otherwise you wouldn't be using that machine and there really isn't much demand on cracked CNC-machine controlling softwares just because you will get caught using one.

And that is just example for that there would be DRM anyway because that's business. Like you can see where companies are going when they already get almost all of the money, microtransaction, lootboxes, DLCs and now the newest "pay-to-play" model. I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't piracy, the game developers would have been selling "installs" instead of games for a long time just because how fucking stupid it is to sell customer a product they can stop using and then later continue using without paying for it again.

[leadeater]

33 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

the seller welcomes you to buy a new software license and security key

No that is not a thing, I've used software license like that a lot and that's never happened. What you describe is illegal just about anywhere while you are paying for that license, companies love maintenance support agreements and deprecating old versions forcing you to upgrade but while that software is listed as supported you have a legal entitlement to it.

 

The worst I've had to do is make a phone call and supply the new machine GUID that the software or software license server is on.

 

Sure, if you are running a 10-20 year old version of the software then you are going to have a problem but you would have been notified of EOL years ago.

[JoostinOnline]

40 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

@JoostinOnline

IDK whats funny, do you really think that 4 days will force anyone to buy that game? Are you really that blind?

I was laughing at you saying my point is busted.  People got real quiet after I asked for hard evidence that companies lose money by using DRM.

[Thaldor]

12 minutes ago, leadeater said:

No that is not a thing, I've used software license like that a lot and that's never happened. What you describe is illegal just about anywhere while you are paying for that license, companies love maintenance support agreements and deprecating old versions forcing you to upgrade but while that software is listed as supported you have a legal entitlement to it.

 

The worst I've had to do is make a phone call and supply the new machine GUID that the software or software license server is on.

 

Sure, if you are running a 10-20 year old version of the software then you are going to have a problem but you would have been notified of EOL years ago.

It was a bad example, but it was more about companies are willing to go shitty for profits. Like Texas Instruments is one shitty company on this area with their Ti-Nspire CX CAS student software which is sold as single license that is burned after the first installation (it's too simple to copy the license file and move it around but that most likely goes against the license agreement, still cheaper to dedicate USB-stick to preserve that file than buy another license if PC dies).

But either way the general software world is quite brutal with DRMs compared to games and game companies have tried to go that way in hopes to get more profits.

[jagdtigger]

5 hours ago, JoostinOnline said:

I was laughing at you saying my point is busted.  People got real quiet after I asked for hard evidence that companies lose money by using DRM.

Look at reality and you will get your hard evidence. One week waiting time wont deter anyone who wants to pirate it . At this point the DRM is failed and all the money that was spent on paying for it and the wasted time on implementing said junk will become a total and utter loss. Not to mention the collateral damage in the form of a pissed off customer base if the DRM was a piece of crap(most of them are).

[Colonel_Gerdauf]

29 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Look at reality and you will get your hard evidence. One week waiting time wont deter anyone who wants to pirate it . At this point the DRM is failed and all the money that was spent on paying for it and the wasted time on implementing said junk will become a total and utter loss. Not to mention the collateral damage in the form of a pissed off customer base if the DRM was a piece of crap(most of them are).

Stop evading his question and fucking give a direct answer.

 

That attitude is only further proving his jab against you, and further proving to everyone else why you should not be trusted with any claim.

[jagdtigger]

8 minutes ago, Colonel_Gerdauf said:

Stop evading his question and fucking give a direct answer.

Thats the most direct and honest answer i can give to him. No company released so far how much the gained because they had DRM, either because there was none or they couldnt measure it. There instances where the lack of DRM wasnt an issue like CDPR and witcher, or these:

https://torrentfreak.com/game-developer-sees-boost-in-sales-after-releasing-official-torrent-200113/

https://torrentfreak.com/kingdom-come-dev-warhorse-studios-decorates-office-with-framed-codex-pirate-nfo-200110/

 

But no concrete info. Bonus point he was the one who made the accusation this is because of pirates and cheaters so im not even sure if the burden of proof is on me in this case....

[Colonel_Gerdauf]

34 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Thats the most direct and honest answer i can give to him. No company released so far how much the gained because they had DRM, either because there was none or they couldnt measure it. There instances where the lack of DRM wasnt an issue like CDPR and witcher, or these:

https://torrentfreak.com/game-developer-sees-boost-in-sales-after-releasing-official-torrent-200113/

https://torrentfreak.com/kingdom-come-dev-warhorse-studios-decorates-office-with-framed-codex-pirate-nfo-200110/

 

But no concrete info. Bonus point he was the one who made the accusation this is because of pirates and cheaters so im not even sure if the burden of proof is on me in this case....

You claim that "Look at reality and you will get your hard evidence" and yet none of this is hard evidence. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; hell, all of this data is little more than loose extrapolations made from connecting the wrong dots together.

[jagdtigger]

1 hour ago, Colonel_Gerdauf said:

You claim that "Look at reality and you will get your hard evidence" and yet none of this is hard evidence. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; hell, all of this data is little more than loose extrapolations made from connecting the wrong dots together.

Because there is nothing else nor pro nor contra?   As i said, for some weird reason none of studios  releases any concrete figure about the cost of their drm vs the gains it brought. The closest thing to concrete is this:

https://torrentfreak.com/eu-piracy-report-suppression-raises-questions-transparency-170922/

 

Quote

The study found that piracy had a slightly positive effect on the videogames industry, suggesting that those who play pirate games eventually become buyers of official content.

And allegedly even this was buried.....

 

If you want cold hard numbers pester the game studios about it. (Good luck with this one, even if they spout out something it will surely be in favor of DRM since they dont want to break the placebo effect....)

[Thaldor]

7 hours ago, JoostinOnline said:

I was laughing at you saying my point is busted.  People got real quiet after I asked for hard evidence that companies lose money by using DRM.

Show me the evidence that using DRM against piracy has increased profits of the companies.

 

Bet you can't do that because either way getting some actual evidence in these matters to side or another is impossible. Just as whether companies loose or gain from piracy is subject that is just horrendous to prove (especially if we take out the often used "false-arguments" ("1 download = 1 lost sale" and "pirates consume more media and advocate it") from both sides even the amount of researches just drops to zero). And all we have is examples where companies have succeeded without DRM and have failed with DRM and they of course don't count because they are not done by the University of the Templar Knights in Whatever-land paid by DRM inc. or Piracy on the Net Org. (all names are completely made up because "reasons"). Kind of same kind of debates as "which is better: more fat and no added sugar or less fat and added sugar" which is actually researched to hell and back and still you can get 5 different answers from 5 different doctors and then 10 doctors will start to debate whether this and that research is valid as argument because they are funded by some organization that has conflict of interest or isn't funded at all and so isn't as big as the other.

 

Same can be said from anti-cheat systems. Does company profit from adding one to the game later than release? Probably Zenimax can tell after some time but most likely they won't tell and even then it would be just one example, nothing more nothing less. Most likely any multiplayer game will profit from anti-cheat system. More interesting matter would be how company can profit from anti-cheat system, again we don't have any numbers but we can play with the ideas:

Like Valve vs. Activision-Blizzard, CS:GO vs. CoD: Warzone.

CS:GO has VAC banning and caught cheaters can just create another Steam-account, buy the game again and continue cheating while getting banned from Warzone means you need to get new phone number and go to extra lengths to get around that ban (both are free-to-play but for arguments sake lets keep both as original CS:GO which was paid game). Valve has turned cheating into a business, because the way around that ban is so short and easy Valve will pocket money out of it, yeah non-cheaters will suffer from it but fuck them, they have already paid for the game and they basicly are worse customers than cheaters because cheaters pay for the game multiple times (even if it's from 95% discount, that little bit is still more than from the normal player who buys only one copy). Warzone players will be happier because cheaters have harder time getting back to the game but then again they cannot leverage the same money printing loop as Valve can which brings us to the question: "Which companys anti-cheat system is more profitable? Valves loose one or A-Bs strict one." While both games have MTX systems in place and probably lootboxes we can think that Warzone players are more happy to spend 3 coins for lootbox keys than CS:GO players because they are not fed up by cheating but does that extra sale exceed the sales coming from cheaters buying the game again (and usually many times again)?

[Master Delta Chief]

On 5/17/2020 at 3:32 AM, JoostinOnline said:

Wow, you have a way bigger problem with something that you've got a financial investment in?

Well considering that there are some companies out there that either offer lower quality products, falsely advertise or give no free trial/demo, it's obviously expected to see people pirate the software or game in order to see whether if it's actually worth it to buy. You can make counter-arguments like having people check the reviews or see a video walk-through of the product, but that often isn't enough for the end-consumer. Anyways, the point here is and always has been, Denuvo sucks in terms of providing DRM applications. 

[Worstcaster]

On 5/16/2020 at 3:07 AM, Ashley said:

i'm hoping someone makes a list of games that use that software so i can stay away from them. 

GOG sells none DRM titles, so at least you can know those games are OK.

[8uhbbhu8]

OMFG please no..... Not another Ring 0 anticheat.... Starforce was bad enough. Who know what this thing is actually going to do...

 

Frankly I'm more likely to want to pirate a game that has some sort of anti-cheat/antitamper software as in the vast vast majority of cases it will straight up run better and be more stable without it. 

 

Never mind that some times I want to cheat or mod a little in my single player games especially when they become really grindy ot i'm bored with it and want to switch it up

Or how about the when game is complete dogshit and a third party patch that would be blocked by the software improves the gameplay and performance a hell of a lot.

[Curious Pineapple]

I can give some real and recent insight into this.

 

Subnautica on Microsoft Store runs worse than the Epic version. More stuttery, lower FPS and the experiance is just not as good. Even a cracked 2/3 year old early access copy performed better than the Store version.

 

Until it is released I cannot name the game due to an NDA however the exact same situation. The MS Store version is slower to load, performs worse and stutters when the game has to load a huge amount of data compared to the Steam version.

 

I don't mind a slight load time hit but the encryption makes realtime loading slower and impacts the game experiance.

 

Developers have every right to protect their work, but when that means rooting into a customers machine and impacting their enjoyment of the game, people will turn to cracked copies. If it's a single player game then who cares? Can't get banned so why buy the castrated copy? Online games are easy to protect, do as Microsoft do and match the user account to a purchase (or Gamepass entitlement). No record of a purchase then no online play. Online games are where the income matters as they have to keep up support, single player titles are often a sell once, maybe patch a few times and move on.

[jagdtigger]

3 hours ago, Curious Pineapple said:

don't mind a slight load time hit but the encryption makes realtime loading slower and impacts the game experiance.

I guess this is heavily dependent on the implementation. I mean i didnt notice a difference on my asus 2in1 laptop  between a normal and a full disk encrypted linux install....

[Thaldor]

6 hours ago, Curious Pineapple said:

-snip-

Not really surprising that Microsofts take on DRM is pure garbage compared to others. After all they were behind Windows LIVE back in the day and only reason why we are still able to play Batman games is that Valve bought Microsoft off from them (Arkham Asylum and Arkham City GOTY editions were given free to anyone who owned the original game(s) on Steam when Valve bought them from Microsoft and removed Microsoft LIVE integration from them because MS was shutting the LIVE down).

 

Funny part is that a lot of that performance hit comes from Microsoft somehow thinking that encrypting the game files would make some kind of difference. At least when I tried Sea of Thieves around when it came out, the game was completely encrypted, like not only that the data files would have been protected as usually, but on top of that probably OneDrive-encryption to the whole game. I would like to see the person who thought that up and said that it wouldn't have impact on the performance.

 

UWP does apparently give good protection, at least Forza Horizon 4 did take almost a year to get cracked, but that performance hit is real. Fast checking that the Forza Horizon 4 has the encryption removed as cracked (does the Store version has it, I don't know) would be nice to see how big the performance hit really is, like is this again one of those times when the pirated version is superior to the legal just because one part of the protection is stripped off.

[Curious Pineapple]

7 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

Not really surprising that Microsofts take on DRM is pure garbage compared to others. After all they were behind Windows LIVE back in the day and only reason why we are still able to play Batman games is that Valve bought Microsoft off from them (Arkham Asylum and Arkham City GOTY editions were given free to anyone who owned the original game(s) on Steam when Valve bought them from Microsoft and removed Microsoft LIVE integration from them because MS was shutting the LIVE down).

 

Funny part is that a lot of that performance hit comes from Microsoft somehow thinking that encrypting the game files would make some kind of difference. At least when I tried Sea of Thieves around when it came out, the game was completely encrypted, like not only that the data files would have been protected as usually, but on top of that probably OneDrive-encryption to the whole game. I would like to see the person who thought that up and said that it wouldn't have impact on the performance.

 

UWP does apparently give good protection, at least Forza Horizon 4 did take almost a year to get cracked, but that performance hit is real. Fast checking that the Forza Horizon 4 has the encryption removed as cracked (does the Store version has it, I don't know) would be nice to see how big the performance hit really is, like is this again one of those times when the pirated version is superior to the legal just because one part of the protection is stripped off.

SoT has partially encrypted game files. The UE PAK files have encrypted index but the data itself is plain.

[Nowak]

 

DAC is being removed from Doom Eternal in update 1.1. Also, according to Marty Stratton:
 

• The decision to use DAC was id's, not Bethesda's
• It was also not the quality of Denuvo's anti-cheat that made them remove it
• Performance issues and crashes introduced in the update were related to bugs in the update itself with skins and VRAM allocation, not DAC

[SolarNova]

Each time a game dev .. or publisher, makes a decision like this ..be it the inclusion of invasive DRM, bad monetization, or agenda driven content.... they give more and more incentive for people to just Pirate the game instead. be it to 'try out' the game full of agenda BS without rewarding or encouraging the devs/publishers for doing it, or just so they can play the game without being ripped of or having spyware installed on their system.

 

In the past (pre 00's) Pirated games were ,for the most part, used to avoid paying for the game, or to 'try before you buy' once demo's went extinct. Now though these companies are giving people more and more actual 'moral' reasons to turn to Pirated software.

 

Im not ashamed to say i've pirated games before. For the most part to "try before I buy" ..or to ensure certain publishers dont get rewarded (looking at EA here).

 

I mean Doom:Eternal has already cracked by CODEX and is available. And since the multiplayer isnt a big part of it (apparently its not great), theres nothing stopping people just going with the cracked version instead.  In fact if they opted to keep Denovo, i wouldn't hesitate to suggest those who have a legitimate copy, or who want to buy the game ..buy it ..then use the cracked version instead.