Denuvo DRM's rushed implementation in Sonic Mania is reportedly causing rapid performance breakdowns, according to celebrated game cracker, Voksi

[Dafydd]

Reddit post by game cracker Voksi: https://www.reddit.com/r/CrackWatch/comments/908pg1/sega_rushes_the_new_denuvo_in_new_sonic_manias

 

TorrentFreak article: https://torrentfreak.com/sega-accused-of-anti-consumer-behavior-with-rushed-sonic-mania-plus-protection-180720/

 

"I'm gonna focus here on the second post. This slowdown is caused by a trigger in the time attack menu when you scroll down till the last levels, which is not closed properly, which causes Denuvo to continue writing in its section until the game is closed, which causes massive game slowdown."

 

"I've encountered this exact anti-tamper trigger while making my crack, which put the game in the exact same loop, in the exact same spot. So, this trigger is failing for this person on a legit copy. Good job, SEGA!"

 

Proof and steam discussions on it in the Reddit thread.

 

Voksi is a member of notorious game cracking group, REVOLT, and is known for their hard work cracking lots of Denuvo games the last few weeks (check their Reddit history).

[Sauron]

And then they wonder why people pirate games...

[Paddi01]

What is anti-tamper exactly?

[Dafydd]

13 minutes ago, Paddi01 said:

What is anti-tamper exactly?

Basically a way to try and prevent pirates cracking games. Things like this show how bad this can get tho.

[jagdtigger]

2 minutes ago, Dafydd said:

Things like this show how bad this can get tho.

And even this gets cracked, its just really funny how big studios still waste money on these placebo's...

[Beskamir]

21 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

And even this gets cracked, its just really funny how big studios still waste money on these placebo's...

Many believe that as long as drm delays a crack by a few days it's done it's job.

[Sauron]

35 minutes ago, ElfFriend said:

Many believe that as long as drm delays a crack by a few days it's done it's job.

What about an update to a game that has been out for months?

[ARikozuM]

Here's an idea: make the DRM only last a month after launch... not a year or two after!

[Derangel]

Not surprising. Doing a rush job adding anything to a complicated piece of software is going to cause problems. This is likely the key difference between the games that work well and the ones that don't when it comes to Denuvo.

[S w a t s o n]

At least it's not running VMProtect or i hope not. Assassin's Creed Origins just runs like shit even on 4 fast cores and they wrapped denuvo in vmprotect for that

[mr moose]

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

And then they wonder why people pirate games...

And the more people pirate the more DRM  they include, and thus the circle self perpetuates. 

[ARikozuM]

9 minutes ago, mr moose said:

And the more people pirate the more DRM  they include, and thus the circle self perpetuates. 

We should just force EA to publish their findings on piracy vs sales. 

[mr moose]

5 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

We should just force EA to publish their findings on piracy vs sales. 

If only those studies actually meant anything.   Remember the big EU study that everyone was convinced proved piracy was good? turns out no one read it, the reason it was not released was because it essentially proved nothing.

[ARikozuM]

4 minutes ago, mr moose said:

If only those studies actually meant anything.   Remember the bbig EU study that everyone was convince proved piracy was good? turns out no one read it, the reason it was not released was because it essentially proved nothing.

Should still be available for viewing. Checking methodology and discussing findings, or lack thereof, is an important part of the scientific method. 

 

Edit: I don't mean publishing as in posting to a scientific journal. Just giving access to the paper is great. 

[Guest]

Great Idea for game in 2018:

- Good graphics

- Playable on most machines

- Not broken

- Is supported actively

- A finished game

- Not put together overnight

- Great singleplayer campaign

- Great multiplayer

- Nice soundtrack

 

The close game I can think of is SC2. Fortnite and PUBG and now this. I can't understand why people pay for rubbish games. 

[mr moose]

3 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Should still be available for viewing. Checking methodology and discussing findings, or lack thereof, is an important part of the scientific method. 

The document was accessed through freedom of information request.  It was never withheld or hidden, it just wasn't published/tabled,  becasue in order to do that a study has to maintain a certain integrity.  I have read through the report and it had several questionable conditions, not the least of which was that it never actually proved what the media said it did.

[ARikozuM]

4 minutes ago, mr moose said:

The document was accessed through freedom of information request.  It was never withheld or hidden, it just wasn't published/tabled,  becasue in order to do that a study has to maintain a certain integrity.  I have read through the report and it had several questionable conditions, not the least of which was that it never actually proved what the media said it did.

Do you have a link to the paper so that I may read it?

[mr moose]

 

 

 

7 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Do you have a link to the paper so that I may read it?

https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2017/09/displacement_study.pdf

[MoonSpot]

Since when has a sonic title been worth the bandwidth? Thought the only action sonic got was from grandparents buying them for grand-kids, and with console bundles. Think they could have been fine without going crazy with DRMs.

[mr moose]

16 minutes ago, Arokhantos said:

 

But many devs leave denuvo in there games even after its been cracked, there few that have removed but the majority is stupid and keeps it in even after been proven that it hurts game performance after removing it via crack.

It probably takes too much work to remove it.  Like untangling spaghetti.

[jagdtigger]

9 hours ago, ElfFriend said:

Many believe that as long as drm delays a crack by a few days it's done it's job.

And many proves that DRM isnt needed.... (CDPR, GoG)

[Sauron]

10 hours ago, mr moose said:

And the more people pirate the more DRM  they include, and thus the circle self perpetuates. 

Game sales are constantly on the rise, so that doesn't really hold any water... some would argue that piracy actually helps game sales in the long run, although I don't think there's conclusive evidence either way.

4 hours ago, Arokhantos said:

But many devs leave denuvo in there games even after its been cracked, there few that have removed but the majority is stupid and keeps it in even after been proven that it hurts game performance after removing it via crack.

I think there's a clause in the contract that lets the company get a full refund from Denuvo if the DRM is cracked and the devs remove it from the game - there is an incentive to get rid of it when it becomes ineffective.

[asus killer]

15 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

Here's an idea: make the DRM only last a month after launch... not a year or two after!

that would probably end piracy.

[Brooksie359]

10 hours ago, huilun02 said:

Gotta go flop fast!

It's kind of ironic that "sonic runs slow" if you think about it 

[mr moose]

11 hours ago, Sauron said:

Game sales are constantly on the rise, so that doesn't really hold any water... some would argue that piracy actually helps game sales in the long run, although I don't think there's conclusive evidence either way.

 

Game sales are on the rise, but are they on the rise and scaling appropriately with the economy, with population, with distribution. Are profits appropriate to the number of games sold or has loot box and DLC become the cash cow that made up for piracy losses?    There are lots and lots of unanswered questions in this debate.  Some of these are really important to understanding if the consumer is being harmed buy the game dev or piracy or not at all.

 

T