Patching in new DRM years after launch seems unlikely to impact pirates, but actively harms legitimate users who play on Steam Deck or mod games they paid for.
Not necessarily. All DRM punishes paying customers, but some also punishes pirates. Very few games with Denuvo ever get cracked, instead the publisher removes it after a while because Denuvo charges a license fee as long as its in your game. E.g. the Hatsune Miku game on steam hasn’t been cracked in the two years it’s been out. So there’s an argument for using it, even if it’s a flawed one.
But these games already went without DRM for years. They’re long since cracked. The only purpose this DRM serves is to make it harder for paying customers to use mods. Not pirates, they can keep using the same mods they’ve always used. This is literally for the purpose of degrading the experience of paying customers. That’s what they mean by “only punishes paying customers”.
I was under the impression that all the major Denuvo games got cracked within the year they launched if not the first couple weeks? Maybe there wasn’t the right attention for that game?
Do you know of a place that tracks that kinda thing? I’m pretty curious now about the statistics of release to cracked.
There’s an r/crackwatch, but afaik its Denuvo list hasn’t been updated in something like 1.5 years (because there’s been no, or next-to-no, denuvo cracks this whole time)
For example, in 2021, only 7 games released with Denuvo were cracked (out of an approximate 30). In 2022, only one. There was only one cracker in the world who was any good at breaking Denuvo, and Denuvo hired them, so it just doesn’t happen anymore.
(Be careful when reading the crackwatch updates, because they mark ‘denovo removed’ the same colour as ‘denuvo cracked’, you have to read the notes)
One success does not put the lie to the idea that there are few successes.
The most recent update to the list was literally less than 1 hour ago. Of the 229 games that have been released with Denuvo since 2020, <30 of them have been cracked. 119 of them had the Denuvo eventually removed by the publisher.
Empress was essentially the only person who cracked Denuvo with any regularity, and even they only succeeded at a few games, and only extremely popular ones (because they worked off a donation scheme). I use the past tense, because Empress works for Denuvo now.
Not necessarily. All DRM punishes paying customers, but some also punishes pirates. Very few games with Denuvo ever get cracked, instead the publisher removes it after a while because Denuvo charges a license fee as long as its in your game. E.g. the Hatsune Miku game on steam hasn’t been cracked in the two years it’s been out. So there’s an argument for using it, even if it’s a flawed one.
But these games already went without DRM for years. They’re long since cracked. The only purpose this DRM serves is to make it harder for paying customers to use mods. Not pirates, they can keep using the same mods they’ve always used. This is literally for the purpose of degrading the experience of paying customers. That’s what they mean by “only punishes paying customers”.
I was under the impression that all the major Denuvo games got cracked within the year they launched if not the first couple weeks? Maybe there wasn’t the right attention for that game?
Do you know of a place that tracks that kinda thing? I’m pretty curious now about the statistics of release to cracked.
There’s an r/crackwatch, but afaik its Denuvo list hasn’t been updated in something like 1.5 years (because there’s been no, or next-to-no, denuvo cracks this whole time)
For example, in 2021, only 7 games released with Denuvo were cracked (out of an approximate 30). In 2022, only one. There was only one cracker in the world who was any good at breaking Denuvo, and Denuvo hired them, so it just doesn’t happen anymore.
(Be careful when reading the crackwatch updates, because they mark ‘denovo removed’ the same colour as ‘denuvo cracked’, you have to read the notes)
Hogwarts legacy came out last year with dunovo and Empress cracked it in something like a few weeks. Whoever made that list just stopped updating it.
One success does not put the lie to the idea that there are few successes.
The most recent update to the list was literally less than 1 hour ago. Of the 229 games that have been released with Denuvo since 2020, <30 of them have been cracked. 119 of them had the Denuvo eventually removed by the publisher.
Empress was essentially the only person who cracked Denuvo with any regularity, and even they only succeeded at a few games, and only extremely popular ones (because they worked off a donation scheme). I use the past tense, because Empress works for Denuvo now.
Wait, what’s the dif between denuvo removed and cracked?
“Denuvo removed” means, like I said before, the publisher stopped paying the denuvo license and voluntarily removed it from the game themselves.
We’re talking about a rhythm game with a smaller audience then, say, Binding of Isaac. I’m guessing yeah, it might not be a prime target for cracking.
There is basically only one or two people involved with any sort of denuvo cracking, someone named Empress and another I can’t remember.