oh do flexlm next…
By someone besides Empress?
Sort by popular, there are so many denuvo titles on there now cracked.
Good, I hope they go bankrupt.
What kind of measures do current Denuvo versions take that they need these kinds of bypasses?
It’s at least running in the HyperVisor layer of the OS, which to my understanding is basically the same as a rootkit, tho I am not sure if it’s a higher or lower level than that.
I don’t understand how that is possible without installing its own kernel driver. afaik only the denuvo anticheat does that
Easy solution: fuck denuvo. Fuck the games that use it. And also fuck windows.
Edit: it has been shown many many many times over the many many many years, that preventing Piracy doesn’t mean increased sales or vice versa.
Those who don’t buy because the can’t, won’t play It if DRMed (loss not even near the cost of denuvo)
Those who don’t buy because they make informed decisions, won’t buy or play it, if DRMed (loss plus denuvo cost)
And many would buy a game even if it’s non-DRM-ed just because they liked it and want to support the devs. I bought soooo many games AFTER I already finished them or were halfway through.
And putting denuvo on it, instead of giving me a demo? Fuck you. I know the game is shit just by that.
the infuriating one is Capcom. after all these years, decades even, they STILL to this DAY do not understand PC games. they still have yet to figure out HOW to optimize their games for PC and would STILL keep using Denuvo even AFTER admitting that “yeah it slows our games down, yeah we remove it and then put it back”
Either it’s old as Japanese execs at capcom that refuse to understand gaming on the PC or they just don’t care. But it boggles my mind how Capcom kept using Denuvo while admitting it fucks their shit up.
Capcom puts Denuvo into everything, then after a while they replace it with enigma, which is presumably cheaper, and leave that shit in indefinitely. They also put DRM in games on Steam that they are already selling DRM-free on GoG, defeating any imagined benefit DRM could have and just punishing their actual customers.
Sega meanwhile puts Denuvo into absolutely everything and just keeps it in forever. Square Enix puts Denuvo into everything, but at least usually removes it after a while. I’m thinking this might really be a Japanese thing. They also don’t only hate piracy but modding as well, so I’m not surprised they would all opt for the most heinous form of DRM.
Aye, I also rarely understand the motivation. Must really be that those who decide have no real clue about what a computer or a game is.
In the last decade i highly drifted towards indie games and rarely even check AAA anymore. No innovation, no risk, nothing fresh nor great. Just re-iteration of what has already been done before. Milk every franchise until even the hardcore-fans are bored to oblivion.
It’s so sad, and I’m passionately gaming since pacman on the Atari 2600
On the one hand software freedom.
On the other this has me thinking about how fascinating this problem is from academic standpoint.
How can you ensure software can ONLY run on the machines you allow? Even if the user has ring 0 access?
Is it mathematically impossible to achieve?
Practically speaking, people already have cell phones that are impossible to own, because in many cases, users are not allowed to unlock the bootloaders of their phones.
Only with a client server model like in multiplayer or always online games. DRM is a conceptual scam. This kind of attack is unpatchable. It’s essentially a blue pill attack against a single program.
I don’t think this is matter of mathematics, it is difficult to define what “software only running on desired machine” is. Like, do you permit functionally equal software with different code? With painstaking effort, functionality should be approximated fairly close (although idk what that means in mathematical context) On the other hand, requiring exact code is likely not what they want.
Cryptographic guarantee requires mathematical specification, which seems ill-fit in this scenario.
SAAS. You never install the entire application. Large parts of the engine never run locally.
I think Denuvo technically does a little bit of this.
I forgot the exact details, but one of the keys that’s used to unscramble the bytecode has to be downloaded from their registry server on first launch.
But after that, it’s not required.
Although that still never totally protects it. I’ve seen a fair few number of passionate game communities bring online-only games back from the dead by reverse engineering the server architecture. It’s a lot of work, but if you know how the software is supposed to function then you can write the other half of the software that gives the response to make that work.
City of heroes is a big example
The original code for that was leaked, most if not all replacement servers run that code, not reverse engineered code.
Yeah, I can see that. I’m thinking of streaming assets and code on demand, similar to how an optical disk works. It’s a terrible waste of resources, and they can be grabbed if they are not cryptographically secured.
Even that, a dedicated player can capture it. If it has to be rendered on the device then they have access to the assets.
Or use the cloud gaming approach and just stream the video, no local engine at all!
That would protect the IP, but the response time is terrible. Pinging Google.com I get a response time of about 80 ms. At that delay, everything would feel spongy and laggy.
If they cared about your experience they wouldn’t be using intrusive DRM at all.
It’s totally possible to achieve. TPM is the desktop equivalent of the technology that runs on your cellphone to have apps detect if you have an unlocked bootloader or root. It’s the same technology prevents your favorite concole (ie: switch 2, ect) from running pirated games.
This improved security does come at a price: we/the users are the enemy and cannot be trusted. This means modifying your system will be prohibited and we (the consumer) will have to trust that Big Tech has our best interests in mind. /s
What’s preventing spoofing this with a fake implementation?
To expand on this a bit:
It’s all built on top of the concept of “a chain of trust”, starting at the hardware level.
(as mentioned) TPM is a chip that’ll store encryption keys at a hardware level and retrieval of these keys can only happen if the hardware is unmodified.
I assume that part of this key is derived from aspects of your OS (ie: all device drivers are signed by MS).
The OS will fetch this key, if it’s valid - the OS knows that the hardware is untampered, it can then verify that the OS is unmodified, which can then be used by application to determine that their not modified, etc.
Now you could spoof your own TPM chip (similar to how Switch 1’s are chipped/nodded), but the deal-breaker is that when you add your key to the TPM chip, you sign it with a hardware vendor specific public key. And that vendor private key is baked into the hardware (often into the CPU, so the private key never crosses the hardware bus).
Am still not playing any Video Game with Denuvo.
(I only play games with Steam’s DRM)SkidrowReloaded
RepacksLab
Fitgirl Repacks
ElAmigos
For sure but I’m not doing hypervisor. That shit is dumb.
I’m not the most familiar with hardware level stuff. With the security disabled as in the article, can a malevolent actor rewrite firmware or leave the equivalent of an undetectable rootkit on your hardware? It would be mildly amusing to see an entire generation of pirates fuck up here, but also reminds me of the arguments regarding the intel cpus having a secondary, unknown firmware in the form of the management thingamajig.
Firmware, unlikely. Rootkit, probably. The most likely attack is plain old malware. Attacks relying on those security features being disabled are uncommon.
However! If a malicious actor says "hey here’s a guide to defeat denuvo on the latest game, and here’s the crack’, and the guide tells you to disable certain security features, the crack can contain malware specifically crafted to exploit that scenario. It’s one of the reasons that guides saying “disable uac, disable antivirus, run as admin” are a huge bright red flag.
Very much possible, yes. I don’t think any game is worth the risk. Even if you have a PC dedicated to just gaming, buying new hardware if it gets borked is more expensive than just buying the game. Or playing the hundreds of great games kn existence without Denuvo.
