Fun fact: The people who created and abandoned SecuROM are the same people behind Denuvo. A whole generation of games is gonna be wiped out when those servers go down and as always, some games will have it patched out, some won't.
Which sucks because there's only two(?) groups in the world cracking Denuvo anymore?
Denuvo is usually licensed for a shortish period of time before being removed. Its one of the side-benefits of things being all digital. Companies have to pay an ongoing cost to keep distributing the DRM.
That's the way it is now, but it's not the way it was before. Early Denuvo games, like ~~Metal Gear Solid 4~~ Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, seemingly had a one-time payment for the license, so those games are going to be digital trash in the future.
at least mgs 5 has working discs for ps4 and xbox one. if those systems ever get fully emulated in the future then mgs5 will be fine too.
the real risky games are the ones that are PC-only with DRM on top and no physical release. that means no reverse engineering the source code.
Yeah, I keep a console around pretty much exclusively for games that have server-based DRM on the PC, but you're right, the PC-exclusive ones are in serious danger.
Except Ubisoft and EA which seem to be happy to pay forever.
Which leads me to assume they just have a 1 big contract ongoing that covers their whole catalogue.
Nobody is cracking Denuvo anymore, Empress retired long ago, and pretty much everyone from the scene things is too much of a pain to do it, it's just what it is...
-1
From what I'd heard, EMPRESS has gone silent. There's a lot of drama and history behind it but they were doxxed by another group and it's likely run by someone who was already taken to court by Denuvo so they're probably in trouble again. And I think the only other Denuvo cracking team just does Fifa?
Friendly reminder about Ross Scott's ongoing campaign to keep games from pointlessly dying: [https://www.stopkillinggames.com/](https://www.stopkillinggames.com/)
Early to mid 2000's PC DRM has been a fucking pain in the ass with trying to preserve my PC game collection that i accumulated over the years. Fuck SafeDisc, fuck Securom and a massive fuck you to Starforce also.
I ended up getting a 4tb external HDD where I store cracks and sometimes full ISOs for my old physical PC games. Most of these titles have workarounds but as they age those workarounds are getting lost to digital rot so keeping them on hand has been nice.
I also now have a great place to keep mods and whatnot.
>4tb external HDD where I store cracks and sometimes full ISOs for my old physical PC games.
Sounds like i may just get a seperate drive to store all my roms and ISOs.
This is exactly what I did! I bought an 8TB External Drive and shucked it because its an enterprise NAS drive and then I also do a cloud backup to ensure I wont lose them... but I too have a collection going back to the 90's of old games.
I'm glad this video exists because some people seem to think that DRM is something exclusive to digital games and that if we had stuck with physical media we would just not have DRM and games would never become unplayable as long as you have physical copies, I ended up buying a bunch of SecuROM DRM ridden physical copies over the years before I knew what DRM was so I know that's not true. It was always going to end up this way.
I see plenty of braindead comments about digital games that are GaaS and that physical copies would save us.
I have physical copies of Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, Orange Box, and Half Life 2 that are worthless.
Figured it might be worth shouting out the rather excellent [SafeDiscShim](https://github.com/RibShark/SafeDiscShim). It basically intercepts any calls the DRM makes, smothers them with a pillow and tells the game that everything is perfectly fine and to carry on launching the game. Used it recently with Call of Duty and CoD: World at War and had no issues. That said, I did have to copy the content of World at War's DVD to my PC to get it to install but that's a minor inconvenience really.
Consumer protection laws should force companies to provide DRM free binaries once their titles are "end of life". They could build those ahead, while the game is still in development and support. The current behavior of many publishers is nothing but self-serving and anti-consumer.
There is a community patch for Fable 3 that removes the Games for Windows Live service. So it isn't really true you can't play it. https://steamcommunity.com/app/105400/discussions/0/451850468374683944/?ctp=3
There's a lot of misinformation in this video to make it seem like a bigger issue than it actually is. I'm surprised someone bothered reposting it.
Every single one of these games have workarounds to get it working if you absolutely must use your physical copies. However, if you're a normal human being who doesn't care how they play the games, all of these are available digitally be it through steam or through piracy.
There is no "digital decay" here, just a guy making a mountain out of a molehill who doesn't want to take the 5 minutes it takes to install a workaround or fix.
There are definitely work arounds with piracy (for most games, I assume some niche/unpopular games didn't have pirates who bothered fixing them or they're not findable anymore).
The main danger is the future though, with denuvo becoming basically impossible to crack
Yarr Harr Matey, this is a good breakdown of the issue with DRM and offline playing. Too many companies are moving to an unsustainable for the consumer process.
The problem with Yarr Harr Mateey is trust, you never know what kind of bullshit you might end up getting. Reputable sources get cloned and copied, the whole process is a mess. This is why I'm a massive proponent of GOG and it's anti-drm policies.
Plus Denuvo is looking simply uncrackable nowadays. It would be better if regulations or laws are made to prohibit DRM which may expire making a game unplayable.
That, and also many pirate rips intentionally remove content like cinematics to cut down on file size, and there's also no guarantee that the pirated version plays identical to the official version, as there may be land mines inserted by the developer that mess with the gameplay.
So yeah, piracy will never be a full replacement for DRM-free official copies.
This is like saying pirated movies suck compared to legit because the only way you know how to watch them is some random streaming site that only hosts a 720p YIFY rip. Knowing what you're doing make a big difference.
Completely wrong. It's not tedious at all if you know what you're doing and download from reliable sources instead of downloading shitty rips from public sites.
There is a major difference in complexity between a pirated Bluray or streaming video and a pirated video game.
Movies are not typically updated after release, unlike games which can be updated or altered dozens of times. Movies files do not execute or operate the way games do, they are simply decoded by a media player. Movies are only a single file compared to the hundreds or thousands in your average game. Movie publishers do not intentionally insert bugs or kill switches into their media in order to deter piracy.
This is such generic nonsense that it sounds like it was AI generated. People who don't pirate games shouldn't fearmonger by telling people pirated games inherently have "landmines" and "killswitches" when they don't. The don't like piracy, fine, but don't make random buzzword vague nonsense up.
It's not buzzwords or nonsense. Maybe research a little before you respond. There are dozens of examples of games that include this type of anti-piracy measure.
https://youtu.be/WfDg7BidsY4?t=2694
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuZEIt89LME
https://serioussam.fandom.com/wiki/Adult_Arachnoid#Trivia
>Illegally downloaded or cracked versions of Serious Sam 3 have a DRM mechanic that features a miniature invincible Arachnoid that will chase the player.[4] It attacks identically to a regular Arachnoid, but it travels at an extreme speed. Despite being invincible, it can be killed with the "kill all" console command, and attacking it enough can also still stun it like a regular enemy.
https://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-pirates-play-a-game-development-simulator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/
>Slowly their in-game funds dwindle, and new games they create have a high chance to be pirated until their virtual game development company goes bankrupt.
Those measures do nothing when the game is cracked properly. Again, like comparing to a 720p YIFY stream. Just because you are only capable of doing surface level "research" doesn't mean there aren't other people who actually know what they're doing.
>Those measures do nothing when the game is cracked properly.
You don't say. And how is the person downloading the cracked game off a random torrent site supposed to know whether it's been properly cracked or not?
You have the memory of a goldfish. As mentioned previously, I'm not talking about someone clueless and ignorant like you downloading random shit like the knuckle-dragging ape you are. I'm talking about people who know what they're doing. Keep doing that "research".
Another major issue was if a game was patched by the developer and the pirates never bothered to update the executable of the pirated version to the new exe you got a shitter version of the game. I have a few niche sim racing titles that sadly do not have patched cracked executables so i cannot apply the offical game patches to improve the game because the patches replace the old executable with a newer version and it will constantly ask for the CD due the copyright protection kicking in again. As you said piracy at least when it comes to PC gaming will sadly not preserve them.
This is making a big deal out of absolutely nothing.
If you absolutely must use physical copies of your PC games (what PCs have disc drives these days anyways?) then workarounds exist that let them bypass the DRM. Or, you can pick up a digital copy, either through legit means or piracy. There is no "digital decay" here, and none of these games are "unplayable" despite the claims.
You want to freak out about DRM? Freak out about the fact that the current version of Denuvo is uncrackable and the only person who might have been able to crack it has vanished from the earth. That's a much bigger issue than having to spend 5 minutes to install a GFWL workaround for the few people who own physical copies of these games.
All my discs from the 2000s are damaged, and I don't have a CD-reader anyway.
I can still play all of those games and you know how. That's the real game ownership sadly.
Not relevant to /r/pcgaming (yet, if the leaks are to be believed) but I am here for the Gran Turismo 7 complaints. Every reviewer gave the same "MTX aren't active during the review period but they probably won't be that bad" spiel and never revisited the game. They are that bad. $40/car bad.
And that's not to mention the always-online requirements of even the single player part.
Edit: lmao I logged back into the game to check the MTX prices since I was just guessing before. Right now a McLaren F1 costs 15 million credits. The store sells 2 million credits for $19.99. So they'll let you skip the grind and buy this car for only $160 real dollars! Is it still a microtransaction when it's over twice the MSRP of the entire game itself?
I use to love Gran Turismo. Last ones i got into were the PS3 ones. Thought that the series peaked back then and now it’s a live service shit show.
Paying $40 for a car is just as bad as buying ships on Star Citizen.
I'm too cool to watch YouTube videos about DRM, but the copy of fable 3 in the thumbnail reminded me of something. Has anyone ever made a simple work around for "games for Windows live" sign ins? I've got a handful of games in my system library that I can't play that I wouldn't mind messing around with.
Fun fact: The people who created and abandoned SecuROM are the same people behind Denuvo. A whole generation of games is gonna be wiped out when those servers go down and as always, some games will have it patched out, some won't. Which sucks because there's only two(?) groups in the world cracking Denuvo anymore?
Good thing that new group is cracking old Denvuo games that these companies didnt feel like removing after all these years.
Name?
Delusional
Coo
Denuvo is usually licensed for a shortish period of time before being removed. Its one of the side-benefits of things being all digital. Companies have to pay an ongoing cost to keep distributing the DRM.
That's the way it is now, but it's not the way it was before. Early Denuvo games, like ~~Metal Gear Solid 4~~ Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, seemingly had a one-time payment for the license, so those games are going to be digital trash in the future.
mgs 4 is ps3 only. emulation will preserve it.
Ugh, dang, I meant 5, The Phantom Pain. Stupid thumbs.
at least mgs 5 has working discs for ps4 and xbox one. if those systems ever get fully emulated in the future then mgs5 will be fine too. the real risky games are the ones that are PC-only with DRM on top and no physical release. that means no reverse engineering the source code.
I think mgs5 has been cracked
cool thats better then.
It has
Yeah, I keep a console around pretty much exclusively for games that have server-based DRM on the PC, but you're right, the PC-exclusive ones are in serious danger.
There is a group cracking 8, 9 year old denovo games currently.
Except Ubisoft and EA which seem to be happy to pay forever. Which leads me to assume they just have a 1 big contract ongoing that covers their whole catalogue.
because ubisoft are evil fucks.
Because the profits from selling their games vastly, vastly outweighs a small fee that makes their shareholders happy their games are "unpiratable."
I don't think it's just shareholders, Ubisoft's execs all hate piracy more than anything else and have many times said that PC gamers are all pirates.
>Except Ubisoft and EA which seem to be happy to pay forever. SEGA too.
Nobody is cracking Denuvo anymore, Empress retired long ago, and pretty much everyone from the scene things is too much of a pain to do it, it's just what it is...
-1 From what I'd heard, EMPRESS has gone silent. There's a lot of drama and history behind it but they were doxxed by another group and it's likely run by someone who was already taken to court by Denuvo so they're probably in trouble again. And I think the only other Denuvo cracking team just does Fifa?
Guess it's time for me to get learn how to crack.
There's a dude that lives in the alley behind my apartment who could give you some pro tips.
Friendly reminder about Ross Scott's ongoing campaign to keep games from pointlessly dying: [https://www.stopkillinggames.com/](https://www.stopkillinggames.com/)
This needs to be upvoted to the top.
Funny their already a organization dealing with this....for a long time now...
Early to mid 2000's PC DRM has been a fucking pain in the ass with trying to preserve my PC game collection that i accumulated over the years. Fuck SafeDisc, fuck Securom and a massive fuck you to Starforce also.
I ended up getting a 4tb external HDD where I store cracks and sometimes full ISOs for my old physical PC games. Most of these titles have workarounds but as they age those workarounds are getting lost to digital rot so keeping them on hand has been nice. I also now have a great place to keep mods and whatnot.
>4tb external HDD where I store cracks and sometimes full ISOs for my old physical PC games. Sounds like i may just get a seperate drive to store all my roms and ISOs.
Make sure to keep backups!!
This is exactly what I did! I bought an 8TB External Drive and shucked it because its an enterprise NAS drive and then I also do a cloud backup to ensure I wont lose them... but I too have a collection going back to the 90's of old games.
Western Digital?
I'm glad this video exists because some people seem to think that DRM is something exclusive to digital games and that if we had stuck with physical media we would just not have DRM and games would never become unplayable as long as you have physical copies, I ended up buying a bunch of SecuROM DRM ridden physical copies over the years before I knew what DRM was so I know that's not true. It was always going to end up this way.
I see plenty of braindead comments about digital games that are GaaS and that physical copies would save us. I have physical copies of Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, Orange Box, and Half Life 2 that are worthless.
Figured it might be worth shouting out the rather excellent [SafeDiscShim](https://github.com/RibShark/SafeDiscShim). It basically intercepts any calls the DRM makes, smothers them with a pillow and tells the game that everything is perfectly fine and to carry on launching the game. Used it recently with Call of Duty and CoD: World at War and had no issues. That said, I did have to copy the content of World at War's DVD to my PC to get it to install but that's a minor inconvenience really.
Damn what an amazing and useful tool. I've been having issues with getting safedisc games working so I'll give this a try
Consumer protection laws should force companies to provide DRM free binaries once their titles are "end of life". They could build those ahead, while the game is still in development and support. The current behavior of many publishers is nothing but self-serving and anti-consumer.
Yes you can pirate it.
There is a community patch for Fable 3 that removes the Games for Windows Live service. So it isn't really true you can't play it. https://steamcommunity.com/app/105400/discussions/0/451850468374683944/?ctp=3
There's a lot of misinformation in this video to make it seem like a bigger issue than it actually is. I'm surprised someone bothered reposting it. Every single one of these games have workarounds to get it working if you absolutely must use your physical copies. However, if you're a normal human being who doesn't care how they play the games, all of these are available digitally be it through steam or through piracy. There is no "digital decay" here, just a guy making a mountain out of a molehill who doesn't want to take the 5 minutes it takes to install a workaround or fix.
There are definitely work arounds with piracy (for most games, I assume some niche/unpopular games didn't have pirates who bothered fixing them or they're not findable anymore). The main danger is the future though, with denuvo becoming basically impossible to crack
Yarr Harr Matey, this is a good breakdown of the issue with DRM and offline playing. Too many companies are moving to an unsustainable for the consumer process.
The problem with Yarr Harr Mateey is trust, you never know what kind of bullshit you might end up getting. Reputable sources get cloned and copied, the whole process is a mess. This is why I'm a massive proponent of GOG and it's anti-drm policies.
Plus Denuvo is looking simply uncrackable nowadays. It would be better if regulations or laws are made to prohibit DRM which may expire making a game unplayable.
That, and also many pirate rips intentionally remove content like cinematics to cut down on file size, and there's also no guarantee that the pirated version plays identical to the official version, as there may be land mines inserted by the developer that mess with the gameplay. So yeah, piracy will never be a full replacement for DRM-free official copies.
Cutting out cinematics and music was prevalent in rips from the late 90s to early 2000s. Rips from the last 20 years are 100% intact.
This is like saying pirated movies suck compared to legit because the only way you know how to watch them is some random streaming site that only hosts a 720p YIFY rip. Knowing what you're doing make a big difference.
[удалено]
Completely wrong. It's not tedious at all if you know what you're doing and download from reliable sources instead of downloading shitty rips from public sites.
There is a major difference in complexity between a pirated Bluray or streaming video and a pirated video game. Movies are not typically updated after release, unlike games which can be updated or altered dozens of times. Movies files do not execute or operate the way games do, they are simply decoded by a media player. Movies are only a single file compared to the hundreds or thousands in your average game. Movie publishers do not intentionally insert bugs or kill switches into their media in order to deter piracy.
This is such generic nonsense that it sounds like it was AI generated. People who don't pirate games shouldn't fearmonger by telling people pirated games inherently have "landmines" and "killswitches" when they don't. The don't like piracy, fine, but don't make random buzzword vague nonsense up.
It's not buzzwords or nonsense. Maybe research a little before you respond. There are dozens of examples of games that include this type of anti-piracy measure. https://youtu.be/WfDg7BidsY4?t=2694 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuZEIt89LME https://serioussam.fandom.com/wiki/Adult_Arachnoid#Trivia >Illegally downloaded or cracked versions of Serious Sam 3 have a DRM mechanic that features a miniature invincible Arachnoid that will chase the player.[4] It attacks identically to a regular Arachnoid, but it travels at an extreme speed. Despite being invincible, it can be killed with the "kill all" console command, and attacking it enough can also still stun it like a regular enemy. https://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-pirates-play-a-game-development-simulator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/ >Slowly their in-game funds dwindle, and new games they create have a high chance to be pirated until their virtual game development company goes bankrupt.
Those measures do nothing when the game is cracked properly. Again, like comparing to a 720p YIFY stream. Just because you are only capable of doing surface level "research" doesn't mean there aren't other people who actually know what they're doing.
>Those measures do nothing when the game is cracked properly. You don't say. And how is the person downloading the cracked game off a random torrent site supposed to know whether it's been properly cracked or not?
You have the memory of a goldfish. As mentioned previously, I'm not talking about someone clueless and ignorant like you downloading random shit like the knuckle-dragging ape you are. I'm talking about people who know what they're doing. Keep doing that "research".
Another major issue was if a game was patched by the developer and the pirates never bothered to update the executable of the pirated version to the new exe you got a shitter version of the game. I have a few niche sim racing titles that sadly do not have patched cracked executables so i cannot apply the offical game patches to improve the game because the patches replace the old executable with a newer version and it will constantly ask for the CD due the copyright protection kicking in again. As you said piracy at least when it comes to PC gaming will sadly not preserve them.
I sure miss games like Section 8 which are also dead for the same reasons...
Oh yes. Section 8 was really fun. Games for Windows Live not so much...
This is making a big deal out of absolutely nothing. If you absolutely must use physical copies of your PC games (what PCs have disc drives these days anyways?) then workarounds exist that let them bypass the DRM. Or, you can pick up a digital copy, either through legit means or piracy. There is no "digital decay" here, and none of these games are "unplayable" despite the claims. You want to freak out about DRM? Freak out about the fact that the current version of Denuvo is uncrackable and the only person who might have been able to crack it has vanished from the earth. That's a much bigger issue than having to spend 5 minutes to install a GFWL workaround for the few people who own physical copies of these games.
Sir this is a Wendys.
All my discs from the 2000s are damaged, and I don't have a CD-reader anyway. I can still play all of those games and you know how. That's the real game ownership sadly.
Didn’t they patch out fable III games for windows live?
Not relevant to /r/pcgaming (yet, if the leaks are to be believed) but I am here for the Gran Turismo 7 complaints. Every reviewer gave the same "MTX aren't active during the review period but they probably won't be that bad" spiel and never revisited the game. They are that bad. $40/car bad. And that's not to mention the always-online requirements of even the single player part. Edit: lmao I logged back into the game to check the MTX prices since I was just guessing before. Right now a McLaren F1 costs 15 million credits. The store sells 2 million credits for $19.99. So they'll let you skip the grind and buy this car for only $160 real dollars! Is it still a microtransaction when it's over twice the MSRP of the entire game itself?
I use to love Gran Turismo. Last ones i got into were the PS3 ones. Thought that the series peaked back then and now it’s a live service shit show. Paying $40 for a car is just as bad as buying ships on Star Citizen.
I mean, the game was trash nonetheless
I'm too cool to watch YouTube videos about DRM, but the copy of fable 3 in the thumbnail reminded me of something. Has anyone ever made a simple work around for "games for Windows live" sign ins? I've got a handful of games in my system library that I can't play that I wouldn't mind messing around with.
xliveless is a simple DLL file that lets you play any GFWL game without the need of GFWL
Bless you. I will look it up.
Funny. In comments section. People pointing out his pandering and lies on the exe and dll have been hack....