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In announcing its first major patch for Mass Effect: Andromeda last week, BioWare highlighted fixes to the game's much-maligned facial animations, as well as gameplay tweaks like larger inventories and skippable cutscenes. One thing BioWare forgot to mention in its patch notes, though, is an improved version of Denuvo DRM that is forcing pirates to use an outdated version of the game... at least for now.
[...] It's unclear why Mass Effect: Andromeda didn't feature the latest version of Denuvo in its initial release. In any case, the updated DRM leaves pirates stuck with a much less polished version of the game, and it could keep them away from months of further patches that are already in the works. It's a situation that reminds us a bit of Game Dev Tycoon and other games that intentionally make pirated versions inferior to legitimately purchased copies.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @09:28AM (1 child)
Rule 34 definitely applies.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @09:46AM
What about rule 63?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @10:01AM (1 child)
the updated DRM leaves pirates stuck with a much less polished version of the game, and it could keep them away from months of further patches that are already in the works.
On the other hand, it leaves non-pirates stuck with Denuvo. I'd actually pay more for an unpatched pirated version :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @10:15AM
Framerate for the version with the crap faces might also be better.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Wednesday April 12 2017, @10:55AM (18 children)
Never got why people don't expand on the old "Master of Orion" type copy protection.
Do nothing about failures. You know it's a copy, but just let it carry on and play.
But have millions of codepaths check whether it's legit in a different way each time, store it in the game executable, refer to it later, etc. all the tricks you can think of, in all different ways, all dotted throughout the code and some literally only activating on certain days or in certain ways. Make enough of them and it becomes almost impossible to be sure you've got them all covered by some "crack", especially without clear "THIS IS COPY PROTECTED" errors popping up.
And when you "roll dice" in the game, for whatever part of gameplay, have it check the legitimacy in slightly different ways, and make copied games lose the rolls more often than not, or sabotage the game in a seemingly legitimate way just at the critical moment (oh, you have four shields, oh look a ship with 6 guns just turned up "at random" just as you were about to win). Almost impossible to detect in a large enough codebase, and makes the pirates feel like an idiot.
I'd also be sneaky and make copied versions of the games, a few months down the line, get Steam achievements that aren't possible with legitimate copies. "Oh, look, you have the 'I'm a pirate' achievement... Sorry, no support." Would also catch out those with the Steam achievement tools that just give you everything, etc.
You aren't going to stop them pirating, so just go for public humiliation and ruin the game for them in subtle ways that mean they can never be quite sure whether the game thinks it's legit or not. This takes away any kind of quick-hack they might do to run it, shows you who actually is pirating it, and at the same time it allows you to not spend a fortune on fancy technology that quite clearly will become hacked eventually.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday April 12 2017, @11:24AM (1 child)
You're describing an enhancement to the game's difficulty: Pirate Mode. Many games hurt your luck/dice rolls/etc. based on a difficulty selection or slider(s).
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(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @12:30PM
And he'd even be encouraging it.
Anyone who has both the "I'm a pirate" and "Completed the game" achievements beat it on "pirate" difficulty.
Soon hardcore gamers will be using the term "casual gamers" about anyone who only beat the game on "legal" difficulty.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by letssee on Wednesday April 12 2017, @11:40AM (2 children)
These tactics have been tried actually. I don't remember which game. They lead to lots of bad press and lots (LOTS) of support work because of people (sometimes unknowingly) playing the pirated version and deciding the game was badly written and complaining about it online.
It's better to let people know *why* they cannot finish the game (i.e. because their version is pirated). If you just subtly make the game impossible to win they'll never come back for the sequel and they will post bad reviews.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @05:09PM
Additionally, you run one big ass risk of doing your creative DRM incorrectly, causing the game to get confused and marking legit copies as pirated. The more complicated and more spread out the checks, the harder it is to avoid that minefield of uncertainty.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday April 12 2017, @07:13PM
There's also cases where they backfire -- the checks don't get coded correctly and misidentify numerous legit copies as being pirated. Then you get into an even bigger support nightmare, because they call support and support tells them to go buy a legal copy when they already own a legal copy. So then they're complaining online about having to jump through hoops to prove they bought it legally, while also complaining online about the game screwing with them, while also calling all your support channels demanding a patch, which you then have to provide...
If you've got hundreds of tests, how can you be sure none of them will ever give a false positive under any circumstances?
And if you don't tell anyone what's going on, how can you be sure they won't just give the product a ton of crap reviews, even if they pirated it?
And if you push back against those reviews, what happens when the customer you're pushing back against DIDN'T pirate the thing, you just screwed up a test?
And even if you don't make mistakes, pirates might still claim you did. Are the people going to believe your company, or the negative reviews?
And what about a customer who bought it and ALSO pirated it (I do this a lot because it's faster than finding the damn CD) so they post their complaints along with a "VERIFIED OWNER" badge from the retailer and they provide a legit CD key to the support staff when asked? Granted, they should remove the pirated version and install the real one before calling support, but if the game claims it installed successfully and doesn't complain about being pirated, they don't have any reason to suspect that as the cause. So it's likely that they won't do that and won't mention it to support either.
It may be *fun*, but otherwise I see nothing but problems with this approach...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @11:53AM
Because copyright protection is intended to encourage people to buy the game, rather than make them think it's a buggy piece of shit not worth playing. And also because sometimes copyright protection fucks up for legitimate customers and that's one hell of a bad press.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @12:32PM (11 children)
A large number of people use pirated games as "try before you buy". While that's technically not legal, they are still customers, and you don't want to convince them that the game is broken / impossible to win.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @01:54PM (10 children)
Is this some poor attempt at rationalizing or justifying CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR? Quit being a part of the problem.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:23PM
It is behavior that should NOT BE CRIMINAL. Don't uncritically accept laws and unwarranted connections, don't let scheming slimebags invent unnecessary rules that they know will be broken so they can profit from the punishment. It is not stealing from restaurants to shop at grocery stores. There's too much cheating by the operators of red light cameras which actually makes driving less safe. Marijuana should never have been banned, nor should alcohol have been Prohibited. Treating drug addiction as a moral failing deserving of severe punishment instead of as an illness deserving treatment has itself been a massive policy failure.
And copyright? There is no sane reason for copyright to last so incredibly long. Need a lot more reforming than just shortening it. We should be working on a replacement system, not trying to prop it up by criminalizing sharing and allowing them to demonize it by calling it piracy. Where is our digital public library? It doesn't exist, thanks to copyright. How about our publicly available, copylefted, free textbooks for primary school? There are some, but somehow most school systems keep forcing students and the public to pay for copyrighted books.
Sharing is a natural right. The real crime is that so much sharing is still outlawed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:57PM (6 children)
Is this some poor attempt at rationalizing or justifying CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR? Quit being a part of the problem.
What problem? I can think of a few.
Problem 1: region locking
Something like two thirds of Japanese games that I would like to buy are region locked on Steam. Most of the other third I've already bought. The region lock is even weirder when you consider that I live in Japan. If I did not have enough western games to keep me occupied between the occasional non-blocked title, I'd pirate the shit out of the blocked ones, and wouldn't feel the slightest bit of guilt. Of course, I'd have to be very careful, as file sharing in Japan carries a two-year prison sentence...
Problem 2: demos
The games that offer demos today are few and far between. You have no legal way to try if you would like it or if it even works on your hardware. Recommended and minimum specs are not reliable, and reviews are not enough. Not everyone can throw away $60 on something that may not even work.
Problem 3: DRM
Often times pirated games are simply better. Dependance on central server which may not even exist a few years down the road, requiring an always-on internet connection, stability issues, system incompatibilities, lower performance, bricking the user's machine, installing rootkits (hi, Sony!), the list of DRM "improvements" goes on and on. Or you can pirate it and get rid of all that bullshit.
Hmm, it doesn't seem like pirates are the ones being the problem here.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday April 12 2017, @06:17PM (5 children)
You are never entitled to a game, just because you want to try it.
If you want to tell the publisher how much money they lose by being hard to buy from, or how their DRM scheme would brick your PC, go ahead.
That still doesn't entitle you to the game, or give you the moral right to play it against the wishes and without rewarding the people who made it.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday April 12 2017, @07:48PM (4 children)
While US copyright law (Section 107) may not have a specific exemption for that, the UN declaration of human rights [un.org] does:
"Moral ... interests" is subsection 2 probably refers to "moral rights": The right of the author to attribution, and to preserve the integrity of their work (including the right to refuse attribution).
"Material ... interests" probably refers to royalties from copyright law. It appears that US copyright law takes the view that "fair use" should not impact the market for the original work. That brings us to the debate about whether unauthorized copies are "lost sales" or "free advertising".
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday April 12 2017, @09:38PM (3 children)
Playing a game without paying, when it's still actively sold, is not fair use. Period.
Unauthorized copies are not all lost sales, but a variable fraction of them is, depending on the game.
Unauthorized copies are only advertising to the extent that someone will eventually buy the game or its sequel ... which is an even smaller fraction.
Is there really a debate, or are people just trying to rationalize the fact that they'd rather not pay for their entertainment?
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday April 12 2017, @10:47PM
I had actually checked. As I mentioned in my other comment, it would count as fair dealing, if not for the DRM.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @12:27AM (1 child)
Playing a game without paying, when it's still actively sold, is not fair use. Period.
Does it count as "actively sold" if you can't buy it because you live in the wrong country (aka region blocking)?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday April 13 2017, @01:11AM
Legally, yes.
"Fair use" has an actual definition. It's not just some kid looking at a toy they want, being told no, and claiming "It's not fair".
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday April 12 2017, @05:32PM
As least in Canuckistan, copies for personal study are legal.
It only becomes CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR if you resell those unauthorized copies for a profit (commercial copyright infringement).
For completeness, the DRM actually overrides your "fair dealing" rights. I am not happy about that.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday April 13 2017, @11:32AM
Unless you can see "posessing" in the list of things that are criminal copyright infringement here:
https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#506
Ooops, I accidentally a fact into an argument with an idiot.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday April 12 2017, @11:50AM (1 child)
At first glance, I thought BioWare had forced pirates to see crazy "the pizza is aggressive" faces. No, pirates will instead the faces of the version that people paid $50-60 to preorder in the first place ($60 for deluxe editions).
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @06:10PM
$130 in Canada for Deluxe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @01:52PM
How bloody awful for the pirates.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @05:12PM
... for why bad games sell poorly.
I've never seen piracy as much of a problem as a software developer. The reason is simple. Piracy itself is irrelevant. What matters is people who normally would have bought your product, but instead chose to pirate it. That group is an extremely tiny fraction of all pirated copies. For instance piracy was widespread and trivial on the original Playstation. Its piracy prevention was undermined by a widespread trick that literally just required you to swap in the "back-up disc" for any original disc at a certain time in the boot order of the system. No special software, hardware, or anything required. Yet it ended up having the highest tie ratio [wikia.com] of any console ever. Tie ratio just being the average number of games sold per console sold. Go figure, it had lots of good games and sold lots of copies.
I'm not quite ready to go DRM-free but I've yet to see any strong evidence whatsoever that a very basic system like keys is any less effective at deterring piracy than these ultra invasive, performance damaging systems like denuvo. Piracy just seems like the scape goat for the reason corporations selling people reskins of the same handful of games for 15 years isn't quite working out.