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Game studios that use digital rights management (DRM) tools tend to defend it to the death, even after it's been cracked. It prevents 'casual' piracy and cheating, they sometimes argue. However, Rime developer Tequila Works is taking a decidedly different approach. It claims that it'll remove Denuvo, the anti-tampering/DRM system on the Windows version of Rime, if someone cracks its island puzzle title. This is an odd promise to make, especially since it amounts to an inadvertent dare -- find a way to break in and the developers will eliminate the need for that crack.
This wouldn't be so unusual a statement if there weren't a history of Denuvo cracks. While it's harder to defeat this code than earlier schemes, it's definitely not impossible. Recent games like Resident Evil 7 and Prey had their Denuvo implementations broken within days of release, while developers have patched it out on titles like Doom and Inside. Tequila Works is aware that cracking is likely more a question of "when" than "if," but it appears to be optimistic about the challenge involved.
Source: ArsTechnica
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 29 2017, @11:17PM (6 children)
I suspect that what's going on here is that the game devs may be calling the bluff of the DRM merchants, and saying, basically: "If it isn't preventing copying, we're yanking this customer-hostile shit. And not paying you again."
It makes a lot more sense than just daring the community to do what you know damn well they'll do anyway.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Monday May 29 2017, @11:46PM (3 children)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by sjames on Monday May 29 2017, @11:55PM (1 child)
It does make good advertising either way.
It could also be a counter to the argument that once something is cracked, the 'pirates' are offering a product superior to the original. This way they use the DRM to gain a few more days exclusivity and then once the crack is out there remove the DRM (that is no longer helpful) to avoid offering an inferior product.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday May 30 2017, @07:38PM
This.
The first couple weeks are critical for sales (says the guy playing TF2 and other older games), and then you might as well offer the product without the encumberance.
Maybe they pay Denuvo per install, which makes no sense after the DRM gets cracked.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday May 30 2017, @08:17AM
But the Denuvo team know their product can be defeated. They can hardly be oblivious to the fact that all its previous incarnations have been defeated. They'd never offer a refund-if-broken.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday May 30 2017, @01:54AM
It's also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 30 2017, @08:55AM
No, they just wanted to slow down the pirates a bit.
Unfortunately for them, there are people like me who won't touch a game if it's got shit like that on the game. I see a game has external drm on top of steam, and I'll just flag it as "not interested" which will remind me to never buy the game in the future, even if the drm is removed.
However they did the dumb thing of not being up front about the drm being on the steam version at first - they updated the store page later in the day or the following day to properly flag it. Essentially after someone warned people in the discussions that denuvo was on the game. (they had to find that out for themselves however.)
So since I can't trust them to be honest and up front about the DRM they hide in their games, I've written down the publisher and developer in my little book that I check before buying a game. Names in that book mean I ignore them regardless of what they put out, on any platform. I've got enough games bought over the years that still sit unplayed to keep me occupied.