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: 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.