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Denuvo-Free Devil May Cry 5 Reportedly Improves the Game's Performance by Up to 20FPS
It appears that Denuvo's anti-tamper tech has significant impact on Devil May Cry 5's performance, and a Denuvo-free .exe game file has now surfaced online.
The Devil May Cry 5 .exe file was actually released by Capcom following the game's release earlier today, but has now been pulled. However, the file can still be downloaded through the Steam console. Several users are reporting FPS improvements by up to 20FPS while using the Denuvo-free exe file.
Sound familiar? Devil May Cry 5 is the game AMD demoed running on a Radeon VII GPU at its CES 2019 keynote. I wonder if they were running it with DRM.
Average frame rates are only part of the story when it comes to a game's performance. Minimum frame rates, percentiles, etc. can measure frame stuttering. A significant boost in a game's performance can also increase minimum frame rates.
Related:
Denuvo Forgets to Secure Server, Leaks Years of Messages From Game Makers
More Powerful Denuvo DRM Cracked 10 Days After Release of PREY
'Rime' Creators Will Remove Anti-Tampering Code If It's Cracked
New "Out of Control" Denuvo Piracy Protection Cracked
Denuvo License Generator is Latest Circumvention Method
Voksi Releases Detailed Denuvo-Cracking Video Tutorial
DRM Software Company Takes Legal Action Against Cracker
Hitman 2's Denuvo Protection Cracked Three Days Before Launch
New 'Valeroa' Anti-Piracy System Cracked "In 20 Minutes"
Evidence Continues to Mount About How Bad Denuvo is for PC Gaming Performance
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday July 27 2018, @11:37AM (4 children)
That's why one sells such cracks through Tor Hidden Services.
But perhaps his celly has pointed that fact out to him by now.
I'm going to set up a hidden service for Soggy Jobs sometime soon. That way my users can look for new jobs while they're at their old jobs.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday July 27 2018, @11:41AM
His celly has never heard of the garlic sprouter. He's in for assault with a deadly weapon.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @11:48AM (1 child)
Someday, one day, I'll find another you and we'll be in a world of our own on the morning Tor ride.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday July 27 2018, @01:38PM
My apologies, I'm fresh out of mod points.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @12:39PM
You would have a point... if he was selling them. Which he wasn't.
Scene crackers do it for notoriety and/or ideology, not profit.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @11:43AM (21 children)
Sounds painful.
The guy posted a statement. [reddit.com] Seems the DRM massively impacts game performance and there's strong justification for disabling it on legally purchased copies?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday July 27 2018, @11:52AM (13 children)
Bulgaria, eh? I bet if he lived in Russia or China he wouldn't have had any problems.
Sometimes it's good to have a criminal state or two around the globe.
Bulgaria = vassal state.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by unauthorized on Friday July 27 2018, @01:22PM (1 child)
It doesn't matter where you live, US law will be enforced upon you as long as someone with a lot of money wants you badly enough.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @02:34PM
But I live in New Zealand not the US
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday July 27 2018, @01:41PM (10 children)
"We have our own orphanage!"
-- Slavic Child Pornography Website
I don't know that it's Russian specifically, just that all the kids in the photos appeared Slavic.
Child pornography is just as unlawful in the Russian Republic as in the US, it's just that the laws aren't always enforced.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Friday July 27 2018, @02:02PM (3 children)
https://www.tripsavvy.com/worst-case-guide-to-russian-travel-1622531 [tripsavvy.com]
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-quality-of-Russian-police [quora.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Russia [wikipedia.org]
There are differing views on the amount of routine corruption experienced there, but if you have friends/connections, a lot of activity could be overlooked.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @04:05PM (2 children)
That is the same everywhere. I've lived in the UK, France and Spain, and in all three countries, those who are well connected can get away with pretty much anything. The authorities will look the other way.
That is not a Russia/Slavic/EastEurope specific thing. I have not lived in the USA, but based on what I've read in the news and opinions of US Citizens, sounds like corruption for the well connected is alive and well for the USA too.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday July 27 2018, @04:25PM (1 child)
I dunno. Let's say you start Michael David Crawford's Orphanage for the Production of Child Pornography (unofficial name). You bribe the first cops and officials to start investigating the joint, or you cultivate a relationship with them in advance. Some countries must be better than others for not getting busted. Maybe Russia is better than the UK, France, and Spain, and Ukraine is better than Russia. And Syria or Yemen beats them all.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @09:41PM
what about offering participation credits, like an achievement of participation award and stuff like that? sometimes money isn't enough
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @02:04PM (5 children)
1) Russian Federation
2) The laws are enforced alright. Just that the police there have decided to cut out the middlemen politicians in the business of taking bribes to define what is legal. If you can pay your way out of it, jail is avoidable. They've bet you at this particular facet of capitalism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @02:40PM (2 children)
Except that most often that not Russian police doesn't know Russian laws. And they don't really care about that.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @03:04PM (1 child)
So, the same as the US?
(The US courts have repeatedly ruled that the police officers do not need to know the laws they're enforcing. Yes, that happened.)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Friday July 27 2018, @04:30PM
Watching experienced First Amendment auditors, you will definitely see them school U.S. cops on the 1st Amendment and ID laws (these vary by state).
Cops have an advantage over ordinary folks: they are authoritative figures with wide-ranging powers. They can detain most people without cause, and most people won't realize that the cop is in the wrong. And they can always just make up a resisting arrest or disorderly conduct charge. Even if the person goes free later, arresting them in that moment might have been the cop's goal.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday July 27 2018, @02:42PM
I should not drink and public.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday July 27 2018, @02:49PM
... The Ukrainian Angels studio raid was done in cooperation with some foreign law enforcement agencies.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @12:48PM (5 children)
> Seems the DRM massively impacts game performance and there's strong justification for disabling it on legally purchased copies?
Modern forms of DRM (stuff like CD-keys excluded):
- openly treat customers like criminals
- bloat binaries*
- degrade performance
- randomly stop your legally purchased software from working
- are completely indistinguishable from viruses and trojans
- siphon off private data, so also indistinguishable from spyware
* As an extreme(?) example, the recently released Puyo Puyo Tetris apparently takes ~130 MB on disk; ~5 MB of game and ~125 MB of Denuvo.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @01:37PM (3 children)
That's why it's called Digital Restrictions Malware. It's also why I no longer purchase software. If you're going to treat me like a criminal even after I try to do things legally I might as well save a few bucks (or $60) and just copyright infringe your software to begin with.
AND STOP CALLING IT PIRACY! PIRACY IS NOT COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT AND COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT IS NOT PIRACY! IT'S NOT THEFT EITHER, SO JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY!
Ok, I'm done screaming.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Friday July 27 2018, @07:44PM (2 children)
> why I no longer purchase software
With commercial software, there's usually more problems than DRM. How about, rushed out the door with major bugs and missing features? Occasionally, I used to buy $60 blockbuster games. But when one was shipped without the multiplayer feature working, and was "fixed" 3 months later with a "bug patch", and several others put me on the expansion treadmill, so that every time an expansion came out, I had to have it or the game was for all practical purposes unplayable, I quit.
And as for business software such as office suites, I've heard about and seen enough of M$'s crap to know I don't want any part of it. File format lock in, lack of backward compatibility, the upgrade treadmill, the possibility of them remotely disabling the app, erasing the data, declaring that you are a pirate, etc. No thanks. I really don't understand why businesses put up with that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 28 2018, @12:45AM (1 child)
That has puzzled me a lot. I have seen how businesses around here gang up on people of Mexican heritage and INSIST that only English be spoken at the workplace.
Yet those same tie-wearers and shakers of the hand accept software that phones home behind their back, and is obedient to someone else, not them.
I have to consider this kind of stuff as "Business-Class software" or "Executive-Grade software".
You can't trust it. It has hidden agendas. Its like someone who offers to clean your house for cheap, but once in the door, goes through your house with a fine tooth comb and tells all their friends what they found there.
All I can figure is that people that frequent forums like this know good and well whats going on, and it does not have to be that way. Its kind obvious that other people who have concentrated on business skills are more concentrated in legal and leadership skills, neither which apply to a machine which by design is absolutely loyal only to the guy who speaks to it in the machine's native language, not some highly paid guy, dressed to impress, hocking up orders and directives.
My only guess is that when one is that high up in an organization, it really doesn't make that much difference at that level whether or not stuff works... at that altitude, the whole thing is nothing more than a bullet point on some memo. Lay everyone off. Kill off the company. Re-organize the decision-makers under another name. Rinse. Lather. And repeat. Make another cash-cow and milk it until she croaks as well.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday July 28 2018, @01:40AM
I think the best explanation of these business decisions on this is "business philosophy". It's scary how religious they are in their professed belief in capitalism and "you get what you pay for". Even after decades of evidence showing them that they are wrong, they persist in believing that if it is free, it's no good. They've swallowed and totally embraced the propaganda that deliberately ignores the fundamental distinction between the abundant and easily duplicated world of information, and the scarce, material good world, and buy that nonsense that copying is stealing. They think their lot is with producers, and want their precious company secrets protected to the max. Fear of loss really pushes people's buttons, no matter how much the gain more than offsets the perceived loss.
When I've tried to ask if that's why, I've gotten bull for an answer. Basically the tone of the answers is that I'm an engineer not a businessperson, and therefore unqualified and incapable of understanding the company's decisions on these matters. Now go back to your cube and work on engineering stuff, and leave business to the pros.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday July 28 2018, @05:33AM
So why on earth would anybody part with their money to pay for that excrement? Why not just do without for a while and starve the beast?
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @07:15PM
You want a 100% legal method to get past this DRM? Boycott it until it's removed by the company. If EVERYONE did this instead of putting themselves at legal risk we'd be better off.
Personally I find out a game has that shit on it in steam I just click "not interested" and never look at it again. I have plenty to play without having to worry about it, so I'll never feel like I'm "missing out".
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bradley13 on Friday July 27 2018, @01:12PM (8 children)
TFAs are missing any sort of detail. What is the guy charged with?
- On the one hand, if he's selling (or giving away) copies of the game itself, he's up for copyright violation, theft, etc.. That would be stupid.
- On the other hand, if he simply provides a product that allows other people to remove DRM from their legitimately purchased games, then his activities should be entirely legal.
So: is he stupid or smart? Anyone have further information?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by unauthorized on Friday July 27 2018, @01:33PM (2 children)
Patched binaries only I believe. Still copyright infringement, but worthless without a copy of the game data itself.
Anyone who can crack a modern DRM is a very intelligent person. Ignorance =/= stupidity.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday July 27 2018, @01:50PM
Note that I have any great amount of the latter.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @02:44PM
Re. patched binaries - what I don't understand is why don't these crackers release tools which modify original binaries, instead of releasing the changed binary itself? Or even source code which builds into a tool to modify the original binaries. Or maybe a python script which does such modifications. Wouldn't that defeat all arguments of copyright infringement, IP infringement etc.? They're only distributing what is then 100% their own original work, no content from whatever they're targeting. Then at most I see this could only devolve into a DeCSS-type situation, the legality of which seems to vary from country to country.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Friday July 27 2018, @01:33PM (1 child)
From the various sources available Reddit, TorrentFreak etc we can conclude that he had very poor opsec for doing what he did. He was not a hard man to track down apparently.
From your suggested and given two options he did both. One can argue over the finer details of what is a "crack" etc if what he did is just a bypass or circumvention. After all he never actually removed the protection, as far as I know nobody has been able to remove the protection at all but they are all just various form of circumventions preventing it from triggering. But he did do that and he did share his works. But he also did the second part, he shared his knowledge about how he did it, he even made a few tutorials where he went into detail about it and uploaded those to Youtube (I have not checked if they are still around). But as far as I know he didn't share his tools or gave tools to others to do it, even tho others have done that for previous versions of the Denuvo protection scheme.
As to what exactly he has been charged with is still somewhat unknown, but it should be a fairly easy thing to find out for the various news sources since Denuvo (and their new parent company) filed some kind of claim against him. But it's probably going to be some for of copyright violations. If that sticks one would assume that people that might have bought and used Denuvo for their games that he cracked might pile on at a later stage. Not that they might get that much money out of a 21 year old man from Bulgaria but just to make an example out of him.
He is probably well and utterly fucked for life.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday July 28 2018, @04:08PM
> One can argue over the finer details of what is a "crack"
Why? For legal arguments? Better that the laws be made sensible.
> as far as I know nobody has been able to remove the protection at all
DRM is always breakable, no matter how much IP advocates wish otherwise, and try to befuddle the public with propaganda to that end. It's inherent in the concept. It has to be unlocked so that consumers can use whatever it is "protecting". Once seen, it can be copied. If necessary, the copy can be created by writing a clone from scratch, employing reverse engineering if practicable.
> Not that they might get that much money out of a 21 year old man from Bulgaria but just to make an example out of him.
Yes, just like MAFIAA terrorism.
> He is probably well and utterly fucked for life.
The MAFIAA and IP terrorists would like everyone to fear so, and while he is in some trouble now, he'll probably be okay. But it would be good to help. One counter is to put some fear in the terrorists. Best defense is a strong offense. Disbar Denuvo's lawyers if, as might well be the case, they've vastly overreached. Also sue Denuvo, for false advertising and selling a product that can't work. DRM is a dark fantasy that fortunately is impossible to implement. Might as well sell perpetual motion or cold fusion.
Ideally, I'd like to see the issues settled once and for all, bring a permanent end to patent trolling and copyright extremism. Freedom of Speech and Religion are widely accepted principles. The Freedom to Copy should be also.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday July 27 2018, @01:45PM (2 children)
I readily agree that they should be legal, but are they actually legal in Bulgaria?
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @02:07PM (1 child)
If nothing else, this case will be a litmus test for whether Bulgaria is under rule of law or rule of capitalism.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Thexalon on Friday July 27 2018, @03:18PM
I'm going to guess that the answer to that question is "no".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @04:37PM (1 child)
Voksi gave an interview to Torrentfreak. [torrentfreak.com] They say he's free but his domain was seized by the government. I think the domain was revolt.group. The web site is redirecting to a Bulgarian government site.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @05:31PM
Replying to myself. Another Torrentfreak article confirms [torrentfreak.com] that the domain name is what I said it was.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @10:53PM
If you do this, dont tell people who you are.