Capcom didn't add Enigma to prevent mods

[FluffyQuack]

The news story that Enigma was added to Revelations to prevent modding and resulted in worse performance is being spread all over the place, but people relaying the story isn't doing any research. I looked into this and as someone who's been modding RE games for over 10 years, I like to think I know what I'm talking about on this subject.

Here are clarifications about the situation:

• The new Revelations patch had some major issues and Capcom withdrew it so they could re-work it. But we don't have anything that proves Enigma was the cause of the issues. RE5 was patched with Enigma about a year ago and we didn't see anyone complain its performance was suddenly way worse or the game becoming broken somehow. And there are many other Capcom games that's had Enigma for quite a time now.
  
• Enigma doesn't affect file mods at all (which most mods are, including all cosmetic mods). You can still modify game memory. This is pretty easy to confirm: try to run RE5 with mods. It will work. However, Enigma does try to prevent some forms of reverse-engineering and code tampering which a lot of people working on trainers or making code-changing mods would want to do. This is expected behaviour for something that's meant as DRM. It's an annoyance for some modders, but Capcom wouldn't implement this to prevent mods.
  
• The Chun-Li thing isn't related at all. Capcom has been occasionally taking down nude mods for years, so it's not like Chun-Li suddenly made Capcom aware nudity exists. That said, they're very sporadic when it comes to actually taking down mods like that or videos showcasing them.

I should note that I'm not trying to defend Enigma. As most people, I'd rather have my games with zero DRM. And I do find it really weird Capcom would add Enigma to such an old game.

It is disappointing Capcom stated a few months ago their official stance on mods is to treat them the same as cheats, and I am curious/worried they might try to do something more serious against mods at one point (I think the most worrying thing they did recently was send copyright strikes to some Monster Hunter Rise Youtubers for showcasing a few random mods, and there was no indication why they did that), but this Enigma thing is not that.

[potato]

are you the fluffy mod manager guy?

[Hermit]

I just watched their presentation about it and yes they admit that part of it is to stop modding. You can watch it for yourself. They said the nude mods are damaging the reputation and could cause damage to their income.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=CT5bwwvDv00&source_ve_path=MzY4NDIsMjg2NjY&feature=emb_logo

[Ratsplat]

Any DRM being added at all, no matter how benign, should never be forgiven. Not without an explanation about how it benefits customers who own 10+ years old games.

[Machuwery]

No Mr Fluffy, the right word about all this is not "disappointing".... Disappointing would be when they cut off the Ada campaign on RE4 Remake so they could sell it months later as DLC.

Including a russian DRM developed for someone called Dimitri with a questionable security system in a game released 11 years ago, without any kind of notice... the word is outrageous.

Saying disappointing is like: "oh well, it's a pity but this is how life goes". That kind of mentality is the one that provoke so many bad policies on console gaming.

It's not enough with saying "I don't like it", there has to be actions or consequences. I was going to buy DD2 the release day, now i will play "the free demo version" when is avalaible without paying and any DRM included. Crapcom maybe don't like that but i don't like shady DRMs either, so we'll be even.

[potato]

Originally posted by Machuwery:

No Mr Fluffy, the right word about all this is not "disappointing".... Disappointing would be when they cut off the Ada campaign on RE4 Remake so they could sell it months later as DLC.

separate ways wasn't cut, it was always a dlc, even in the original re4 release in 2005

the difference is you couldn't buy it separately back then so you had to buy the whole thing again to play it

[Machuwery]

Originally posted by potato:

Originally posted by Machuwery:

No Mr Fluffy, the right word about all this is not "disappointing".... Disappointing would be when they cut off the Ada campaign on RE4 Remake so they could sell it months later as DLC.

separate ways wasn't cut, it was always a dlc, even in the original re4 release in 2005

the difference is you couldn't buy it separately back then so you had to buy the whole thing again to play it

You're really a Crapcom defender. Sure dude, Crapcom develop a remake and they don't pick the latest version.

At least in the original game there was a mode called Assignment Ada... where is that mode in the remake?

Keep defending policies and DRMs that are harmful for the players.

[potato]

Originally posted by Machuwery:

Originally posted by potato:

separate ways wasn't cut, it was always a dlc, even in the original re4 release in 2005

the difference is you couldn't buy it separately back then so you had to buy the whole thing again to play it

You're really a Crapcom defender. Sure dude, Crapcom develop a remake and they don't pick the latest version.

At least in the original game there was a mode called Assignment Ada... where is that mode in the remake?

Keep defending policies and DRMs that are harmful for the players.

i'm a facts defender

[Machuwery]

Originally posted by potato:

Originally posted by Machuwery:

You're really a Crapcom defender. Sure dude, Crapcom develop a remake and they don't pick the latest version.

At least in the original game there was a mode called Assignment Ada... where is that mode in the remake?

Keep defending policies and DRMs that are harmful for the players.

i'm a facts defender

Where is the Assigment Ada mode, facts defender?

[Magic Tofu Cat]

they should just focus on res 9 unless there trying too get rid of chun li playing strip poker in a random room they do not want us too find

[Anthony]

While there certainly is some misinformation and questionable claims, I find it extremely insulting that they would go out of their way to (quietly) patch a game like Revelations without even adding anything to even attempt to justify it like they did with RE5's half-baked auto QTEs and splitscreen.
Even if the DRM was as simple as Steam's DRM, it's embarrassing that they thought this was worth the hassle but adding in the console exclusive raid mode level or fixing up other games like RE5 (which is honestly in an embarrassing state but nobody really talks about it, going as far as to add brand new bugs).

So at least personally, this is the issue I have with the whole situation. They won't fix or add certain things to the game but they will go out of their way to randomly add useless DRM that literally serves no purpose (other than making fan fixes and more complex mods more difficult). They even went as far as to create new servers for RE5's update despite the netcode being the same buggy mess...

I've also mentioned this elsewhere more than once, but they also recently broke RE1 a little by replacing an REnet related file with an empty folder that just makes the game crash after saving if you enable the service.
They're just on a roll, going back to older games to make them inferior apparently, so I'm kinda glad they're finally getting some backlash for it

[ItalicMaze]

Originally posted by potato:

Originally posted by Machuwery:

No Mr Fluffy, the right word about all this is not "disappointing".... Disappointing would be when they cut off the Ada campaign on RE4 Remake so they could sell it months later as DLC.

separate ways wasn't cut, it was always a dlc, even in the original re4 release in 2005

the difference is you couldn't buy it separately back then so you had to buy the whole thing again to play it

It wasn't DLC for the original. It was extra content that was exclusive to the PS2 at the time.

[ThirteenAG]

Originally posted by FluffyQuack:

Enigma doesn't affect file mods at all (which most mods are, including all cosmetic mods). You can still modify game memory. This is pretty easy to confirm: try to run RE5 with mods. It will work.

Except RE5 doesn't have ntdll hooks, and rev1 did have them in the update. That prevents you from calling VirtualProtect to modify read-only regions of exe, needed for unlocking resolutions for example.
Additionally while I agree it's not possible to prove enigma caused performance issues, the fact that updated rev1 exe had more hooks than re5's exe(which is very annoying to mod due to enigma), it plausible that these additional hooks caused performance to drop at certain events, there's no way this thing is zero overhead.

[bb10]

Originally posted by FluffyQuack:

Capcom didn't add Enigma to prevent mods

The thing is that it stops mods about as well as it stops piracy, not at all. Especially in the case of this particular game (you can just downgrade to a previous version). So how can you claim to know what their motivation was or wasn't? :P

[Mentally Unstable]

It doesn't match up to what Capcom stated for the record. Mods are the reason they are doing so.

https://www.ign.com/articles/capcom-expresses-concern-over-mods-that-are-offensive-to-public-order-and-morals

The chun li fiasco may not be the main/real reason for it but it no doubt provided them a "good" cover excuse to do it. In one of the pp slides that capcom execs put out to justify greater "security measures", they explicitly stated "The image of the product is tarnished when mods are released that violate PUBLIC MORALS AND ORDER without permission". Followed by "Mods can be mistaken for legitimate implementations and can cause bad publicity".

No prizes for guessing what a conservative asian society like Japan is referring to whenever they use such a line. More importantly, they actually singled out mods in that slide.

They also mentioned that their security measures cannot differentiate between mods and attempts at piracy or cheating. So mods also end up being targeted as well. As per one of their execs,

"Mods are popular with users because they allow them to add or change various features to an existing game," Capcom programmer Taro Yahagi explains in the presentation. "However, for the purposes of anti-cheat and anti-piracy, all mods are defined as cheats."

Yahagi explained that unless mods are officially supported by the game, any unofficial support or mods created by users and uploaded to places like NexusMods constitute as cheating by the publisher.

Either way, it's absolutely asinine to suddenly apply it to their old games, especially single player ones. If one wants to mod/cheat in a single player game, wtf cares? Why would my copy of RE4 be affected if someone else decides to mod their own copy with a butt naked version of Ada or give themselves unlimited ammo? It's also unethical of them not to declare it upfront. If they can declare denuvo, why can't they declare enigma?

It may not affect most mods now but if their implementation becomes stricter in time, it will no doubt start affecting even more. And capcom DGAF when that happens because as far as they are concerned, modding can go burn in the same hell pit as piracy and multiplayer cheats. In other words, modding is an acceptable casualty.

[Drago]

I wouldn't say players worrying about malware within Enigma is all that unfounded considering that doing searches reveals that its quite common to have antivirus scanners flag products using Enigma. As per their own forum back in 2021 for example. With customers asking why using the software causes their otherwise clean file to be flagged.

https://forum.enigmaprotector.com/viewtopic.php?t=13956

An interesting rabbit hole if the current situation didn't make it sad with our love of the Capcom library to this point. If you want to see other deals like this, search for Enigma Protector false positives. Seems to bring up quite a few antivirus forums with Enigma staff arguing or challenging the detections of their software.