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.

[Raziel ל׳]

Kobi Blade の投稿を引用：

ToveriJuri の投稿を引用：

Let's ignore the virus total scans entirely. There is a plausible explanation for those. Do you know for a fact that Enigma is not malware or spyware? If yes how? I don't even know where the company is from, where their business address is, what jurisdiction they are under, who they are accountable to. Do you know? I don't think you do either. So without even knowing who these people are who are behind this Enigma Protector Software how can you be certain there's nothing wrong with their proprietary software?

I know Capcom is A famous Japanese video game company I know Denuvo is an Austrian DRM Company Acquired by Irdeto which is a Cybersec company from Netherlands with offices all over the world. I can at least somewhat trust that these companies don't plan on doing anything illegal and I know they will be targeted if they do. But who are the Enigma people again?

So I'll come back to my question. How can you know it's not malware when the software isn't open source, you haven't reversed engineered it and we don't even know who the people who made the software are?

Enigma is developed and maintained by The Enigma Protector Developers Team, which is a group of software developers and security experts from different countries.

Is used by many reputable companies and developers, such as Capcom, Ubisoft, EA, Valve, Epic Games, and more...

Plus is regularly scanned and tested by various antivirus and security tools, such as VirusTotal, Kaspersky, Norton, etc...

Only someone with no knowledge in Software can claim such a tool is malware, plus you asked how we know, is simple, it does not perform any malicious tasks (and yes we can keep track of each and every task it performs, including network connections).

While I don't believe Enigma is malware in the traditional / legal sense, because naturally there will be 1 or 2 false positives due to the nature of the program, what evidence do you have that its that reputable, I cannot find any evidence that Ubisoft, EA, Valve, Epic games and more use Enigma protector, this does not however mean at all its trustworthy or not possible to have something DRM based practices or even malware like activity. In the same way I do not trust Riot Games DRM or the DRM involved in Naraka Bladepoint

I have seen no such evidence for its widespread use or trust, its website doesn't list any partners, doesn't look that update with modern web development practices, and by its very nature seems like a small company with very little disclosure as to who they are.

[Lanzagranadas]

Kobi Blade の投稿を引用：

Enigma is developed and maintained by The Enigma Protector Developers Team, which is a group of software developers and security experts from different countries.

Is used by many reputable companies and developers, such as Capcom, Ubisoft, EA, Valve, Epic Games, and more...

Ubisoft and EA... reputable?

You really have to be out of touch to say something like that, especially during the new Ubisoft's "Gamers need to get comfortable with not owning their games" controversy.

Good luck trying to inspire trust on Enigma with examples like those.

[sumolagann]

Is there a full list of games that are using enigma? Valve is using enigma in what?

[Raziel ל׳]

sumolagann の投稿を引用：

Is there a full list of games that are using enigma? Valve is using enigma in what?

I've yet to find any evidence of valve using enigma, so I'm thinking he just made it up.

[Peelsepuuppi]

Kobi Blade の投稿を引用：

ToveriJuri の投稿を引用：

Let's ignore the virus total scans entirely. There is a plausible explanation for those. Do you know for a fact that Enigma is not malware or spyware? If yes how? I don't even know where the company is from, where their business address is, what jurisdiction they are under, who they are accountable to. Do you know? I don't think you do either. So without even knowing who these people are who are behind this Enigma Protector Software how can you be certain there's nothing wrong with their proprietary software?

I know Capcom is A famous Japanese video game company I know Denuvo is an Austrian DRM Company Acquired by Irdeto which is a Cybersec company from Netherlands with offices all over the world. I can at least somewhat trust that these companies don't plan on doing anything illegal and I know they will be targeted if they do. But who are the Enigma people again?

So I'll come back to my question. How can you know it's not malware when the software isn't open source, you haven't reversed engineered it and we don't even know who the people who made the software are?

Enigma is developed and maintained by The Enigma Protector Developers Team, which is a group of software developers and security experts from different countries.

Source?

Kobi Blade の投稿を引用：

Is used by many reputable companies and developers, such as Capcom, Ubisoft, EA, Valve, Epic Games, and more...

Source?

Kobi Blade の投稿を引用：

Plus you asked how we know, is simple, it does not perform any malicious tasks (and yes we can keep track of each and every task it performs, including network connections).

Yeah I asked how you know. Well have you kept track of every single task it does or are you just saying that you can do it?

[ChristianEcoterrorst]

Kobi Blade の投稿を引用：

ToveriJuri の投稿を引用：

Let's ignore the virus total scans entirely. There is a plausible explanation for those. Do you know for a fact that Enigma is not malware or spyware? If yes how? I don't even know where the company is from, where their business address is, what jurisdiction they are under, who they are accountable to. Do you know? I don't think you do either. So without even knowing who these people are who are behind this Enigma Protector Software how can you be certain there's nothing wrong with their proprietary software?

I know Capcom is A famous Japanese video game company I know Denuvo is an Austrian DRM Company Acquired by Irdeto which is a Cybersec company from Netherlands with offices all over the world. I can at least somewhat trust that these companies don't plan on doing anything illegal and I know they will be targeted if they do. But who are the Enigma people again?

So I'll come back to my question. How can you know it's not malware when the software isn't open source, you haven't reversed engineered it and we don't even know who the people who made the software are?

Enigma is developed and maintained by The Enigma Protector Developers Team, which is a group of software developers and security experts from different countries.

Is used by many reputable companies and developers, such as Capcom, Ubisoft, EA, Valve, Epic Games, and more...

Plus is regularly scanned and tested by various antivirus and security tools, such as VirusTotal, Kaspersky, Norton, etc...

Only someone with no knowledge in Software can claim such a tool is malware, plus you asked how we know, is simple, it does not perform any malicious tasks (and yes we can keep track of each and every task it performs, including network connections).

"reputable companies." there is no such thing. It amazes me to see simping for corporations that engage in completely unethical practices.

[m662]

Kobi Blade の投稿を引用：

ToveriJuri の投稿を引用：

Let's ignore the virus total scans entirely. There is a plausible explanation for those. Do you know for a fact that Enigma is not malware or spyware? If yes how? I don't even know where the company is from, where their business address is, what jurisdiction they are under, who they are accountable to. Do you know? I don't think you do either. So without even knowing who these people are who are behind this Enigma Protector Software how can you be certain there's nothing wrong with their proprietary software?

I know Capcom is A famous Japanese video game company I know Denuvo is an Austrian DRM Company Acquired by Irdeto which is a Cybersec company from Netherlands with offices all over the world. I can at least somewhat trust that these companies don't plan on doing anything illegal and I know they will be targeted if they do. But who are the Enigma people again?

So I'll come back to my question. How can you know it's not malware when the software isn't open source, you haven't reversed engineered it and we don't even know who the people who made the software are?

Enigma is developed and maintained by The Enigma Protector Developers Team, which is a group of software developers and security experts from different countries.

Is used by many reputable companies and developers, such as Capcom, Ubisoft, EA, Valve, Epic Games, and more...

Plus is regularly scanned and tested by various antivirus and security tools, such as VirusTotal, Kaspersky, Norton, etc...

Only someone with no knowledge in Software can claim such a tool is malware, plus you asked how we know, is simple, it does not perform any malicious tasks (and yes we can keep track of each and every task it performs, including network connections).

By all means do share the reports with signed signatures of products from Ubisoft, EA, Valve, Epic Games. We can easily verify any claims than of which company are using Enigma Protector in any capacity as there is a lovely feature in those audit programs called find similar signatures.

Or you can simply list the products and we will scan them ourselves. But I am willing to bet those signatures are not going to match.

[tofutofu]

I was wondering about this too, mods still work perfectly yet people still tell me oh they patched it

[Anthony]

Lano の投稿を引用：

I was wondering about this too, mods still work perfectly yet people still tell me oh they patched it

Two things: One is that not all mods work the same way despite people putting them all in the same bag, so certain mods work, others won't. Updates almost always break that kind of mod but usually it only requires minor "value" updates (addresses), but in cases like these it might require extra workarounds to circumvent the added protection.
Second is that if you go over to your game in your library you'll see a post called "Regarding the update", which explains that the 'controversial' update has been temporarily rolled back quite a few days ago, meaning right now (at least for now) you still have the old version installed (unless it has been reinstated very recently).
You might not notice a difference unless you use something like an ultra widescreen patch (just an example). ThirteenAG also mentioned unlocking resolutions which may or may not be solely related to ultrawide resolutions, but I believe games like RE1 and 0 do not allow you to go over 1920x1080 unless (maybe) you edit a config file manually. That's the kind of mod that can be affected by something like this, and not skins for instance.
In our case, it also affected patching RE5 (and apparently, it was worse in the REV update) to fix bugs and add additional settings/features, as we both literally learned how to patch just to fix up RE5 and were inexperienced regarding dll injections (our old method simply didn't work anymore)

[Crypto Gamer]

Yeah Revelation got DRM rolled back it also made Direct X to Vulkan mod for many not works so many Non Windows users could not even play game.

I also wonder which gaming companies actually use Enigma DRM with proof of course.

[Lanzagranadas]

Lano の投稿を引用：

I was wondering about this too, mods still work perfectly yet people still tell me oh they patched it

The update screwed up the game so Capcom had no choice but to temporarily roll it back.

Still, how would you know which mods work or which don't though? Lack of mouse icon next to your user name says you don't own this game on Steam, so if you play it on other platforms this isn't going to affect you anyway.

[Peelsepuuppi]

Lanzagranadas の投稿を引用：

Lano の投稿を引用：

I was wondering about this too, mods still work perfectly yet people still tell me oh they patched it

The update screwed up the game so Capcom had no choice but to temporarily roll it back.

Still, how would you know which mods work or which don't though? Lack of mouse icon next to your user name says you don't own this game on Steam, so if you play it on other platforms this isn't going to affect you anyway.

You can test certain type of mod with resident evil 5. As you can easily access both the enigma infested version and the previous enigma free version.

[Anthony]

ToveriJuri の投稿を引用：

Lanzagranadas の投稿を引用：

The update screwed up the game so Capcom had no choice but to temporarily roll it back.

Still, how would you know which mods work or which don't though? Lack of mouse icon next to your user name says you don't own this game on Steam, so if you play it on other platforms this isn't going to affect you anyway.

You can test certain type of mod with resident evil 5. As you can easily access both the enigma infested version and the previous enigma free version.

They don't have 5 either but it could be library share I assume. I'd never even noticed the mouse icon, let alone what it stands for, so that's cool to know.
Then again, if the revelations implementation was indeed more strict, then testing things in RE5 won't really prove much. For all we know, *maybe* this enigma implementation was indeed causing performance issues much like capcom's own DRM in RE8, and that could also explain why no one noticed performance drops in games like 5 (then again, I haven't bothered testing the REV update myself, so I don't know if performance really is any worse personally).
Either way, things have quieted down now and we just might get the update anyway and everyone will move on with their lives, and those recent negative reviews won't be recent anymore

[tofutofu]

mb, I dont have revelations on this account but I do have it and have conpleted it on my other account which is now strictly for “those kind of games” if you know what I mean

[ApeRoss]

Lano の投稿を引用：

mb, I dont have revelations on this account but I do have it and have conpleted it on my other account which is now strictly for “those kind of games” if you know what I mean

No need to anymore, you can have private games on steam now