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.

[Kobi Blade]

Escrito originalmente por Anthony:

Escrito originalmente por Kaed✩Wolf:

Thank you very much for taking the time to debunk this story that Capcom is blocking mods, Fluffy. Unfortunately we are living in the era of misinformation, where people no longer argue with the truth but with lies. It's sad to see so many people spreading misinformation out of pure ignorance or bad behavior.

I also don't agree with updating catalog games with more DRM, games that have been pirated for a long time. Most likely the order came from above, the people who don't understand anything about what Steam consumers want, only about money. But that doesn't mean I agree with lying to tarnish the company's image, because you didn't like that they added another layer of protection to the game's executable.

I'm glad that at least one well-known modder is debunking this mod-blocking story. And thank you very much for all your work in the community, I use your ModManager a lot. :temhug:

Well, none of us really know why Capcom did this, so if you really wanted to push it, you could say claiming it was meant to fight piracy or any other reason without stating is just speculation is also spreading misinformation, wouldn't it?
But it is true, there definitely is a lot of misinformation and exaggerations. I certainly wish all this backlash was more focused on what really matters but then again, I don't really think we're gonna get anywhere with this regardless, and people will just forget in time...
I just hope they don't "update" any more games because this makes three games negatively affected by updates recently, along with 5 and 1 (both last year I believe)

FluffyQuack is the only source of misinformation in this entire topic, and he fighting hard to defend CAPCOM, while making wild assumptions and failing to provide solid arguments.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out what CAPCOM is doing here, despite failing miserably, do you honestly believe this is all an effort to add DRM to a game that was cracked years ago?

Not to mention the costs involved, CAPCOM is not getting any new sales out of this, if anything people been complaining left and right.

[ThirteenAG]

Escrito originalmente por FluffyQuack:

• Cheat Engine also works. I could scan for values and modify them. I could even attach a debugger and modify code, which was something I thought it would prevent me from doing.

I would like to reiterate, that it's not entirely correct. In order to unlock all resolutions for example, some read only memory has to be modified(there are different ways to avoid that, but it increases code complexity by a lot). And you can't do that in this build, until you use VirtualProtect api, which enigma hijacks and renders useless. It just doesn't work. So if you go to any read only section of exe, you won't be able to modify it with cheat engine.
Another problem with that, in the code you have to wait until the original code is "unpacked" from this enigma exe, and can't set hooks early, before game code executes. For example, to modify CreateWindow api to make borderless windowed, or again, unlock resolutions because the code that creates a resolutions list has to be patched early. These issues are present in re5 exe and re5 needs additional code to deal with them. If it wasn't for enigma, normal exe would significantly simplify the creation of user fixes and modifications, which would benefit both, the players and capcom.

Default windows debugger also can't be attached to this exe, it throws an error immediately. Does it mean that any debugger can't be attached? No, it only means that there are anti-debugger detections in the exe. They don't improve the game in any way, I don't see how all people who paid for this game should be happy about it.

[sumolagann]

SomeOrdinaryGamers said it only costs 400 for enigma "A multi billion dollar company literally went to the lowest common denominator of protection software and decided to source them out"

[Raziel ל׳]

If Enigma affects certain memory operations or things modders would do to try and run FOV or more complex mods, its enough to piss me off and enough to be anti mod, if its going to make things more difficult for modders in a singleplayer game...

[tbirdclanwish]

Escrito originalmente por ThirteenAG:

Escrito originalmente por FluffyQuack:

• Cheat Engine also works. I could scan for values and modify them. I could even attach a debugger and modify code, which was something I thought it would prevent me from doing.

I would like to reiterate, that it's not entirely correct. In order to unlock all resolutions for example, some read only memory has to be modified(there are different ways to avoid that, but it increases code complexity by a lot). And you can't do that in this build, until you use VirtualProtect api, which enigma hijacks and renders useless. It just doesn't work. So if you go to any read only section of exe, you won't be able to modify it with cheat engine.
Another problem with that, in the code you have to wait until the original code is "unpacked" from this enigma exe, and can't set hooks early, before game code executes. For example, to modify CreateWindow api to make borderless windowed, or again, unlock resolutions because the code that creates a resolutions list has to be patched early. These issues are present in re5 exe and re5 needs additional code to deal with them. If it wasn't for enigma, normal exe would significantly simplify the creation of user fixes and modifications, which would benefit both, the players and capcom.

Default windows debugger also can't be attached to this exe, it throws an error immediately. Does it mean that any debugger can't be attached? No, it only means that there are anti-debugger detections in the exe. They don't improve the game in any way, I don't see how all people who paid for this game should be happy about it.

I agree with this and more. For BNLC that I currently mod, we had to create some custom workarounds for our hooks because the .text section memory protection was unmodifiable because of that hook in VirtualProtect.
Now cheat engine/x64 you can still assemble instructions and by pass the protections as seen here https://streamable.com/s46k0s for testing when we had this problem 4 months ago, but that isn't really cut it for dll injection mods and the workaround isn't elegant.
Engima also obscures the section names of the exe. So you have to guess which section is which with some heuristics like size and that isn't fun if they implement ASLR. Also makes it awful to do a static analysis
I don't know if you guys have experience it, but I think it's Capcom DRM, but it also crashes on breakpoints. There was a time in between Denuvo and Engima that Capcom implemented this logic for BNLC, so we needed to handle both the antidebugging parts of Engima and Capcom drm.
It doesn't look like a good direction for mod support from what I can tell.

[cadeharrison]

Escrito originalmente por 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.

You claim that you aren't trying to defend Enigma, but I must say you're doing a pretty bad job of that.

[ItalicMaze]

Escrito originalmente por cadeharrison:

Escrito originalmente por 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.

You claim that you aren't trying to defend Enigma, but I must say you're doing a pretty bad job of that.

The people who exaggerate what's going on are the real issue since they can be proven wrong, and companies can use that against us.

[uka21]

It doesn't really matter if Enigma affects performance or not. It shouldn't have been added at all. When people bought this game it didn't have this sketchy @F DRM. I think if they want to add DRM after all these years, they should also provide full refunds, even for people who have hundreds of hours played. Adding DRM post launch should be illegal. IMO Valve should kick Capcom games off Steam if they continue to do so. Press F to F Capcom. The damage is already done.

[Ness_and_Sonic]

Escrito originalmente por uka21:

It doesn't really matter if Enigma affects performance or not. It shouldn't have been added at all. When people bought this game it didn't have this sketchy @F DRM. I think if they want to add DRM after all these years, they should also provide full refunds, even for people who have hundreds of hours played. Adding DRM post launch should be illegal. IMO Valve should kick Capcom games off Steam if they continue to do so. Press F to F Capcom. The damage is already done.

Between the Enigma DRM and Skull Girls situation, it's actually pretty bad. As consumers that bought the game before these changes, we didn't agree to them when we made our purchases. As such, shady things like this should warrant the publisher offering full refunds of game and its DLC.

[Peelsepuuppi]

Yes they did FluffyQuacks. They did it to prevent things like DLL injection. Here's an example of game fix mods that stopped working when Enigma was added and started working when it was removed

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Resident_Evil:_Revelations#Widescreen_resolution

Very useful things like increasing available Resolutions, FOV control Framerate Cap removal and even improving Shadow Resolutions.

The reason why RE5 revelations mods work is because they downgrade they downgrade the version of the game to one that doesn't have Enigma. Many of those mods use exactly the same kind of DLL injection methods that Enigma specifically prevents.

Not only Cheat Engine uses this type of method, but already mentioned fixes listed on PCGamingwiki. Other software that uses similar methods are Resahde and Rivatuner, both of which are commonly whitelisted by most anti-cheats so they might not be prevented by enigma either.

I've tested it RE5 with Special K (similar program to rivatuner) and unmodded version of the game blocks it just like it blocks all the QoL fix mods, which is why the QoL fix mods downgrade the game version to make them work. With that downgrade you lose certain updates to the game that were actually pretty nice like QTE removal added by Capcom.

This idea that Enigma doesn't block mods is nonsense as it does affect a certain rather common type of game modification and I'm kind of dissapointed that you are agreeing with the narrative that it doesn't affect mods. Kind of expected a better, more informed take from someone who's so heavily involved with modding themselves. The fact that some modders have to specifically look for workarounds to get some things working with Enigma is itself an issue.

While I haven't tested them, I wouldn't be surprised if useful software like Helixmod, DXVK and dgVoodoo are also prevented by Enigma.

Blocking DXVK is particularly problematic as that is what Valve's Proton uses for Linux compatibility, which is key for steam deck support.

[Peelsepuuppi]

Escrito originalmente por ItalicMaze:

Escrito originalmente por cadeharrison:

You claim that you aren't trying to defend Enigma, but I must say you're doing a pretty bad job of that.

The people who exaggerate what's going on are the real issue since they can be proven wrong, and companies can use that against us.

And what exactly is exaggerated? Enigma prevents certain type of mods from working which is a fact and the company behind Enigma is somewhat of an Enigma itself considering how hard it is to find any info on them or even which country they are from.

[Livy]

Escrito originalmente por ToveriJuri:

Escrito originalmente por ItalicMaze:

The people who exaggerate what's going on are the real issue since they can be proven wrong, and companies can use that against us.

And what exactly is exaggerated? Enigma prevents certain type of mods from working which is a fact and the company behind Enigma is somewhat of an Enigma itself considering how hard it is to find any info on them or even which country they are from.

The exaggeration was the malware complaint and other less relevant topics.

But otherwise disappointing that people went from one set of misinformation (malware) to another (that capcom don't want to block mods) just to feel superior.

[Peelsepuuppi]

Escrito originalmente por MrFox1231:

Escrito originalmente por ToveriJuri:

And what exactly is exaggerated? Enigma prevents certain type of mods from working which is a fact and the company behind Enigma is somewhat of an Enigma itself considering how hard it is to find any info on them or even which country they are from.

The exaggeration was the malware complaint and other less relevant topics.

But otherwise disappointing that people went from one set of misinformation (malware) to another (that capcom don't want to block mods) just to feel superior.

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?

[Kobi Blade]

Escrito originalmente por ToveriJuri:

Escrito originalmente por MrFox1231:

The exaggeration was the malware complaint and other less relevant topics.

But otherwise disappointing that people went from one set of misinformation (malware) to another (that capcom don't want to block mods) just to feel superior.

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).

[Damstructions]

All of you are giving me a brain hemorrhage. Have a productive day.