Denuvo Cracked. Please remove it ASAP

[BaH]

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/sonic-mania-has-been-cracked-in-just-eight-days-since-launch/

The game has been freed of Denuvo, there is no longer any reason to punish legitimate customers by providing them an inferior version of the game.

Please announce when the game has been updated to remove Denuvo so I can re-purchase and support Christian Whitehead and co (my pre-order was refunded as there was no mention of this awful additon in the listing)

[Doktor Mandrake]

Originally posted by SenMithrarin85:

Originally posted by Doktor Mandrake:

So intrusive drm is effective and saves PC gaming?

Stop with the fear mongering, people said over a decade ago that piracy would kill pc gaming, and here we are

Did I say that? I said NO drm is effective. But that won't stop publishers finding worse methods to enforce it.

You dream of a drm free utopia on pc that will never exist.

You said unintrusive DRM is ineffective.. And that implies you think intrusive DRM is more effective

[SenMithrarin85]

Originally posted by Doktor Mandrake:

Originally posted by SenMithrarin85:

Did I say that? I said NO drm is effective. But that won't stop publishers finding worse methods to enforce it.

You dream of a drm free utopia on pc that will never exist.

You said unintrusive DRM is ineffective.. And that implies you think intrusive DRM is more effective

No I didn't. I said that denuvo is *mostly* unintrusive which it is. And I said that IT was becoming more infeffective. NEVER did I say that intrusive drm is more effective, merely that publishers will move onto them in time.

[Ness_and_Sonic]

Originally posted by SenMithrarin85:

Originally posted by Ness_and_Sonic:

So what happened with CD Projekt Red and GOG?

They are the exception, not the rule.

And I suppose those Sega Genesis/Mega Drive games getting more sales on Steam after Sega included their uncompressed versions are an exception, too? What about Sonic Mania's refunds? Or how about Rocket League, which sold pretty well on PC? The only DRM it has is Steamworks.
https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Rocket_League

[Zoli456]

Denuvo did 911.

[SenMithrarin85]

Originally posted by Ness_and_Sonic:

Originally posted by SenMithrarin85:

They are the exception, not the rule.

And I suppose those Sega Genesis/Mega Drive games getting more sales on Steam after Sega included their uncompressed versions are an exception, too? What about Sonic Mania's refunds? Or how about Rocket League, which sold pretty well on PC? The only DRM it has is Steamworks.
https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Rocket_League

An exception in the sense that they are the only publisher I know of that is openly against drm.

[Zoli456]

Denuvo did 911.

[Kaldaien]

Fun fact, Denuvo's still there, it's just the Steam DRM that was cracked.

But we already saw cracks in its foundations on day one. I even worked around one of them, Denuvo wasn't making that difficult to do.

[Xander]

Originally posted by Kaldaien:

Fun fact, Denuvo's still there, it's just the Steam DRM that was cracked.

But we already saw cracks in its foundations on day one. I even worked around one of them, Denuvo wasn't making that difficult to do.

There or not, it isn't working and so isn't a potential problem to anyone using that version. DRM could be for people using the one for sale. Sega needs to correct that by removing it as it is now useless.

[Doktor Mandrake]

Originally posted by Kaldaien:

Fun fact, Denuvo's still there, it's just the Steam DRM that was cracked.

But we already saw cracks in its foundations on day one. I even worked around one of them, Denuvo wasn't making that difficult to do.

Whatever helps you sleep at night :)

CPY do fully-reverse engerineered releases :D

[Shinji]

Sigh... Denuvo isn't even DRM (technically). It has some DRM like features that restrict hardware changes in a 24 hour period (how often is that used?) but it's big feature is anti-tamper. When used with another DRM platform they can try to prevent people from bypassing standard DRM schemes. So... Denuvo + Steam does make sense if the purpose (and I'm pretty sure it was) is to just keep people from trying to bypass Steam license checks.

Anti-tamper is a method of preventing someone from trying to debug or otherwise modify the program code in some way. It isn't a method of license control in itself.

With that said anytime an anti-tamper or DRM platform sticks around on the market for long enough the hackers will find easier and better ways to bypass it. Denuvo survived for months when it first started being used (with some rocky starts to go with it giving it a bad rap) however now it can be broken in days instead. Eventually it may be hours making the protection useless.

Denuvo itself doesn't seem to hamper performance in my opinion. It isn't like Securom, Starforce, Safedisc, or even Tages. All 4 of those installed a driver as part of the game install to facilitate the DRM functions. 3 of them had known negative impacts on the system. Securom and Safedisc protected games fail to start on Windows 10 due to incompatibilties with its drivers.

Even when we go there keep in mind DRM isn't the only thing that impacts our ability to play games. Some anti-cheat protections also impact it. We should all be familiar with Punkbuster. That's a rather common one. The other one that comes up every now and again is EasyAntiCheat. Punkbuster runs a service in the background however EasyAntiCheat actually loads a driver. If the driver can't load then it won't boot the game citing a generic cause. This has been the case in Windows 10 insider builds where internal changes impact the ability for the driver to dynamically load and operate.

Lastly I know of at least one non-DRM function that impacted a game. Specifically Watch_Dogs 2. It enforces that you must not be running in test mode. Test mode is commonly used to load unsigned drivers. I've also used it for games running EasyAntiCheat when an insider change prevents normal operation. However Watch_Dogs 2 isn't doing a DRM check here but rather an integrity check. A check that it shouldn't be bothering to do in the first place. Why should it matter that an unsigned driver is loaded or not?

So at the end of the day while changes in Windows 10 conflicting with EasyAntiCheat prevented game loads and Watch_Dogs 2 prevented itself from running from my choice in what mode to run in I've never seen Denuvo prevent me from playing a game.

EDIT: For those that said the devs are going to go to consoles only... I wouldn't hold my breath on that one. The DRM platforms there are getting broken too. Current consoles might not be broken at the moment but it doesn't mean they won't be. It's only a matter of time.

[SenMithrarin85]

Originally posted by Shinji:

Sigh... Denuvo isn't even DRM (technically). It has some DRM like features that restrict hardware changes in a 24 hour period (how often is that used?) but it's big feature is anti-tamper. When used with another DRM platform they can try to prevent people from bypassing standard DRM schemes. So... Denuvo + Steam does make sense if the purpose (and I'm pretty sure it was) is to just keep people from trying to bypass Steam license checks.

Anti-tamper is a method of preventing someone from trying to debug or otherwise modify the program code in some way. It isn't a method of license control in itself.

With that said anytime an anti-tamper or DRM platform sticks around on the market for long enough the hackers will find easier and better ways to bypass it. Denuvo survived for months when it first started being used (with some rocky starts to go with it giving it a bad rap) however now it can be broken in days instead. Eventually it may be hours making the protection useless.

Denuvo itself doesn't seem to hamper performance in my opinion. It isn't like Securom, Starforce, Safedisc, or even Tages. All 4 of those installed a driver as part of the game install to facilitate the DRM functions. 3 of them had known negative impacts on the system. Securom and Safedisc protected games fail to start on Windows 10 due to incompatibilties with its drivers.

Even when we go there keep in mind DRM isn't the only thing that impacts our ability to play games. Some anti-cheat protections also impact it. We should all be familiar with Punkbuster. That's a rather common one. The other one that comes up every now and again is EasyAntiCheat. Punkbuster runs a service in the background however EasyAntiCheat actually loads a driver. If the driver can't load then it won't boot the game citing a generic cause. This has been the case in Windows 10 insider builds where internal changes impact the ability for the driver to dynamically load and operate.

Lastly I know of at least one non-DRM function that impacted a game. Specifically Watch_Dogs 2. It enforces that you must not be running in test mode. Test mode is commonly used to load unsigned drivers. I've also used it for games running EasyAntiCheat when an insider change prevents normal operation. However Watch_Dogs 2 isn't doing a DRM check here but rather an integrity check. A check that it shouldn't be bothering to do in the first place. Why should it matter that an unsigned driver is loaded or not?

So at the end of the day while changes in Windows 10 conflicting with EasyAntiCheat prevented game loads and Watch_Dogs 2 prevented itself from running from my choice in what mode to run in I've never seen Denuvo prevent me from playing a game.

Its funny that you mention all those drm schemes, since they'll become more widely used as denuvo becomes easier to bypass. Ironic, no?

[Doktor Mandrake]

DRM always gets replaced by another form of DRM

..Why do you think some of us mention the fact that.. Once the denuvo servers go down, its RIP denuvo games you paid money for

[wrz]

Originally posted by Shinji:

Denuvo survived for months when it first started being used (with some rocky starts to go with it giving it a bad rap) however now it can be broken in days instead. Eventually it may be hours making the protection useless.

I'm pretty sure that was because the only decent debugger that could work with 64-bit at the time was WinDbg which has the most counterinuitive workflow and interface I've ever seen. Most reverse engineers have stuck with OllyDbg but that only attaches to 32-bit processes; there's a 64-bit version planned but the author hasn't been heard from in years.

Suddenly, an open source debugger called x64dbg starts getting a lot of attention, including attention from people attacking Denuvo. Source code contributions via pull requests and whatnot start occuring, and official contributors are added with write access to the repo. Suddenly, development is at light speed with sometimes over a hundred commits a day.

Once x64dbg reached decent enough maturity to work with 64-bit processes, suddenly a Denuvo game got circumvented.

Note: I recall all Denuvo games from early 2016 to have been 64-bit only.

So that is mainly why it took so long. And it is unlikely to take that long again because now they have the tool for the job, so to speak.

Note: I know IDA Pro can do static analysis, but last I checked it doesn't have its own debugger. So it's mostly useless for this purpose.

For quite a few years, making your application 64-bit only was a potent deterrent to potential reverse engineers looking to circumvent licensing behavior in shareware or paid software. Just that factor alone was considered a death knell for something being 'cracked.'

And yes, I agree the release-circumvention latency will be whittled down to hours at some point as reverse engineers further reverse engineer Denuvo and develop Python scripts and plug-ins for debuggers that speed things up by automating some of the more time consuming tasks. I dare say that years down the road there may even be something that can extract the 'real' code from the VMProtect sections and actually remove Denuvo from an executable.

[chris183]

denuvo just got popular in 2016 (when rise of the tomb raider came out) and even then it was only in about 5 to 8 games for months during 2016, saying that we "need" a drm all the time is bs, steamworks was the only drm anyone was using for a atleast a few years after things like securom and games for windows live died out

i really dislike when people say "pc gaming needs drm" what a load of crap, the drm never works anyway

and furthermore it should be required to remove denuvo after its no longer serving its purpose, if it worked for 8 days do you think it was worth the price to put it in the game in the first place especially when it makes legit steam customers not want to support the game

i thought sega was on to something really good with bayonetta and vanquish , i happily bought those games and felt it was going to be a new start for sega but i guess not

vanquish isnt even my kind of game but i bought it anyway just to support the good business practices they had

[MrEmeralddragon]

Originally posted by SenMithrarin85:

All you have achieved is to convince them to stick to consoles. No publisher will release a game on pc without denuvo or something worse. The fact that a LOT of people have begun pirating it since it was cracked says it all.

Its a hollow victory

What it says is people want the game. Sticking to their guns on Denuvo is literally losing them money.