Community The Slow Demise of Denuvo (Progress Report)

Dinjoralo

None shall remember those who do not fight.
Dec 6, 2018
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Denuvo puts higher ups and shareholders who don't know anything about games at ease. Don't expect it to go away any time soon.
 
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lashman

lashman

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Denuvo puts higher ups and shareholders who don't know anything about games at ease. Don't expect it to go away any time soon.
oh, i know ... still - it's good to keep an eye on the "progress" ... they're all bound to notice sooner or later
 
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lashman

lashman

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hmm , suspicious exesize change on RE2make ... did they like remove the D without anyone noticing ?
hmmmm ... interesting

hopefully someone tests it soon
 
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Aelphaeis Mangarae

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Apr 21, 2019
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hmm , suspicious exesize change on RE2make ... did they like remove the D without anyone noticing ?


RESIDENT EVIL 2 · DepotID: 883711

or maybe the stuff got new versions that are better for exe sizes :thinking-blob:
I believe a Denuvo-free version of the old 1.02 executable leaked. The latest executable is 1.04 and still has Denuvo. Something to remember is that as long as a game is receiving updates and especially DLC, there's a solid incentive to keep Denuvo in place. As an example, AC: Odyssey is cracked, but if you wanna play the cool story DLC you need to buy the game. It'll be cracked eventually once all the DLC releases, but a not-insignificant number of people will be swayed by the perceived inferior experience of the cracked version. I dunno what DLC RE2 still has in the works, though.
 
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prudis

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As an example, AC: Odyssey is cracked, but if you wanna play the cool story DLC you need to buy the game.
luckily Ubi does them episodicly so to finish such cool DLC you need to wait 12 weeks for the rest of the DLC anyway .... also i am like 4 games in the series behind anyway :face-savouring-delicious-food:

I learned to pretty much wait for shit to be content complete as I am the once and done kind of player ... so i would wait for "Complete edition" no matter what ... and with denuvo infection in .... my pricetag is around the bargain bin level
 
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lashman

lashman

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I believe a Denuvo-free version of the old 1.02 executable leaked. The latest executable is 1.04 and still has Denuvo. Something to remember is that as long as a game is receiving updates and especially DLC, there's a solid incentive to keep Denuvo in place. As an example, AC: Odyssey is cracked, but if you wanna play the cool story DLC you need to buy the game. It'll be cracked eventually once all the DLC releases, but a not-insignificant number of people will be swayed by the perceived inferior experience of the cracked version. I dunno what DLC RE2 still has in the works, though.
apparently all DLC works fine with the 1.02 version (not that it really matters - everyone should buy it anyway)

will be interesting to see performance comparisons, though
 

gabbo

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Dec 22, 2018
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Well that didn't take long. How does Sega usually handle this on its own internal titles?
 
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lashman

lashman

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Well that didn't take long. How does Sega usually handle this on its own internal titles?
like most publishers - they pretend the crack doesn't exist ... they don't remove them :(
 
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lashman

lashman

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I thought they removed it from Yakuza 0? (Or was it a different one, or am I remembering this wrongly?)
yeah, but that's kinda/sorta SEGA JP ... they never remove it from the any of the SEGA EU stuff
 
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lashman

lashman

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interesting , thats quite new title... seems to be older version though


curious to see if Beth will follow the suit of Rage 2 and remove the infection like with some upcoming pack
i wish
 

gabbo

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Dec 22, 2018
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although stillpissesme of i cant legally buy the 2009 one
I mean, if you have $50-70 ebay has copies. It's what I've basically resigned myself to since Activision and Bethesda are going to sit on their hands with that one
:glad to see Young Blood is free of it, or can be, after what... 2 weeks? week and a half?
 
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Aelphaeis Mangarae

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Apr 21, 2019
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One concern I have with Youngblood being cracked at this stage is that it seems up upcoming patches are really taking balancing and pacing criticisms to heart. I feel Youngblood is a pretty good spinoff, but there's genuine room for improvement. The boss difficulty in particular really needs tuning for solo play.

The latest patch, which doesn't seem to be included in the cracked version, added the ability to pause the game in singleplayer mode. That's a much requested feature that can drastically change how people feel about the game if they live busy lives and can't play uninterrupted, for instance. The next patch is going to change stuff like:
  • Additional checkpoints
  • Difficulty adjustments across the board, especially in boss fights
  • Addressing the feeling some players have expressed that some enemies feel like “bullet sponges”
  • Adding additional ammo throughout the game
  • An option to toggle enemy health bars on/off
  • Making it easier to get 100% game completion
There's a solid chance that it'll be a while before the updates get cracked, if ever, and the devs improving the game will be undermined by people pirating it and missing out on the improvements. This is really the double edged problem of Denuvo as a form of post-release incentive. Normally, the difficulty of cracking Denuvo means that people who pirate miss out on post-release improvements and content additions for quite a while, and this gives them a signiciant incentive to buy the game. But it also means that they will talk shit about the game based on an outdated version. It's kinda like the problem of anti-piracy methods that break the game subtly. Yes, it scolds people for pirating. But it also means they'll tell their friends that your game is a broken piece of shit. And that can be a problem. I remember way back that a huge number of the pirated copies of AC: Unity floating around were accidentally based on a nuked release that had a corrupted file which caused crashing when you entered a certain area of the map. How many people formed a negative impression of AC: Unity because it kept crashing due to being a broken pirated version?

This is why there's no simple answer to "should I remove Denuvo after it gets cracked or further down the road?" There are genuine pros and cons to both approaches.
 
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prudis

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Sep 19, 2018
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I mean, if you have $50-70 ebay has copies. It's what I've basically resigned myself to since Activision and Bethesda are going to sit on their hands with that one
e-bay copies are random ashell, my jurnou friend wanted to get legit NFSUG for stream , but ended up purchasing like 3 verbatim disk while purchasing e-bay copies
 

gabbo

MetaMember
Dec 22, 2018
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One concern I have with Youngblood being cracked at this stage is that it seems up upcoming patches are really taking balancing and pacing criticisms to heart. I feel Youngblood is a pretty good spinoff, but there's genuine room for improvement. The boss difficulty in particular really needs tuning for solo play.

The latest patch, which doesn't seem to be included in the cracked version, added the ability to pause the game in singleplayer mode. That's a much requested feature that can drastically change how people feel about the game if they live busy lives and can't play uninterrupted, for instance. The next patch is going to change stuff like:
  • Additional checkpoints
  • Difficulty adjustments across the board, especially in boss fights
  • Addressing the feeling some players have expressed that some enemies feel like “bullet sponges”
  • Adding additional ammo throughout the game
  • An option to toggle enemy health bars on/off
  • Making it easier to get 100% game completion
There's a solid chance that it'll be a while before the updates get cracked, if ever, and the devs improving the game will be undermined by people pirating it and missing out on the improvements. This is really the double edged problem of Denuvo as a form of post-release incentive. Normally, the difficulty of cracking Denuvo means that people who pirate miss out on post-release improvements and content additions for quite a while, and this gives them a signiciant incentive to buy the game. But it also means that they will talk shit about the game based on an outdated version. It's kinda like the problem of anti-piracy methods that break the game subtly. Yes, it scolds people for pirating. But it also means they'll tell their friends that your game is a broken piece of shit. And that can be a problem. I remember way back that a huge number of the pirated copies of AC: Unity floating around were accidentally based on a nuked release that had a corrupted file which caused crashing when you entered a certain area of the map. How many people formed a negative impression of AC: Unity because it kept crashing due to being a broken pirated version?

This is why there's no simple answer to "should I remove Denuvo after it gets cracked or further down the road?" There are genuine pros and cons to both approaches.
These same thoughts can go some way to making the case for devs/pubs to remove Denuvo themselves
 
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prudis

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meanwhile some teams actually remove that stuff



 
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