3DM, a Chinese warez group, first claimed to have breached Denuvo's technology in a blog post published on 1 December 2014, wherein they announced that they would release cracked versions of Denuvo-protected games FIFA 15, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Lords of the Fallen.[6] Following onto this, 3DM released the version of Dragon Age: Inquisition about two weeks after that game had shipped.[6] The overall cracking progress took about a month, an unusually long time in the game cracking scene.[2][7] When asked about this development, Denuvo Software Solutions acknowledged that "every protected game eventually gets cracked".[2] However, technology website Ars Technica noted that most sales for major games happen within 30 days of release, and so publishers may consider Denuvo a success if it meant a game took significantly longer to be cracked.[8] In January 2016, 3DM's founder, Bird Sister, revealed that they were to give up on trying to break the Denuvo implementation for Just Cause 3, and warned that, due to the ongoing trend for the implementation, there would be "no free games to play in the world" in the near future.[9] Subsequently, 3DM opted to not crack any games for one year to examine whether such a move would have any influence on game sales.[10] Denuvo's marketing director, Thomas Goebl, claimed that some console-exclusive games get PC releases due to this technology.[11]
Rock Of Ages 3dm Crack
By October 2017, crackers were able to bypass Denuvo's protection within hours of a game's release, with notable examples being South Park: The Fractured but Whole, Middle-earth: Shadow of War, Total War: Warhammer 2 and FIFA 18, all being cracked on their release dates.[12] In another notable case, Assassin's Creed Origins, which wrapped Denuvo within security tool VMProtect as well as Ubisoft's proprietary DRM used for their Uplay distribution software, had its security features bypassed by Italian collective CPY in February 2018, three months after the game's release.[13] In December 2018, Hitman 2's protection was bypassed three days before its official release date due to exclusive pre-order access, drawing comparisons to Final Fantasy XV, which had its protection removed four days before release.[14]
By 2019, several products like Devil May Cry 5, Metro Exodus, Resident Evil 2, Far Cry New Dawn, Football Manager 2019 and Soul Calibur 6, were cracked within their first week of release, with Ace Combat 7 taking thirteen days.[14][15][16] In the case of Rage 2, which was released on Steam as well as Bethesda Softworks' own Bethesda Launcher, the Steam version was protected by Denuvo, whereas the Bethesda Launcher version was not, leading to the game being cracked immediately, and Denuvo being removed from the Steam release two days later.[17][18]
Games protected by Denuvo require an online activation.[24] According to Empress, a notable Denuvo cracker, the software assigns a unique authentication token to each copy of a game, depending on factors like the user's hardware. The DRM is integrated with the game's code, which makes it especially hard to circumvent.[25]
In July 2018, Denuvo Software Solutions filed a lawsuit against Voksi, a 21-year-old Bulgarian hacker who had cracked several Denuvo-protected games.[33] Voksi was arrested by Bulgarian authorities, and his website, Revolt, was taken offline.[33]
The Denuvo DRM wrapped around Just Cause 3 has yet to broken, with similar tech having kept Dragon Age: Inquistion out of bittorrented hands for a similiar period, while that on FIFA 16 remains uncracked since September.
I don't know that I buy it, to be honest. On top of this claim coming from just one currently dispossessed cracker group, where there's a will - or a pricetag - there's a way, so I can't imagine the entire internet giving up on its pirated games. There's also every chance that a more profound chink in the Denuvo armour could yet be found. I imagine game publishers are frantically signing up to it for as long as it seems insurmountable, however, so there may well be an impending fallow period.
It does, however, depend on more than just a few games signing up to this stuff. Many are happy to use Steam's relatively easily-cracked built-in DRM, for instance, in order to provide just a basic level of copy protection. Not everyone feels that every pirated copy is a lost sale, after all.
Perhaps bigger than the idea that piracy will simply stop is that, if Denuvo (and others) really can remain that resistant, it might well become the norm that big new games take weeks or even months to crack, as that's the major period in which people are frantically trying to obtained cracked versions. If that does happen, it's their wills rather than the software which will be crack, and publishers will either get the increased sales they claim would happen without piracy - or simply end up with fewer people playing and thus evangelising about their games.
With Just Cause 3 still resisting attempts to break it, 3DM's "Bird Sister" used her personal blog to inform the group's community of its intentions to cease all cracking of single-payer games. According to a report on Torrent Freak, the hiatus started today, on Chinese New Year.
Avalanche Studios' open-world sequel uses anti-tamper technology from the Austrian company Denuvo Software Solutions, which has been effective in slowing piracy in the past. Most notably on Dragon Age: Inquisition, as reported by Eurogamer, which was on sale for a month before a cracked version was released online.
On that occasion Denuvo's protection was brought down by 3DM, a group of Chinese pirates, but they are facing a much stiffer challenge with Just Cause 3. According to a report on Torrent Freak, which translated a blog post from a member of 3DM known as "Bird Sister", the group almost "gave up" in its attempt to crack the game's final stage due to it being, "too difficult."
Whether Bird Sister means that in the most literal sense is open to debate. It makes sense that almost any defence can be brought down given enough time and effort, after all, but it also makes sense that, the longer it takes for a game to be cracked, the less relevant it will be to those waiting to play.
As Denuvo explained to Eurogamer back in 2014, "Keep in mind that most PC games are cracked and pirated on the day of release, if not earlier, so keeping titles 100 per cent piracy-free for weeks or even months is almost unprecedented in the games industry."
The first Denuvo-protected game was released in September 2014. Early reports suggested that Denuvo Anti-Tamper "continuously encrypts and decrypts itself so that it is impossible to crack."[1] Denuvo Software Solutions has stated that the technology "does not continuously encrypt and decrypt any data on storage media. To do so would be of no benefit in terms of security or performance." The company has not revealed how Denuvo Anti-Tamper works.[2] Games protected by Denuvo require an online re-activation for every hardware change every 24 hours and Denuvo limits activations to four hardware upgrades per 24 hours.[3][4] Denuvo's marketing director Thomas Goebl stated that some console-only releases get PC releases due to this technology.[5]
In December 2014, the Chinese warez group 3DM claimed to have defeated Denuvo and later that month released a software crack for the video game Dragon Age: Inquisition, which uses the Denuvo anti-tamper technology to protect Electronic Arts' Origin Online Access DRM.[6] The group claimed that the technology involves a "64-bit encryption machine" that requires cryptographic keys unique to the specific hardware of each installed system.[7] However, the 3DM crack arrived almost a month after the game's release in November 2014, an unusually long time for PC games[6] which were normally cracked on the same day as release. Asked about the development, Denuvo acknowledged that "every protected game eventually gets cracked"[6] and Ars Technica noted that most sales for major games happened within 30 days of release, and so publishers may consider Denuvo a success if it meant a game took significantly longer to be cracked.[8] 3DM continued to release cracks for Denuvo-protected games throughout 2015.
3DM reportedly nearly gave up attempting to crack Just Cause 3, which is protected with Denuvo, in January 2016 due to difficulties with an upgraded version of the anti-tamper mechanism.[9] They also warned that due to the current trends in encryption technology, the cracking of video games may become impossible within two years.[9][5] 3DM announced they would stop all research on Denuvo Anti-Tamper, stop cracking all single-player games from February 2016 for one whole year, start relying on other crackers and see if the sales have increased in China in one year's time.[10]
In August 2016, it was reported that the Denuvo protection found in DOOM had been bypassed by a cracker named Voksi.[11] Bypasses for many other Denuvo-protected games were released the following days.[12] Although the exploit used for these bypasses was patched 3 days after the first bypass was released, news followed that Rise of the Tomb Raider, Inside and Doom[13] had been fully cracked by the scene group CONSPIR4CY (CPY)[14] by successfully emulating the enhanced "v3" anti-tamper implementation and patching the remaining in-game triggers. Playdead later removed Denuvo from their game Inside in their later patches.[15] id Software removed Denuvo from their 2016 release Doom via a patch in December later that year.[16] Crytek later removed Denuvo from their VR game The Climb.[17] CPY continues to crack Denuvo in other games.
A few months later, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard was cracked only five days after its release, making it the fastest-cracked game with the latest Denuvo implementation at the time.[18] In May 2017, Russian cracker BALDMAN cracked two games protected by the then-latest "v4" version of Denuvo: Nier: Automata and Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3. On 4 June, MKDEV cracked Constructor HD,[19] (although the release was unstable and later properly cracked by CPY.[20]) On 6 June, BALDMAN cracked Tekken 7, just four days after release, despite shipping with the then-latest "v4++" implementation of Denuvo.[21] In June 2017, anonymous scene group STEAMPUNKS released Dishonored 2 with an offline Denuvo license generator. They later released Adr1ft and Planet Coaster with similar generators. The keygens released by STEAMPUNKS are allegedly packed by VMProtect,[22] which is reportedly also used by Denuvo itself in some iterations. STEAMPUNKS released working license generators for most uncracked games with the v3 implementation of Denuvo. For a short period, Denuvo protection on new games was being cracked within hours of release,[23] however this stopped with the release of Assassin's Creed Origins, which was notable for wrapping an updated Denuvo protection within VMProtect. In February 2018, CPY cracked Assassin's Creed Origins, after almost 3 months of the game's release.[24] Final Fantasy XV's Denuvo protection was bypassed by 3DM using the demo .exe file three days before release[25] and several people reported finishing the game using said crack before the game was officially released on PC.[26] 2ff7e9595c
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