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Thoughts on Denuvo / DRM in Visual Novels?


phantomJS

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Denuvo was tried to be used on eroge before but then it got cancelled for some reason and people boycott that game still pretty hard.

Currently the worst DRM is probably DMM player that requires players to be always online.

DRMplayer probably the most annoying to crack currently but it isn't bad DRM. It is used on Phantom Trigger and Momoiro Closet for example.

DRM is kinda whatever imo because companies such as Yuzusoft even don't use DRM because they know their game will sell and that DRM does nothing. Mostly stops Japanese people from sharing their games with a small friend ciecle (if using DRMplayer or such that is online verification.)

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I dislike DRM's since I never feel safe playing games with them, denuvo specially after all the Sonic Mania drama, so yeah definitely a turn off for me.

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I don't know much about Denuvo, but it looks like it has to do with Sony DADC DigitalWorks. I don't know the details of that connection, but I find it interesting that the also appears together with SecuROM. I do know about this one and it's a mess, even worse than Wikipedia makes it out to be. The idea is that the game refuse to run unless the disc is in the drive. Sounds ok, but the detection system for virtual drives has a tendency to make false positives, meaning some computers can't run the game for no apparent reason. Another common issue is that it doesn't support all drives and there is no official list. Wikipedia claims reinstalling tend to fix the problem. That's not the case and it became widespread that people bought a second DVD drive to hopefully get something, which works, but even buying a drive, which works for other people is not a a sure way to fix the problem. The amount of complains, online talk about boycotting games, people claiming to use unofficial no disc patches to play and that way can't update was staggering and it resulted in official updates, which disabled the disc check (at least for some games). The fact that it doesn't work in windows 10 and a lot of computers today have no optical drive doesn't help on the issue and while it's not being used in new games, it's not like people are just throwing out their AAA games, which has this system. It's a complete mess.

 

Diablo 3 was announced that it's a good thing that you have to be online at all times because leaving chest contents generation to the server will prevent cheating. It turns out that a lot of people are actually NOT online at the location where they want to play. It is also a gamble that the server will keep running and in addition to companies going bust, there are some, which shut down servers because "not enough are playing the game anymore". Always online is an approach to planned obsolescence, hence pushing people on to the market to buy new games.

 

Another issue regarding anti-cheat/copy protection is what Blizzard is doing. Have you even read the EULA for StarCraft 2? It says you don't own the copy of the game on your HD. You rent it for that one time fee you paid to get it. Since they own it, they can decide if it should be updated or not. You are not allowed to prevent an update. You also accepting that updates can change minimum system requirements and there is no compensation if an update prevents your from playing on your current hardware. Also they update using a bittorrent system and since it's their files on your HD, they distribute their files without directly informing you. You might have a data cap, but that's your problem.

 

DRM is not in the interest of the user and it often does very little in regards to pirating the game. It's used for totally other purposes, which I read once, but right now I can't remember why. There was even a case where a company only put DRM on some of the discs to save money on DRM fees. Obviously a DRM free disc made it online in no time.

 

As for VNs with DRM: avoid it at all cost. Particularly those, which relies on some server to keep running. It's not like VN companies are known to last for decades.

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4 hours ago, tymmur said:

I don't know much about Denuvo, but it looks like it has to do with Sony DADC DigitalWorks.

Really? I thought they are a bunch of ex-crackers coming together to form an anti-crack solution providing company. At the very least, their solution is better than that SecurROM crap

4 hours ago, tymmur said:

Another issue regarding anti-cheat/copy protection is what Blizzard is doing. Have you even read the EULA for StarCraft 2? It says you don't own the copy of the game on your HD. You rent it for that one time fee you paid to get it. Since they own it, they can decide if it should be updated or not. You are not allowed to prevent an update. You also accepting that updates can change minimum system requirements and there is no compensation if an update prevents your from playing on your current hardware. Also they update using a bittorrent system and since it's their files on your HD, they distribute their files without directly informing you. You might have a data cap, but that's your problem.

Ahhh. Still remember this because of this very interesting article. The comments by Scary_Devil_Monastery were especially enlightening. I was absolutely shocked by this post of his:

Quote

No, I'm afraid I'm NOT making the issue bigger.

See, from what I know of the situation, Blizzard are having the issue because a third-party application which resides in memory can intercept a game client instruction which says the map is "hidden" and convert it to one which says the map is "revealed".

That means in order to have even one legal leg to stand on, Blizzard must first determine that the computer user is not the owner of the hardware or the blizzard-unaffiliated third-party application.

See, if Blizzard simply banned the account of the cheater, that's a clear-cut use of ToS. But in this case? Blizzard is also saying they OWN what takes place on SOMEONE ELSES HARDWARE.

If they succeed in this it doesn't matter if their intentions are as pure as the driven snow. There are ten thousand unethical lawyer out there who have, in the past, happily taken every legal precedent to abuse the law in order to extort.

And what it also unavoidably means is that if I install a Blizzard game Blizzard suddenly owns my computer. That issue is not minor. And it's nothing that can be avoided since it's the one way in which copyright law works in the first place.

 

4 hours ago, tymmur said:

DRM is not in the interest of the user and it often does very little in regards to pirating the game. It's used for totally other purposes, which I read once, but right now I can't remember why. There was even a case where a company only put DRM on some of the discs to save money on DRM fees. Obviously a DRM free disc made it online in no time.

As for VNs with DRM: avoid it at all cost. Particularly those, which relies on some server to keep running. It's not like VN companies are known to last for decades.

Overall I agree with these. Although putting Denuvo into VNs may seems like a good way to preventing cracking of your title(s), in reality it will get cracked in no time as, from what I can infer from online info, 1 main reason crackers crack games is because of the personal challenge to do so. Also, the backlash that will be created will likely outweigh any positive sales impact Denuvo has on your title(s).

Good idea that the likes of MG and Jast ignored it as of now:)

Edited by phantomJS
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Generally speaking, I'm not terribly involved with DRM that doesn't prevent me from playing legitimately purchased copies of games.

My biggest complaint is DMM.com's DRM, which makes it where I have to use a VPN the first time I play any Japanese game I buy from them for the verification.  This is annoying to an extreme degree, and I'm tired of having to find new ways to get past their attempts to prevent Westerners from buying or playing content from their site... 

I've never actually hit any issues with DRM in Western gaming, but that is probably because I don't play multiplayer at all.  Without the need to use online functionality, the issue of deliberate obsolescence is generally moot for me.  I'm not interested in the sort of games that have that issue in the first place, lol.

Denovo... I did have some issues with a few games where I had to spend some time working around locale restrictions, similar to DMM.com.  I found that a few of the VNs I'd purchased that used Denovo also tried to prevent me from unlocking them for play because it picked up on my IP's region during the verification process (again, I had to use VPNs to get around this).  This was unbelievably annoying, because I hate using a VPN for anything other than the shopping itself...

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41 minutes ago, Clephas said:

I've never actually hit any issues with DRM in Western gaming, but that is probably because I don't play multiplayer at all.  Without the need to use online functionality, the issue of deliberate obsolescence is generally moot for me.  I'm not interested in the sort of games that have that issue in the first place, lol.

Consider yourself lucky. Take for instance Neverwinter Nights 2. It used SecuROM, which required the disc in the drive while starting the game. The official forum was dominated by people who met minimum specifications, yet were unable to play due to the DRM. Some bought extra drives just to get a supported drive, but some people complained that wasn't enough. That forum is now gone and an official update has disabled SecuROM, making the game DRM free. What's important to mention here is that it prevented startup of the game and as such would affect both singleplayer and multiplayer. In addition to SecuROM, multiplayer requires each player to have a unique CD key. At least multiplayer is made to work on LAN by typing in the IP of the host and that approach works online as well, making it online multiplayer possible despite the central server being dead. At least that's how I remember it. I haven't played in a while.

My point is that hostile DRM can affect singleplayer as well. DRM in VNs has nothing to do with multiplayer.

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I didn't know much about this since I didn't try any game that have Denuvo system, although apparently it's more advanced copy protection. What I can say is that like any other technology, as long as there's people who feel challanged to cracked Denuvo and have be able to do that, it's only a matter of time to have Denuvo protection game to be cracked easily. I say this because VNDB post at 2016 said that it's quite hard to crack the game with Denuvo, and here we are with several example that Denuvo protected games were already cracked, so it's not hard to imagine that we may have more Denuvo games are easily cracked in the future.

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From my experience, no matter how secure the DRM system is, it will always be cracked at some point. The DMM.com's DRM is relatively easy to defeat since the actual game engine is sitting beneath another program that handles the DMM functions such as verification and Japan-check. You just have to direct the starting point to the actual engine itself.

Most DRMs encrypt and compress the game engine itself and force the computer to run through a series of checks and verifications to ensure that the program is intended to run the way it should. Near the end of the check codes is where they usually check the key/signature/password. However, people can work around these checks by fooling the check codes into believing that the software is being used legitimately.

Another problem with DRMs is that they are often used by people who write viruses/Trojans/Backdoors and your antivirus software may confuse the game engine as malware. It sucks having to whitelist a new game to your antivirus software.

The best protection I see so far is the use of a hardware dongle. The software is encrypted and compressed in sections and obtains the decryption keys from the dongle. The dongle is inaccessible by any cracking tools and solving the encryption key is infeasible at this time (uses AES-128 encryption). A major problem though with dongles is that you will have to give up one or two USB ports.

Edited by WorldofAI
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2 hours ago, WorldofAI said:

The best protection I see so far is the use of a hardware dongle. The software is encrypted and compressed in sections and obtains the decryption keys from the dongle. The dongle is inaccessible by any cracking tools and solving the encryption key is infeasible at this time (uses AES-128 encryption). A major problem though with dongles is that you will have to give up one or two USB ports.

Anyone have any idea how much it will cost to implement something like this?

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6 hours ago, WorldofAI said:

From my experience, no matter how secure the DRM system is, it will always be cracked at some point.

Yeah and in ways nobody predicted. Take for instance the video DVD. It contains some data, which secret software can convert into a decryption key. It can then use that key to decrypt the actual video. This happens automatically in DVD players and mac and windows have software to do this. Linux didn't and some guy (teenager I believe) really wanted to watch DVDs in linux. Since the code is get the key is rather complex, he could not reproduce it. However he did come up with the idea to copy a bit of the video into memory and then brute force access as in trying every single key to see when it produce a result with a viewable video. Since the number of possible keys is not high enough, it only takes a few seconds to try all possible combinations. In other words they made what appears to be a decent system with the key generation code, but goofed in the way that it's not needed in order to watch the DVD. He got sued for aiding illegal copying of DVDs, but won due to having made it for watching his legally bought discs on his own hardware. The question if other people could use it for other purposes was not of his concern, at least with how the laws worked back then.

6 hours ago, WorldofAI said:

The best protection I see so far is the use of a hardware dongle. The software is encrypted and compressed in sections and obtains the decryption keys from the dongle. The dongle is inaccessible by any cracking tools and solving the encryption key is infeasible at this time (uses AES-128 encryption). A major problem though with dongles is that you will have to give up one or two USB ports.

Not only is it really expensive and annoying to use, particularly if you have one for each title, distribution becomes a nightmare. You will end up with physical copies only because you can't avoid shipping hardware.

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On 4/28/2018 at 9:54 PM, WorldofAI said:

The best protection I see so far is the use of a hardware dongle. The software is encrypted and compressed in sections and obtains the decryption keys from the dongle. The dongle is inaccessible by any cracking tools and solving the encryption key is infeasible at this time (uses AES-128 encryption). A major problem though with dongles is that you will have to give up one or two USB ports.

As someone who works in the software industry, I can tell you that this is overblown marketing hype from the people trying to sell these hardware dongles.

The problem with a dongle is that the attacker (the customer) has access to it at all times.  In other words, there is no such thing as a "dongle that is inaccessible by any cracking tools".  I am not one of them, but there are people out there like these guys who figured out how to take over other people's cars using the Internet by reverse engineering the car's systems.

If you give them one of these dongles, and let them plug it into a computer that they have administrator access on, then it is all but assured that they can write their own cracking tools and pwn this dongle.  They don't even have to crack the encryption.  All they have to do is dump whatever's on it, and create a USB device emulator that pretends to be the dongle.

That's not to say these dongles are completely worthless.  I don't know much about them, so I'm not going to say anything more.  But the claim that dongles can't be hacked is almost certainly false.

Edited by Nandemonai
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On 4/29/2018 at 3:53 PM, Funyarinpa said:

I mean, I don't enjoy having them, but I understand why they would be implemented. Unless it's deliberately anti-consumer or is online-only or something, I don't have much of a stance against them.

Denuvo is an always-online DRM; If you aren't online for Denuvo to authenticate, you can't play your Denuvo-games.

Besides this, Denuvo isn't that bad overall tbh. It does bring a host of inconveniences with it, such as the need for re-verification if you didn't play your games for a while or (personal experience) if you try to play the Denuvo games on a different specs PC.

I'm sorry, but I'm not interested in this kind of shit. I PAID for my games, and I don't want you to tell me I can't play if I'm not online, or which computer I can play them on, especially when other non-Denuvo games and titles from GOG does not have this kind of crap. I don't care if you need to protect your games from piracy. Find a method to do so WITHOUT inconveniencing me, A PAYING CUSTOMER. (This applies to other DRm such a secuROM, and VMProtect)

3 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

As someone who works in the software industry, I can tell you that this is overblown marketing hype from the people trying to sell these hardware dongles.

The problem with a dongle is that the attacker (the customer) has access to it at all times.  In other words, there is no such thing as a "dongle that is inaccessible by any cracking tools".  I am not one of them, but there are people out there like these guys who figured out how to take over other people's cars using the Internet by reverse engineering the car's systems.

If you give them one of these dongles, and let them plug it into a computer that they have administrator access on, then it is all but assured that they can write their own cracking tools and pwn this dongle.  They don't even have to crack the encryption.  All they have to do is dump whatever's on it, and create a USB device emulator that pretends to be the dongle.

That's not to say these dongles are completely worthless.  I don't know much about them, so I'm not going to say anything more.  But the claim that dongles can't be hacked is almost certainly false.

Excluding all external factors and considerations such as cost, I think a hardware dongle sounds pretty good on paper to use on software such as Visual Novels to prevent cracking, mainly because it's not worth the time and effort to do so, don't you think? lol

 

 

Edited by phantomJS
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I think if a drm makes it so that the game has annoyances that a cracked version of the game doesn't have they pretty much screwed themselves over. If people want to crack a game they will find a way, and ruining the official version to increase protection will only cause people to want to crack it more and a larger part of the fanbase would also rather then pirate it since the pirated version can be considered superior.

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1 hour ago, phantomJS said:

Excluding all external factors and considerations such as cost, I think a hardware dongle sounds pretty good on paper to use on software such as Visual Novels to prevent cracking, mainly because it's not worth the time and effort to do so, don't you think? lol

If games are sold with dongles, it will be broken. Whoever figures out a way to do it might not even care about VNs at all, but it gives ePenis in the hacking community. The argument for doing is the same as building a toaster, which has a timer and a display running linux. It's not really because you need it, but to be able to do it shows your geek level. (The toaster is about temperature. The electronics will fry instantly without creative cooling and yes, it exist).

A hardware dongle is a horrible idea to add to software where most of the sales are based on downloads. If people pay and then have to wait days or weeks before playing and they have the option of picking a title from a competitor where they can start the same day, the difference in contents has to be significant for people to pick the one they have to wait for. Add that production and shipping can end up being more expensive than the VN itself and we will know which title becomes unsellable.

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1 hour ago, phantomJS said:

I'm sorry, but I'm not interested in this kind of shit. I PAID for my games, and I don't want you to tell me I can't play if I'm not online, or which computer I can play them on, especially when other non-Denuvo games and titles from GOG does not have this kind of crap. I don't care if you need to protect your games from piracy. Find a method to do so WITHOUT inconveniencing me, A PAYING CUSTOMER. (This applies to other DRm such a secuROM, and VMProtect)

Just like you need a good enough device to play the game sometimes you just need internet connection too. Get over it.

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14 minutes ago, Kiriririri said:

Just like you need a good enough device to play the game sometimes you just need internet connection too. Get over it.

Have fun explaining to the sailors that they can no longer play games in their off duty hours when crossing the oceans. There are plenty of reasons why people are not online at the location they intend to play and often it's not by choice. I was offline at home for a few months because placing an order for placing a cable and getting those people to actually do it is not the same thing. Internet connection relied on leeching wifi, meaning I had to go somewhere else to even check mail. Some people further down the road can't get the cable because apparently they live too far from the box they should be connected to.

Oh and remember that unlike normal system requirements, this is not technically needed to play the game. People kind of accept a minimum requirement for a GPU because it's understandable that it won't work on too slow hardware. People are less accepting being unable to play singleplayer because they can't get a proper internet connection at home.

Edited by tymmur
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42 minutes ago, Kiriririri said:

Just like you need a good enough device to play the game sometimes you just need internet connection too. Get over it.

An internet connection for a single player game? Thanks but nope. Too many other games to play (or other entertainment options) and too little patience to deal with that. I'm with tymmur on this one - forcing people to have an internet connection isn't really justifiable for something that doesn't actually require it (unlike say an MMO). Besides that internet connections can be unstable too, even if you do have an otherwise decent one. 

I wouldn't be willing to support such practices - IMO it's punishing someone for something that could well be out of their control.

Edited by snowbell55
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The more annoying it is to play a game with DRM, the less we'll actually play it.

I'm afraid this only encourages playing a pirate copy with the DRM removed, like with regular videogames.

The thing is, companies, especially in the West, want to secure their meager sales, so they'll adamantly lock up their games.

They don't understand that sales would naturally come by following an ethical stance and doing a good job (for example, with translations), so they pursue the lazy, easy way.

There will always be the old games and some patches applied over Japanese original games. My fear is that DRM actually is applied over OELVN, that seems like a virgin, untamed land (virgin, heh).

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2 minutes ago, Okarin said:

The thing is, companies, especially in the West, want to secure their meager sales, so they'll adamantly lock up their games.

At one time Stardock was about to go bankrupt due to poor sales. To make matters worse, somebody took their newest title and placed it on a torrent site. This was easy to do due to no DRM at all. The torrent quickly ended up with a lot of downloads, but then something amazing happened. After having learned about this game from a questionable source, people started to buy the game they had never heard about from a company they had never heard about before. Sales exploded and the company was not only clear of risk of bankruptcy, they ended up doing good and now more than a decade later, they are still alive. They admitted at some point that DRM would have killed them had they not decided not to pay for it in the first place.

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9 minutes ago, tymmur said:

At one time Stardock was about to go bankrupt due to poor sales. To make matters worse, somebody took their newest title and placed it on a torrent site. This was easy to do due to no DRM at all. The torrent quickly ended up with a lot of downloads, but then something amazing happened. After having learned about this game from a questionable source, people started to buy the game they had never heard about from a company they had never heard about before. Sales exploded and the company was not only clear of risk of bankruptcy, they ended up doing good and now more than a decade later, they are still alive. They admitted at some point that DRM would have killed them had they not decided not to pay for it in the first place.

A beautiful moral.

I add: if DRM annoys you to the point of not playing a game you would otherwise, do boycott the game and see what happens.

Edited by Okarin
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7 hours ago, Kiriririri said:

Just like you need a good enough device to play the game sometimes you just need internet connection too. Get over it.

 

7 hours ago, Kiriririri said:

That's how life just is. Sometimes you have to suck it. 

You do or tell people to do this with something inevitable such as death, not with this kind of shit. In fact, I can do a lot more than just sitting around and accepting my fate in regards to DRM.

Tell you what I'm gonna do; I'm gonna complain very loudly about it, such as the time where I told all my friends and bitched online to people to 'find another way' to play it when I bought Child of Light off steam and found that it included uPlay, which is another always-online DRM and often gives you problems such as this

This is another good example of the crap DRM puts you through (and 1 which I had the misfortune of experiencing as well). All of this is gonna make people realise you can find 'alternative ways' to play the games you want. Ironically, game publishers are making people do exactly the opposite of what they intended with with DRM in their games.

All of this certainly didn't happen because we accepted it as a irreversible fact and got over it, or we just stood still and suck it.

I'm not gona keep quiet bout it, and I will not stop externalising my displeasure. Neither will a lot of people. 

Edited by phantomJS
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