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Denuvo Launches Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection
- donkarma 4y agoi'd love to see the techniques used in this
- josephcsible 4y agoWhat can we, the tech community, do to make it more likely that this ends up being defeated and an utter failure?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoPractically nothing. Don't buy games with DRM or anti-cheat.
- haunter 4y ago>Don't buy games with anti-cheat So you would let cheaters win? What a weird take. Small amount of people wants to ruin game for everyone > the solution shouldn't be abandoning online games
- tristor 4y agoThere are more effective ways to deal with cheaters than using anti-cheat systems that degrade system security and performance by hooking into the OS kernel. Also, in many games, anti-cheat is anti-user, because the games are /not/ online multiplayer, which means the only thing the user is "cheating" is themselves. I don't cheat in most games, but there are a lot of games that are pretty grindy in genres I otherwise enjoy for the story, and I want to just get through it because I have a job, family, kids, and other hobbies and friends to keep up with, but I still enjoy gaming. I no longer have the ability or time to spend 200+ hours to get all aspects of a game story completed. Meanwhile, there are other games I could cheat in I would never do, because the difficulty of them is the point (Dark Souls). Cheating in online games, especially competitive online games, is a real problem. But another piece of the problem is that this genre is dominated by "free" games which have cash shops, microtransactions, and extremely aggressive anti-cheat software, all of which are anti-user.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- josephcsible 4y agoWhat GP meant was "Don't buy games with client-side anti-cheat". For any given method of cheating, either it will be detectable from the server, or it won't be detectable even from the client (e.g., <https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/07/cheat-maker-brags-of-computer-vision-auto-aim-that-works-on-any-game/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/07/cheat-maker-brags-of-...>).
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoDevs can do whatever they want server side. Leave the client machine alone. But also, at the end of the day, they're just games. I think we started taking things a bit too seriously.
- Thaxll 4y agoI think you're missing the point that cheater ruins games for everyone, so people leave and just don't play those games anymore.
- josephcsible 4y agoI think you're missing the point that you can stop cheaters without needing anti-cheat on their own computers.
- Thaxll 4y agoThat's very naive, server side detection is not enough.
- AndrewDucker 4y agoCrack it. As fast as possible.
- theyeenzbeanz 4y agoWeren’t some games that came with Denuvo cracked in a comically quick fashion in the past?
- donkarma 4y agoonly because they left the demo executable linked without denuvo with everything working
- User23 4y agoPlease use neutral terminology such as “community supported performance patch.”
- sergiotapia 4y agoThe only person on the planet that is currently cracking Denuvo is Empress.
- donkarma 4y agohave fun learning about devirtualisation and compiler theory
- Retr0id 4y agoIt doesn't even need a crack, it "just" needs more accurate emulation. It may turn out that cracking is the path of least resistance, but making emulation more accurate is less of a legal issue - I for one would feel comfortable working on it "in the open" (which I may well do, depending on how much I care about the first Denuvo'd switch games to come out).
- GuB-42 4y agoAccurate emulation is extremely hard, even for ancient hardware. See this article from 2011 for example: https://arstechnica.netblogpro.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-one-mans-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/ https://arstechnica.netblogpro.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-t... It takes a 3 GHz CPU to emulate the SNES accurately. You can do with less, obviously, but you will notice differences in some games. With modern hardware, I don't think perfectly accurate emulation will ever be possible. We don't have that for the PS2 and XBox, maybe on the original PlayStation, but I am not even sure. Emulators for modern systems are all high level, emulating API calls instead of the hardware.
- alexb_ 4y ago"we, the tech community" lol. If it makes more money, it will be done.
- AdmiralAsshat 4y agoSeveral developers have walked back their use of Denuvo after fan outcry, usually armed with data about how it adversely affects performance. That's pretty much all we can do. Of course neutralizing Denuvo (i.e. cracking it to demonstrate that it's not meaningfully preventing piracy) would also help.
- Mindwipe 4y ago> Several developers have walked back their use of Denuvo after fan outcry, usually armed with data about how it adversely affects performance. No they haven't. They stopped paying for Denuvo after a time, given they have to pay on a monthly basis, because the number of sales they make goes down over time and Denuvo has done it's job.
- mmastrac 4y ago> Irdeto’s services and solutions protect revenue, enable growth and fight cybercrime "cybercrime" is such a tell word for press release BS. What's interesting here is that there's clearly enough pressure from emulation of a system that's still the most current in its category that this product exists. There are clearly some downsides to the savings of pulling ARM architecture off-the-shelf.
- Cyberdog 4y ago> There are clearly some downsides to the savings of pulling ARM architecture off-the-shelf. To be fair, its competitors are basically x86-64 boxes…
- TwoNineA 4y agoKiss your battery life goodbye since it will be siphoning more CPU cycles. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://youtu.be/1VpWKwIjwLk?t=394 https://youtu.be/1VpWKwIjwLk?t=394
- meibo 4y agoOn a system that already struggles to keep up on a lot of games, because it ships with a chip from 2014. Will be fun to see the comparisons.
- pizza234 4y agoThat's not a rigorous test; it actually seems very sketchy. In the last game, the performance is better before the Denuvo removal, which doesn't make much sense. In another game, they're testing the manual run of a game, as the game (it seems ) doesn't provide an automated benchmark.
- alexb_ 4y agoThe normalization of Denuvo, as well as "anti-cheat" protection that involves constant monitoring of your environment, is a fucking travesty for privacy and games. The worst part about Denuvo is that cracking it is game-specific, and there's ~1 person who is willing and able to do it (and currently isn't touching denuvo due to not being donated enough money)
- thot_experiment 4y agoIt really makes me sad that people are even willing to create these systems. It would haunt me forever if I took part in writing something like this.
- ryandrake 4y agoOne sad lesson I learned early on in my software career is, for every ethical stand you are willing to take as a developer, there's always some other developer who is willing set aside ethics or has a different set of ethics. Software needs some kind of baseline ethical standard, like a Hippocratic Oath. A line that we "shall not cross." I remember my first job out of college, I was asked to write code that caused our software to cheat at a certain industry benchmark. I was very junior, but still realized it was wrong. I finally worked up the courage to tell my boss that I had an ethical problem with doing this and wouldn't do it, and to my surprise, he said "Oh, that's fine! We treat software developers well here. I'll just give you a different bug ticket to work on!" Jim, a few cubicles down from me had no problem writing the benchmark-cheating code. It's kind of futile.
- fefe23 4y agoDenuvo "copy protection" is so universally loathed by PC gamers that several publishers have ended up removing it in updates to their games, for example Mass Effect Legendary Edition. https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/mass-effect-legendary-edition-removes-denuvo-2964344 https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/mass-effect-legendary-e... Note how getting rid of Denuvo also saved about one gigabyte (!!) of disk space. Denuvo slowed some games down so much that playing online with a cracked version is considered cheating. I am baffled they are still on the market. If I find out that a game comes with Denuvo DRM, I will not spend money on it. In times where GPU prices are daylight robbery and most people are paying with old hardware, I can't understand why game publishers would deliberately cripple performance of their games. Don't they talk to the developers to find out how much money it cost to optimize the last 10% fps out of the game in the first place?
- SquareWheel 4y agoDevelopers remove Denuvo after n months because they have to pay ongoing fees to make use of it, and the majority of their sales (when they're most worried about piracy) will be at release. It's just a cost savings measure.
- ianbutler 4y agoYour totally valid point aside, GPUs have cratered. There’s actually a glut of them now. The 3090ti price was recently cut in half and the rumor mill is the 40 series was over provisioned based on crypto demand which has now also cratered, so there will be a lot of stock on the market. Now is a good time to look at upgrading if you haven’t in a bit.
- loeg 4y agoX070 prices are still like double what they were 5 years ago. This isn’t a crater yet. I’m not surprised they’re having difficulty moving the extremely expensive cards to non-miners, but x090Ti cards were never really about practical gaming.
- tjoff 4y agoEveryone keeps saying that but at least where I'm at that's not the case by a longshot. It is better, yes, but still terrible. This generation is completely dead to me, maybe next one.
- protonbob 4y agoI think the market that plays games on emulators is pretty different than the market that plays on console. I don't know if this will really bring the effect that the game devs want. It will only hurt the preservation and cultural impact of these games down the road when one isn't able to buy the games new but they can't be emulated.
- pdntspa 4y agoSomeone will crack it. The point of these protection systems isn't to absolutely prevent copying (or emulation in this case?) but rather increase the amount of time before emulation becomes available (because someone cracked it)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Spoom 4y agoI hope Nintendo is ready for the refund requests.
- meibo 4y agoThat would require them to give refunds at all, the eShop currently does not do that and no one fought them on it yet. Realistically Nintendo can do whatever they want, they could take a dump in times square and people would flock to it. They've been selling broken controllers for 6 years.
- edgyquant 4y agoI’ve always found this an interesting criticism. Switch controllers might break more often but I’ve never had a game system controller that didn’t end up with drift in the course of a year or two (and I don’t play games often.)
- meibo 4y agoIt's not just drift, even though that statistically is more likely to happen in JoyCons, there were/are quite a few issues with Switch controllers: * Big connectivity issues for a long while after launch(I couldn't play on my couch with the switch in front of my TV) * Aforementioned drift * Sticky buttons on Pro controllers, those still happen * None of the Nintendo controllers correctly advertise polling rate for BT HID, so they're impossible to use on most phones All of that at more than premium prices, even in refreshed/newly produced units.
- wccrawford 4y ago"Big connectivity issues for a long while after launch(I couldn't play on my couch with the switch in front of my TV)" Did they somehow fix that? I basically gave up on my Switch for that reason. Having to lean forward on the couch to get the controller to reliably work was a dealbreaker.
- 4y ago
- mdbauman 4y agoThe friction in buying games these days is so low, I don't understand how this would result in more units shipped for any publisher that chooses to use this. If you're "pirating" a game, I imagine (because this is why I pirated games in the pre-Steam days) it's because you can't afford to buy it or you refuse to give the publisher/developer your money on principle. Either way, you're not a potential customer. So sure, this may result in less emulation but not necessarily higher sales.
- horsawlarway 4y agoThis has basically always been the case. I have yet to see compelling numbers that show these systems do much of anything. The markets most heavily served by piracy are either 1. Those completely neglected by normal distribution channels (poor countries) 2. Those who are extremely budget conscious (poor people in any country) But it's a good sales pitch to execs to show piracy numbers and claim "Think of all the lost revenue!!!!" - when the blunt reality is that most who pirated simply don't have the means to pay for it in the first place. The right short term answer is to heavily discount digital products for those markets (see: Steam sales) and bring the price back in line with the budget available. The long term answer is political, and will require restructuring how digital products are made and licensed (it's time to ditch the per-copy-sold costs - they aren't the right answer for goods that have ZERO marginal cost per copy produced).
- enzanki_ars 4y agoThere is still a large amount of friction in keeping a game though. These types of DRMs can cause the game to be unplayable years later. Like when Alder Lake came out and a bunch of games with Denuvo DRM broke [1]. Because of all of this recent attention on it, I wouldn't be shocked if it resulted in less sales and higher rates of emulation. Probably not enough to cause a dent in sales to disincentive addition of DRM though sadly. [1]: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/11/faulty-drm-breaks-dozens-of-games-on-intels-alder-lake-cpus/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/11/faulty-drm-breaks-doz...
- Gigachad 4y agoI emulate a few switch games. I prefer playing then on my desktop rather than switch all the cables over for the switch. As well as being banned from the switch store for having a modded console so you cant buy anything anyway.
- lousken 4y agowhy does this trash still exist? Haven't we learned anything from starforce, securom and all the other DRMs? Also don't companies understand that most people who pirate these days either do it or rather not play the game at all? Personally, I blacklisted all denuvo games long time ago and don't own any.
- nvllsvm 4y agoThe time-to-crack varies depending on the game. Cracks for popular games such as Dying Light 2 and Far Cry 6 were released months after the games were initially released. Less popular games such as Burnout Paradise Remastered have yet to be cracked. So this anti-consumer garbage is likely calculated, by the publisher, to be worth paying for Denuvo even if it eventually gets cracked.
- Cyberdog 4y agoThe problem is that the people most affected by this sort of software (the gamers) are not the customers of the company that makes it; the game publishers are. So Denuvo just needs to pitch the idea that their product will increase sales, which is certainly something publishers already want to hear.
- Pr0ject217 4y ago502 bad gateway
- CaliforniaKarl 4y agohttps://archive.ph/pN0f0 https://archive.ph/pN0f0
- United857 4y agoAny technical details out there on how it works? The press release is (understandably) silent on this.
- mehlmao 4y agoOn the subject of piracy / DRM, I always think back to Lar's Doucet's piece Piracy and the Four Currencies: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/piracy-and-the-four-currencies https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/piracy-and-the-four-c... Lars argues that when people make the decision to buy or pirate something, they're spending four 'currencies' which each person values differently: * Money-dollars * Time-dollars * Pain-in-the-butt-dollars * Integrity-dollars As a teenager, I had near-infinite time dollars, and very few money dollars. That reversed when I got a real job. Implementing Denuvo (or other DRM malware) increases a product's cost in Pain-in-the-butt dollars significantly because the pirated version without it is better. I own a Switch, have purchased several games for it, and most of my playtime is on my PC in an emulator now. I can use a better controller, run games at higher framerates and resolution, and use mods. The Switch is still nice on the go, but anything beyond casual games using an anti-emulation solution become less appealing to me.
- causi 4y agoI'd call "elitism-dollars" or "user-preference dollars" a fifth currency. I don't emulate because I don't want to pay for games I could get on ebay for five dollars; I emulate because I don't want Ocarina of Time 3D stuck behind a 400x240 screen door or Breath of the Wild locked at 30fps.
- fraencko 4y agoSite down, here’s a mirror: https://archive.ph/pN0f0 https://archive.ph/pN0f0
- sarsway 4y agoLots of Anti-DRM sentiment here, understandably. However, I think the big issue is the Steamdeck becoming a popular platform for Switch emulation. That's simply not ok. It's wild Valve can get away with this. I would think Nintendo would sue, but its probably fruitless.
- josephcsible 4y agoWhat exactly do you think Valve did wrong that they should be sued for? Should Quaker Oats Company have gotten sued over the Cap'n Crunch whistles that became popular for hacking phone systems?
- mhh__ 4y agoThat's between Nintendo's ego and people who own the steam deck, not valve.
- tristor 4y agoAs someone who bought a Steam Deck almost entirely for the purpose of handheld emulation who also owns two Switches, I can tell you that most of the emulation scene on the Deck is very much /not/ Switch games. It's mostly people emulating games from the NES, SNES, N64, Dreamcast, PSX, and similar older systems. Most of these games would do well if they had proper re-releases with updated graphics quality, but the releases we have seen (on PC anyway) have mostly been the original game with an inferior emulator wrapped around it, being resold without any improvements. Square/FF games have been especially guilty of this sin on PC, and pretty much muddied the waters. Meanwhile, Nintendo has been smarter on Switch, shipping first-party emulators for NES and SNES (but without the games people actually want in the catalog), and has convinced Square to re-release Seiken Densetsu 3 with an official English translation on the Switch w/ the full Mana Trilogy, which I bought and paid for, even though I could emulate all three games because they had improved graphics and an official translation. I think the concern you have here is wildly overblown, and for the most part there are a tiny tiny tiny amount of people who are pirating Switch games by running them in emulators. Most Switch piracy is happening /on the Switch/ by people running games off the SD Card instead of buying carts/downloading officially, using patched OS / loaders. Nintendo basically killed this for Switches made after the first run in the first generation, and it's even a non-issue.
- bilekas 4y agoI see their site is 504... Imagine what their 'protection' is doing to the gaming experience when they can't manage a popular link from HN.
- smileybarry 4y agoLove that this is an anti-emulator SDK rather than anti-piracy/copy. So hacked Switch consoles will continue to be able to play these games perfectly well, emulators will find a method around it (see: Ape Escape PS1 DRM patches), and only legitimate Switch consoles will suffer as whatever amount of unpack-execute-dbgbreak-call-repack cycles are done to "protect" the game code.
- dartharva 4y agoIt seems to me that a game having Denuvo is generally a sign of it being garbage in quality. Good games don't need DRM locks to sell well, as so many titles have demonstrated. The only good games I know that had Denuvo are Doom Eternal and Nier Automata, and both ended up removing it.