Pirates say they have already cracked Resident Evil 7’s PC version and have found a way to disable the game’s anti-piracy measures less than a week after release.
As TorrentFreak reports, a piracy group called CONSPIR4CY say they figured out how to crack Resident Evil 7 just five days after the game’s release. This has apparently allowed players around the globe to download working pirated copies of the game, despite the fact that it uses strict DRM that’s meant to prevent that.
Resident Evil 7 uses Denuvo, a robust software protection that links each copy of the game to one specific computer. Denuvo, which is used by many different game publishers across the world, is popular because it’s ostensibly supposed to stop piracy. By using Denuvo, publishers hope to ensure that nobody can buy a game, download it and share the files with other people via torrents or other distribution services.
However, in recent years, pirates have found ways to crack Denuvo’s copyright protection, sometimes months after release, as in the case of Rise of the Tomb Raider. Resident Evil 7 marks the first time that Denuvo crackers have succeeded within a week of a game’s launch.
Some fans have complained that Denuvo is unwieldy and annoying. It forces games to be dependent on third-party activation servers and makes certain types of modding impossible. Publishers use the program regardless, in hopes of boosting game sales by rendering piracy more difficult.
Yet people appear to be finding ways to bypass Denuvo more quickly every day. Last year, months after pirates cracked games like Doom and Inside, the publishers of those games removed Denuvo from them. At the time, a Denuvo representative told Kotaku that Bethesda removed Doom‘s anti-piracy service because “it had accomplished its purpose by keeping the game safe from piracy during the initial sales window”.
Comments
6 responses to “Pirates Say They Have Cracked Resident Evil 7 In Record Time”
I’m not a huge fan of this – whilst in the long run, I’m a fan of games being cracked (as it stops the chance of digital distribution services stopping and the game being inaccessible), having it cracked within a week is only going to hurt the chance of other PC ports.
PC is far to large of a market at this point for the games not to come to it. Annual revenue is currently projected to reach $42bn by 2020 – https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiymPTc6urRAhWMVrwKHXOwAAUQFggtMAY&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gamesindustry.biz%2Farticles%2F2016-08-02-pc-games-revenue-to-hit-usd42-billion-in-2020-dfc&usg=AFQjCNGGvZh2rBMl1bMaPddT3TFrIPezwQ&sig2=hwiAvi4gcMF5vNWhSb-UYw&bvm=bv.145822982,d.dGc
Looks like Denuvo failed here then, that’s a first for them as far as I’m aware.
Didn’t block out piracy in the initial sales window, wonder if there’s something in their contract about that.
From what I’ve heard there is. They (the devs) get refunded the cost of the DRM, but only if they remove it. Not 100% sure how true that is, but it would explain why the other titles removed it after they got cracked.
When I read that this got cracked my first thought was “Should’ve gone with Denuvo” lol. I’m seriously impressed they got to this at all (and in ridiculous timing).
You can’t really say that the walls at denuvo are crumbling, Square Enix must use a strong form of the drm because Just Cause 3 and Hitman have still yet to be cracked.