Denuvo-Protected Games Rendered Unplayable After Domain Expires (torrentfreak.com) 65
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Last evening the web was alive with angry players who couldn't play their games due to an unexpected error. While the situation is still not completely clear, it appears that someone allowed a domain used by Denuvo's anti-piracy technology to expire, meaning that players of some big games couldn't enjoy what they had paid for. [...] According to Alex Buckland, the DRM provider for all of the affected games had let a key domain expire, rendering the system inoperable. Following the failure to renew, the domain then went into a grace period but when that expired too, it appears to have been removed from DNS records. This meant that the domain would not resolve to an IP address, effectively breaking the system.
To solve the problem, some users on Steam posted up tutorials for players to modify their Windows HOSTS file to point to the last known IP address for the domain. This appeared to do the trick but obviously, such drastic measures shouldn't be needed to play a game that has been legally purchased -- especially those that are single-player only.
To solve the problem, some users on Steam posted up tutorials for players to modify their Windows HOSTS file to point to the last known IP address for the domain. This appeared to do the trick but obviously, such drastic measures shouldn't be needed to play a game that has been legally purchased -- especially those that are single-player only.
Something Tells Me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Something Tells Me (Score:5, Insightful)
oh man, prepare to reap the whirlwind... (Score:5, Funny)
"Windows" HOSTS file
Goddamn, if APK wasn't right. You can fix all ills with your Windows HOSTS file.
Re: oh man, prepare to reap the whirlwind... (Score:2)
Damn right.
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Weird, you just made me a little nostalgic for ATK's posts here.
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Microsoft has let domains expire. Are they a "shit show" as well?
Re:Something Tells Me (Score:4, Informative)
Yes.
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Very yes.
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Jokes aside, if the user had dependency on them? Yes.
Dependency that wasn't necessary in the first place? Double yes.
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Here, have even more "yes."
Re: Something Tells Me (Score:2)
It was clear a couple days ago when it was announced that their shit DRM didn't work on the latest Intel 12th generation processors. This is just embiggening the pile.
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"Embiggening," I never heard that word until I started on Slashdot. :D
"Their s DRM."
Is any digital restriction management ever good?
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What's wrong with embiggening? It's a perfectly croumlent word.
Re:Something Tells Me (Score:5, Insightful)
Something tells me that pirated versions of the game probably ran just fine despite this issue.
Indeed. When you make your customers your enemy, your customers will be your enemy.
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They got lucky. Not that they deserve that in any way.
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Something tells me that pirated versions of the game probably ran just fine despite this issue.
Indeed. When you make your customers your enemy, your customers will be your enemy.
Game owners are not their customer, game producers are. Based on the quality of games at release, they do not care if their games are playable or not. Certainly they have no reason to care once they have been paid
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Something tells me that pirated versions of the game probably ran just fine despite this issue.
Indeed. When you make your customers your enemy, your customers will be your enemy.
Game owners are not their customer, game producers are. Based on the quality of games at release, they do not care if their games are playable or not. Certainly they have no reason to care once they have been paid
I was, obviously, talking about the game producers.
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Considering how expensive something like this is, the workers aren't doing it without some serious management approval.
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And sometimes [youtu.be] not.
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My journey to open source was greatly accelerated by broken licenses. It bothered me that my paid-for software did not work due to a license issue, especially when the manufacturer's "customer service" said they would not help. Crack and keygens were readily available and worked but felt unclean. Open source suddenly made a lot of sense -- possible weak economics but clearly strong virtues.
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Excellent. Now what's a good model to fund the creation of original real-time graphical video games with a scope larger than a single person's hobby for release as free software and free cultural works from day one?
(Traditional roguelikes are neither real-time nor graphical. The program part of Doom was released as free software on a 5-year embargo, and the part other than the program is expected to become free cultural works in 2090.)
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Why should one take Network Gaming 101 to play a single-player game?
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The Slashdot quote when I came to read this reply really summed it up well: What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do.
It's pretty much impossible to have a functional grasp of the underlying technologies of everything you interact with in daily life, and understanding networking, HOSTS files, etc. isn't like knowing how to roll down the window in your car - I'd say it's more like knowing how to change the spark plugs if one breaks. Most people would send the car to the mechanic just
Re: Drastic?! Hardly. (Score:2)
Not spark plugs. Too complex. More like changing a broken knob on the radio. You can easily look up and obtain everything necessary to fix the issue and if you break it, the fix is simply undo the change.
I don't know a good comparison to spark plugs but maybe a registered edit.
the fact most people don't know what a host a HOST file is, doesn't mean it's not a stupid simple fix.
This being said it wouldn't be necessary in an ideal world without DRM.
Re: Drastic?! Hardly. (Score:2)
Re: Drastic?! Hardly. (Score:2)
That would be an incredibly stupid way to optimize any games. Not only are you counting on the IP address to not change (in fact, it could resolve to a rotating set of IPs) you're also theoretically saving 12ms on a lookup that happens at most once every 5 minutes.
In other words, that's a lot of work for basically no payoff.
The Cloud Loves You (Score:1)
and you love The Cloud, and Barney. Hugs!
time for an change back! and if steam bans you (Score:2)
time for an change back! and if steam bans you then change back for all games / take them to court.
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Charge backs are typically limited to 3 months, and digital products, aka "digital services", are typically not allowed to be charged back on by most CC companies unless you can show that you never intended to purchase it in the beginning. (If it was allowed, it would be a madshow with every online game that was sunsetting).
If it were allowed, a merchant sunsetting an online service could still avoid problems by following a few best practices:
1. Announce sunset several months in advance.
2. Stop accepting new user registrations after sunset has been announced.
3. Grant an automatic refund for months of service already paid for that would continue after sunset.
Domain renewed. (Score:3)
In the meantime, someone has now renewed the codefusion.technology domain, which appears to have solved players’ problems. It’s now set to expire on September 24, 2022, meaning just a single year was added to the bank. Hopefully next year doesn’t bring similar problems.
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It’s now set to expire on September 24, 2022, meaning just a single year was added to the bank.
Well, that's how web certs work nowadays - you can only renew them a year at a time.
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It’s now set to expire on September 24, 2022, meaning just a single year was added to the bank.
Well, that's how web certs work nowadays - you can only renew them a year at a time.
This isn't a certificate. This is a domain name (as in https://slashdot.org./ [slashdot.org.] Two very different animals.
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Ah, thank you for the clarification. I saw the one-year extension and assumed the summary was actually referring to a certificate renewal - but the article itself clearly mentions the WHOIS information.
Apparently the domain expired back on September 24, and now the 45-day grace period is up.
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Don't worry, bu the time Apple and Google get done with their pissing contest to see who is the most securist, certs will need hourly renewal.
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People here are missing a very important point (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm certain that, somewhere in the 47-page EULA, is a statement saying their company can't be held responsible for them screwing up like this. So people should stop complaining and get back to handing them more money.
So basically (Score:4, Interesting)
Customers who pirated the game received the better experience to paying customers. I'd like to be able to say that the executives who insist on DRM will see how all they're doing is paying large sums of money to companies that provide a worse customer experience for the people who actually pay for the game, which is basically the exact opposite of the desired outcome, but something tells me that they're still every bit as divorced from the reality on the ground as ever. Any episodes of lucidity on the matter were fleeting and likely passed as soon as the issue seemed resolved with the domain.
Re:So basically (Score:5, Interesting)
Wouldn't be the first time. I distinctly remember a certain audio editing software that used some DRM that actually went to the length of creating its own assembly instructions that needed to be "translated" using a dongle to run on the target machine, making the whole thing incredibly slow. Some cracker who shall remain nameless for obvious reasons sat down for 2 days straight and reverted this into proper assembly code, leading to the cracked version that didn't need a dongle running lightning fast compared to the DRM crippled version, which allegedly even led to paying customers seeking out and applying the patch that removed the brakes on their software.
I remember doing similar as well (Score:2)
Back in the days when games were installing to the HD, but still wanted you to put in the CD/DVD in order to play, I made a habit of getting cracked executables because they were normally far superior to the originals. Not only did I not need to play with swapping discs around, or wait until the optical drive spun up, the game was normally faster in numerous respects, or even crashed less.
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that is the case every single time, and you don't have to worry about some random jack shit company going tits up and stealing your property
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I doubt they care. Most of the sales are in the first week or two of release, and as long as the DRM prevents pirate versions appearing in that period they probably figure that they got their money's worth.
Players getting screwed years later are of little concern. The reality is that boycotts rarely work and statistically most people who participate go back to buying that brand anyway.
Shooting their own foot with pinpoint precision (Score:5, Insightful)
So, essentially, this means that their paying customers can't play the games they pay for, while everyone who didn't give them a dime and instead copied and cracked the game continue to play without a hitch.
This in turn probably now lead to honest customers seeking out that patch and applying it so they can play.
Next time, they'll probably just omit the step that is of not use to them: Buying the game.
It was mostly EA games, Square Enix, and Ubisoft. (Score:5, Insightful)
Happens the streaming radios, too (Score:2)
My Turtlebeach Audiotron was bricked when Turtle Beach decided to turn off their server. So I bought a Grace Digital radio. It was bricked a couple months ago when GD shut down their server.
DRM and Online activation (Score:2)
can kill an old game if the domain name for the DRM check goes down. Horrors if the server the game connects to is taken down and unsupported.
Buy the game, but run the pirated version. Kill the DRM and Online Activation.
Single player internet? (Score:1)
You can stop advertising for them now. (Score:2)
These are not "protected", that's simply what denuvo's marketing team wants it called. They're sabotaged. Modified to fail. There's no upside - publishers, and thus customers, are literally paying to have the product destroyed.
Slight mistake in TFA (Score:1)
Last evening the web was alive with angry players who couldn't play their games
Incorrect.
They could not play Denuvo's games, which they did not own, but merely licensed, temporarily, subject to conditions that likely included complete indemnity to Denuvo should something like this happen.
Fact: except for FOSS, you don't usually own games/software/firmware/content/etc.; you merely rent it from the company that does.
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Sorry. That's of course what I meant.
Breach of Contract (Score:2)
Since software is "licensed" instead of "sold" (also applies to DVD/Blu-Ray/Downloaded-but-Protected media files) and the publisher has decided to use DRM then if that DRM blocks a legitimate licensee (should be "owner" but it isn't) from legitimately using that software, then the publisher should be liable for breach of contract. The publisher should have to pay losses plus penalties.
While for a game losses may be minimal it is possible that DRM'ed software could be used in more critical applications. Al