Major piracy group warns games may be crack-proof in two years

[silicon_toad2000]

In the never-ending battle between pirates and game makers, it often seems like the pirates have the upper hand, releasing DRM-breaking cracks within hours or days of a game's official release. Now, the founder of a major Chinese piracy group is warning that it is losing the battle against a specific DRM protection scheme, to the point where game piracy may no longer be possible within two years.

TorrentFreak reports on a recent post by Bird Sister, the founder of Chinese cracking message board 3DM forum, that says the recent release of Just Cause 3 has pushed the group's cracking abilities practically past their limits. "The last stage is too difficult and Jun [cracking guy] nearly gave up, but last Wednesday I encouraged him to continue,” she wrote.

"I still believe that this game can be compromised. But according to current trends in the development of encryption technology, in two years' time I’m afraid there will be no free games to play in the world," she continued.

Just Cause 3 is protected by Denuvo, a robust "anti-tamper" scheme from the team behind Sony DADC's infamous SecuROM system. Denuvo protection has proven especially resilient to cracks in recent years; 2014's release of Dragon Age: Inquisition remained uncracked for an entire month under the Denuvo protection (a long time in today's game market). More recently, FIFA 16 has remained uncracked since its September 2015 release thanks to Denuvo.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/01/major-piracy-groups-warns-games-may-be-crack-proof-in-two-years/

[White Stripes]

i call BS... someone always finds a way

[GhostShip]

The encryption might be hardy but usually when the decryption software is popped from the chips themselves such protections topple in short order, I have lost count of the number of "uncrackable " schemes over the years and they nearly all fall to the crackers, the reason is simply that to remain usable you cant have everything locked down and with that model in play theres always an exposed exploit just waiting for discovery.

[WhiteLightningX]

lol reminds me of when I read an article online of how the original PlayStation had the 7 bit lead-in on their discs, which would confuse disc drives(or was it the OS?) trying to read them because they expected the first byte to be a total count of 8 bits, causing the entire disc to be misread 1 bit off. Heck of an encryption scheme it was. :DDDDDDD

[White Stripes]

discs for the sega saturn were pressed with the word SEGA at the physical beginning of the lead-in... cdroms ignored it and burners couldnt write it... only disc based console sega made that couldnt be freely booted with a burned disc

[silicon_toad2000]

it's impossible to break the 4 minute mile
it's impossible to break the speed of sound

impossible is what people with no imagination or passion call possible things

[WhiteLightningX]

Wow, didn't know that. Then again, I never owned a saturn so I never bothered with emulators or recreated my owned games for it. But that is cool.