DRM

I want it.

Digital Rights Management, is there any less a sexy combination of words in our entire human lexicon? This is the process that the game industry wants to remind us more-and-more is absolutely essential for the privilege of gaming on home PC. When it comes to consoles, everything is usually handled on the manufacturers side so there isn't too much need to worry, but once you allow players potentially unfettered access to the files of your game, these companies feel it's only a matter of time before the entire industry collapses under the weight of piracy. And so they install special Digital Rights measures to ensure that we use their software exactly how they intend and do absolutely nothing else. In their eyes it's a harmless little counter measure that keeps their bottom line safe and that should be good enough. So if that's the case, why do so many folk shudder when they hear that dreaded 3 letter acronym? Well, I like to think it comes down to execution.

You see, when we explore the world of DRM, perhaps the single most infamous version of it comes in the package known as Denuvo. Denuvo came onto the scene quite a while back, but those who heard it's name knew it well for being the flawless DRM that could hold back game crackers practically indefinitely. This turned out perfect for all those studios who had tried their own home-brew attempts at protecting the copyright of their titles with mixed to terrible results. Now they had the boon of relying on a third party who presumably knew what they were doing. The system seemed to work too. In late 2014 FIFA 15 became the very first title to launch with Denuvo's protection and as such it resisted instant cracking. In fact it wasn't until a month later that a dedicated professional cracking group announced their intentions to test their talents on the Denuvo system. As such, 'Dragon Age: Inquisition' ended up being cracked two weeks after it's launch, which is an eternity in this world. Denuvo themselves seemed unfazed by this development claiming "All games get cracked eventually", they were just in it to protect the launch window.

All in all, this shaped up better than a lot of previous attempts at DRM, including the infamous 'always online' tag that stained many a game in the early to mid 2010's. This was a tactic in which games, even those of single player leanings, would require people to sync their data to an online server in order to prove that their copy of the game was legitimate. The big problem there being the fact that internet service areas are not quite as globe spanning as some like to think they are and that some people were locked out of their games if they couldn't connect. In fact, some games that require this online check to be performed everytime the game logs in, (As if the game is going to suddenly become fraudulent.) still require such checks today, only now they're searching for a verification server that no longer exists, rendering the game unplayable. (Looking at you: 'Tron: Evolution')

Then there are the stories of games that tried a little bit more of a slap-dash method only to have it bite them in the behind later down the line. One of the most infamous DRM stories of this nature hails from Ubisoft in their classic tactical shooter; 'Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2'. (Which is a banger, by-the-by) Back in 2008 that game received a patch that inundated lucky players with a slew of cool gameplay upgrades and tweaks, all for the low, low price of absolutely nothing. It was Ubisoft's little way of giving back to the fans that helped make their game successful, and so they wanted to add in a little way to make sure this update went exclusively to those fans. (And not to the nasty pirates who might have got it.) And so Ubisoft introduced a 'Disk Check' with the update to unsure that the inserted disk was legit. So far so good except... wait, aren't digital game purchases a thing? Yup, Ubisoft managed to patch out a vast number of their player base with an ill thought-out DRM measure and ended up having to work overtime in order to fix it.

This whole debacle is hilarious to sift through after the fact but at the time it was quite the serious and embarrassing blunder. Cutting a huge chunk of the audience off from the game they paid for is a huge nightmare for many a software purist and this sparked concerns about the future of software ownership, concerns which are still alive to this very day. (If Ubisoft could just flick a switch and lock everyone out, what's to stop them from doing that with malicious intent?) But folk needn't have worried because the problem was eventually fixed. "How" you ask? Well it seems that their 'disk check' was so ramshackle that no one really could figure out how to exorcise it from the code, so they ended up having to download a cracked version of their own title and ship that out instead. That little stunt was discovered after Ubisoft forgot to fully remove the cracker's signature from the game credits. (That's a "Whah Whah" Trumpet moment if ever I've seen one.)

Denuvo spelled the end of all that 'wild west nonsense' by, and bear in mind that I'm no software engineer here, implementing a system that constantly checks the validity of game files during play. So that's that, everything has been resolved and we can all bow down to our Denuvo overlords, right? Wrong. For you see this method of DRM actually came at quite the unacceptable price to all us gamers and wannabe-Lemongrabs out there, performance. Yeah, it turns out having another program running on top of your game can prove straining on the system, thus hurting framerate and making some games unbearable. This has been a problem that has plagued Denuvo even as it has risen in popularity amongst developers, encouraging crackers to get even better at removing said software for folk who just want their game to function well. In recent years Denuvo hasn't even been able to last the day against cracking attempts, and this is becoming more and more lauded by the gaming populace.

Denuvo even entered the headlines again recently, in fact, although it wasn't so much for the software itself as it was for the incompetence of the publisher responsible for implementing it; Bethesda. (Oh come on, guys! I want to be positive about you but you're making it so darn hard!) For the recently release of demon slayer simulator; DOOM Eternal, Bethesda wanted to make use of the latest version of Denuvo in order to protect those all important Week One sales. A little wrench was thrown into that equation, however, when Bethesda launched their game with a Denuvo free Exe file in tow, allowing the game to be cracked and repacked within hours. Heck, I stumbled upon a repacked version of the game by accident the day after release, their silliness did this game dirty. Of course, I doubt any of this will significantly hurt DOOM's sales, which is good, but is does make for a funny story on how ineffectual DRM attempts can be.

In the future perhaps the question will come up of how important DRM really is in our everyday world of software management. Whereas Bethesda and Ubisoft may swear down by it until the day they die, other developers like CDPR disagree and in fact take a whole different stance to tackling piracy altogether. At the end of the day, however, they are all just precautionary measures to tackle a theoretical issue. Modern day software piracy hardly costs the modern AAA gaming world anything and although those companies might argue this is due to their hard work, there have been discussions which indicate this might not be the case. For the indie world, however, I'd argue that DRM is a necessity, as they need all the profit they can get. At the end of the day this is moot, publishers will continue to bow to DRM whether it harms their games or not, all we can do is pray that get better at implementing the damn things.