Mass Effect: Andromeda - Denuvo DRM Removed

@DSOGaming Mass Effect: Andromeda no longer has Denuvo DRM.

We don’t know whether this was intentional or not. After all, we’ve seen developers rolling out patches without the inclusion of the Denuvo anti-tamper tech and then re-applying it via a new update.

But anyway, right now, the 1.9 version of Mass Effect: Andromeda is not powered by the Denuvo anti-tamper tech (though the game is still protected by ORIGIN).
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More information.

Was it cracked, recently?
That would be a logical reason to remove it, if its "line of defense" has fallen.

TheSHEEEP said:

Was it cracked, recently?
That would be a logical reason to remove it, if its "line of defense" has fallen.

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It was cracked months ago after patch 1.4 by an Italian group called CPY. Honestly Denuvo DRM is not having a good year as many protected games are now cracked.

TheSHEEEP said:

Was it cracked, recently?
That would be a logical reason to remove it, if its "line of defense" has fallen.

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ME:A was cracked after about a week which is pretty fast for a Denuvo game. However, the folks from Denuvo are very realistic in what it could or should achieve ideally...

“We don’t position Denuvo Anti Tamper as being uncrackable,” said Hernandez. “No anti piracy solution is. However, our goal is to keep each title safe from piracy during the crucial initial sales window when most of the sales are made.”

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Source

Victory

Moriendor said:

ME:A was cracked after about a week which is pretty fast for a Denuvo game. However, the folks from Denuvo are very realistic in what it could or should achieve ideally…Source

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Yep but when it first came out it was supposed to the death of piracy. All the countless articles calming it was supposed to be un-crackable were proven wrong.

Combine that with a few internal problems this year within the company also.

ME4 was cracked 10 days after it's release, not 7.
Whatever denuvo build was used in the release version, it was also in 10 hours origin access test, so it's not 10 days either, it took more time.

As couch noted the cracked version was 1.04 - "tired faces". Did anyone crack later versions dunno, but whoever pirated it, couldn't use the faces patch.
Denuvo still works, not ideally, but at least pirates aren't playing a game before it's even released.

Couchpotato said:

Yep but when it first came out it was supposed to the death of piracy. All the countless articles calming it was supposed to be un-crackable were proven wrong.

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Well, if anyone writing for a tech or software related website seriously believed it would be the "death of piracy" instead of just (hopefully) writing such pieces for clickbaiting then I sincerely hope they do us a favor and consider a career change .

Seriously, I think everyone knew it would only be a matter of time. Personally, I think it has been quite successful and most of the time achieved the goal that Hernandez stated in the Kotaku article (EA/Bio probably would have wished it would last a bit longer). The worst case is day 0 piracy and Denuvo has successfully prevented that from happening nearly 100% of the time. Mission more than accomplished.

Moriendor said:

The worst case is day 0 piracy and Denuvo has successfully prevented that from happening nearly 100% of the time. Mission more than accomplished.

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True again but a few games have been cracked on release, but the majority are a cracked months later. So mission accomplished but the cracking is getting faster.

Heck I still remember Tages & securom, and the founder of Denuvo created securom.

joxer said:

As couch noted the cracked version was 1.04 - "tired faces". Did anyone crack later versions dunno, but whoever pirated it, couldn't use the faces patch.Denuvo still works, not ideally, but at least pirates aren't playing a game before it's even released.

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1.5 was the last cracked version. See the problem with cracking Denuvo is all the triggers you have to bypass. So not every patch is cracked as groups find it to be time-wasting.

One example is if you miss one of those triggers the game will randomly crash.

Note: I don't endorse or condone piracy just sharing some information.

So does Denuvo removal help ?

you said:

So does Denuvo removal help ?

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Well some gamers say Denuvo slows down performance, and it has been proven true with a few new releases, but it's still up for debate on various game forums.

So it might help speed up your game a little as it frees the CPU.

I'm struggling to find a reason to care about this.

Which is odd as you're MMO audience.
Denuvo protects a game's executable, the one thing that's modified by MMO cheaters. Instead of aplying Denuvo which would get rid of cheaters completely as noone is cracking MMOs as, what'd be the point of cracking some junk that'll die once servers are dead, MMO publishers do not use Denuvo at all. Instead, their PR "care about it". By banning cheaters after they ruin everyone else's game instead of preventing it in the first place.

Then again, while I left plenty of pvp MMOs soon after installing because of cheaters' swarm, perhaps you like cheat-o-ramas. It's all matter of tastes I guess.

You forget that I live in the real world where cheating happens regardless of client copy protection - and where superior players aren't necessarily cheaters.

You live in your own world that's far from being real.


Who ever said superior players are cheaters? Perhaps you - till today?

Can't find my post about it (is it possible it got purged during last year's downtime?), but anyway, sometime back I linked to news from this article:
http://www.pcgamer.com/teenage-over...eating-proves-shes-just-that-good-with-zarya/
Unlike some, I never questioned players' skill. The reason I lined it in the first place was I tried to show is that a pro player does not use mushrooms and certainly not 4K nonsense.

As another example would be singleplayer, I won't bother you with Dishonored videos I posted several times admitting the I'm not skilled as the guy on those.

But that's all a bit offtopic.
Wait… No.
Retarded 4 presets combat switch in ME4 is caused by mushrooms rubbish and EA did advertise the game as 4K visual gem as if that proves something isn't garbage. I wish instead of removing Denuvo they improved hair instead of default 4K irrelevance and adapted the combat system in PC version to PC.

ME:A used Denuvo v4. But as Denuvo had some problems with certain things that they've incorporated in the previous versions (namely some allegedly unlincensed use of VM Protect), v4 was an easier target for the crackers.

Right now crackers seem to wait for the patching process to be done, all the DLC's/expansions released and then they move to cracking a Denuvo protected title.

Thing is, the AAA sales are quite low on PC for the money invested in development and marketing and the companies can't blame piracy as much as before. But they aren't willing to admit that they've failed to understand the today's PC market, either. The high prices don't help either. When games switched to the digital distribution people expected lower pricing. Instead, we've seen prices doubling and tripling, in-game stores added, DLC's that should have been in the game from the day 1 and other such niceties. Also, a massive drop in the quality control.

The Multiplayer lost any pretense of anti-cheat control (just take a look at the recent Ubi games: The Division, For Honor and so on, as those are full of cheters, due to anti-cheat measures not being implemented).

I am happy that they removed Denuvo for now, but that won't help much in terms of sales. You all know the reasons, so need to repeat them.

Not a big fan of piracy (i left that in a distant past), but sometimes is like the publishers want to push you towards it. Which is puzzling. Instead of trying to offer a quality product and attract people in a way that even the most hardcore pirate would consider buying the game, we have a system that actually punishes the paying persons. Would still love to see more platforms adopting GOG DRM-free stance and offering a decent tratment for customers. Sadly, that won't happen.

ME:A needed all the polish and help it could get from standpoints of both performance and sales. But instead of polish and help ME:A got denuvo. And like virtually all games weighted down by denuvo, ME:A had lots of glitches, poor performance, and poor sales.

Deniers and 'splainers will say that ME:A crashed and burned for reasons other than denuvo. It's always just coincidental that games with denuvo have performance and sales problems. But though it may be true that denuvo wasn't ME:A's only problem, it is still true that denuvo was a problem ME:A didn't need.

Glad that BioWare removed that weight of denuvo from ME:A. It's probably too late to save the sp game. That sapling is likely malnourished and withered beyond recovery. Perhaps the multiplayer online aspects of ME:A can still benefit.

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RPGFool said:

It's always just coincidental that games with denuvo have performance and sales problems.

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It’s also just coincidental that games without denuvo have performance and sales problems.

I guess the good news is now that denuvo is removed every problem with the game will be gone and sales will go through the roof.

The DRM was still successful as Moriendor pointed out. There's really no reason for them to keep it now that the initial sales window is closed, as that first week or two is the most important. And it only looks better for them now to announce they have removed it.

Doesn't really matter to me, though.

Who is dancing right now?