18
votes
After 352 days since PC release, Red Dead Redemption 2 was finally cracked this morning
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- Title
- Red Dead Redemption 2 Was Finally Cracked This Morning, Lasting Longer Than Most Denuvo Titles | Happy Gamer
- Authors
- Chris Miller
- Published
- Oct 22 2020
- Word count
- 525 words
My buddy had a similar issue. His system is even newer and significantly more powerful than mine, and while I could run it perfectly, it was practically unplayable for him for some unknown reason. We tried everything to get it working for him before finally giving up after several days so he could return it. It's really a shame too, since it was a pretty great game IMO, and the multiplayer was a lot of fun too (which people likely won't be able to experience via a pirated copy).
So these new DRMs are basically all always-online-DRM, right? Because how else would this last a year? I assume, then, that they had to replicate the server sending essential parts of the game that are omitted/encrypted? Like there's parts of the game's code that's never actually on your machine?
Disclaimer: I've done reverse engineering, but never reverse engineered DRM, my knowledge is purely based on what I've read online.
I don't believe that's how this new protections work. They use an online component for authentication, but it has nothing to do with how the software is protected.
These new protections usually work by converting x86-64 bytecode into an internal representation that runs inside a VM. So say, if you want to protect a function, you can mark it to be protected by Denuvo/VMProtect/whatever and instead of getting x86, you get some obscure bytecode made for a custom VM that you need to at least be able to understand so you can start removing the protections, this new VM is not made sensibly, it's made to be as obtuse and quirky as possible so that it's very hard to reverse engineer.
Note that this is the main reason people say that the DRM slows down the game, it's technically true, but developers are smart enough to not protect function that run in the main game loop. So most of the games are not affected by such protections, DRM will mostly add some extra seconds to the loading screens.
Note that the goal of these protections is not to protect the game fully, but to annoy reverse engineers sufficiently that it'll take them too long to reverse the protections. On top of the VM stuff there's also tons of obfuscation and dead code among other more classic techniques. Combining all of this makes it so that it'll take weeks/months of work/hours to be able to remove the authentication checks on protected functions. Some cracking groups probably have written tools/compilers to convert denuvo-vm back to x86-64 or deobfuscators, etc. So their releases are usually faster, but as the cracking groups techniques evolve, so do the DRM protections.
Online is still required for these protections mind you, but it's just a token system. The DRM servers basically check if you own the license and issue a token with an expiration date which the game stores locally, the protected functions just check if the token is valid for your machine and is within the expiration date.
Thanks, that's a great explanation.
oh you sweet summerchild. that's what they did long ago. if i rrmember correctly that startet around assassins creeds release and was cracked and or bypassed fast. this seems to be more complex, a quick google did not bring up what type of drm they use, but i think something along the lines of denuvo is realistic.
RDR2 didn't use denuvo and denuvo gets cracked pretty quickly these days with the list of uncracked denuvo games pretty short and of those on it, very few have a lot of people calling for them to be cracked (Handball 17, Police Simulator: Patrol Duty, etc.).
It'll be a minute before the cat is out of the bag on how Empress cracked this, so makes sense that your search came up with nothing.