Pirate Group Suspends New Cracks to Measure Impact on Sales

[Ernesto]

One of the hottest topics in the game piracy scene in late 2015 surrounded the Avalanche Studios/Square Enix title Just Cause 3.

Released on December 1, 2015, pirates were eager to get their hands on the game for free. However, JC3 is protected by the latest iteration of Denuvo, an anti-tamper technology developed by Denuvo Software Solutions GmbH. Denuvo is not DRM per se, but acts as a secondary encryption system protecting underlying DRM products.

All eyes had been on notorious Chinese game cracking group/forum 3DM to come up with the goods but last month the group delivered a killer blow to its fans.

According to the leader of the group, the very public ‘Bird Sister’ (also known as Phoenix), the game was proving extremely difficult to crack. In fact, Bird Sister said that current anti-piracy technology is becoming so good that in two years there might not be pirated games anymore.

One month on from those words and Just Cause 3 still hasn’t been cracked and today brings even more bad news for those hoping to obtain the best gaming titles for free. Taking to her personal blog once more, Bird Sister has just announced an immediate end to the cracking activities of 3DM.

“We just had an internal meeting. Starting at the Chinese New Year, 3DM will not crack any single-player games,” Bird Sister says.

For those wondering, the Chinese New Year is next Monday, February 8.

“Cracks by overseas warez groups will still get posted on the [3DM] forum, and we will actively deal with these,” the group’s leader adds.

It is not entirely clear what “actively deal with” means, but the suggestion is that these cracks will not be allowed on the 3DM BBS/forum.

Bird Sister

What is perhaps most interesting, however, is the group’s apparent reasoning for ceasing their cracking activities. Denuvo was previously cited as a headache for the group but this time around that technology isn’t mentioned.

Instead, 3DM essentially indicates they’re taking part in an experiment to see how the lack of cracks affects the legitimate market.

“We’ll take a look at the situation in a year’s time to see if genuine sales have grown,” Bird Sister says.

There can be little doubt that the effective withdrawal of 3DM from the piracy market will be received as a huge blow to the group’s fans internationally who have come to rely on it for their pirate fix. There is a modicum of good news for the Chinese though, since 3DM will still work on translating and localizing games for its internal market.

The announcement comes on the heels of yesterday’s earnings report from Square Enix, the company behind Just Cause 3 and fellow Denuvo-protected (and also yet to be cracked) title Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Square Enix of America and Europe CEO Phil Rogers said both games had enjoyed “solid starts” but stopped short of revealing sales stats.

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[Ernesto]

Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of video games players around the world obtain their fix from pirate sources. It’s been that way for more than 30 years, only the numbers have grown over time.

However, in the ‘old days’ people could do most of their copying at home, with a couple of cassette decks or software to shift data between 5.25″ floppy disks. But times have changed and although piracy still exists, people now largely rely on a tiny number of so-called ‘cracking’ experts to break copy protection for them.

One of those groups is Chinese outfit 3DM who in recent years have delighted pirate gamers with free copies of some of the world’s greatest titles. Technology companies have always done their best to thwart groups like 3DM and earlier this year came the most promising news to date.

Out of the blue, 3DM announced that the latest iteration of the infamous Denuvo anti-tamper technology had proven so resistant that in a couple of years PC games piracy might become non-existent.

Then, just a couple of weeks later, 3DM put the icing on the cake when they announced that in order to let the official games market breathe, they would be taking a year off from cracking games.

With games producers everywhere super excited at the prospect of a market free from the nuisance of 3DM, optimism of a boosted-revenue future was high. However, while it seems 3DM can deliver surprise gifts with one hand, apparently they can just as easily take them away with the other.

According to a new announcement by the group’s almost rock-star-famous leader, 3DM have decided they are not quite done. Apparently, growing speculation that the group aren’t up to the job of cracking Denuvo has provided them with new inspiration to prove the masses wrong.

“3DM will soon announce that we have a solution to the latest Denuvo encryption used on games including ‘FIFA 16’, ‘Just Cause 3’, and ‘Tomb Raider: The Rise’,” 3DM leader Bird Sister just announced.

Bird Sister

“We [made this announcement] because a lot of players believe we have abandoned cracking due to technical problems, but we will prove it is not the case,” Bird Sister continues.

“We have not yet been stumped [by protection measures].”

Although this announcement flies in the face of some of 3DM’s earlier comments, the news will be received with disappointment by games developers and publishers, not to mention the team at Denuvo. 3DM had been leading the charge on Denuvo-protected titles so a break could’ve given valuable breathing space.

But that said, the proof of the pudding is in the eating and until pirates have tasted the joys of a fully cracked Just Cause 3, their appetites will remain in full force. In other words they’ll believe this game has been cracked when they actually play it at home – thus far there is no sign of a release.

Interestingly, should cracked copies eventually arrive at the hands of 3DM, the group won’t be taking the credit. A somewhat counter-productive comment by Bird Sister indicates that 3DM will not take the usual path on release since they don’t want to attract too much attention.

“Of course, this will not be a high-profile or official 3DM release,” she concludes.

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[willieaames]

Steam offering refunds is a way bigger story. LOL

[Joker__TPB]

well as long as the crack gets out, eventually, i'm happy

i like Steam and their 2 hour, 2 week refund policy, gives me enough time to see if the game is playable on my pc or not, but testing pirated games saves me the trouble

what i think is worse that is happening now in the gaming world is early access gaming, that system needs to be stopped for good