Irdeto, the developers of the anti-piracy software Denuvo, announced a new tool that will allow game developers to easily track leaks back to its original source.
So if they watermark, then this may become an issue. If you buy a game over steam for the purpose of leaking, steam or some payment provider knows your bank account. From that you can be traced down.
So to hide, a cracker would need to have a fake bank account, or live somewhere lawless like in Russia.
Watermarking isn’t to stop you from buying a game on steam and cracking it, it’s to stop you from uploading screenshots or videos of a game you have alpha/beta access to.
If a game does ship with this, it’s also shipping with denuvo. A cracker that can bypass denuvo can bypass the watermarking too.
According to the article this is a watermark for the game file. Which could be hidden by modifying certain parts of the game in a way that functions the same but results in a unique file for each copy distributed. (Similar to adding a unique pattern of double spaces to a word document.) Without knowledge of the watermarking algorithm a leaker couldn’t be sure the watermark has been removed/obscured.
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Denuvo is great for pushing players to older or indie games, games free of exploitive design.
All DRM is anti-consumer and negatively impacts paying customers. I’m open to friendly discussion on this opinion :)
So if they watermark, then this may become an issue. If you buy a game over steam for the purpose of leaking, steam or some payment provider knows your bank account. From that you can be traced down.
So to hide, a cracker would need to have a fake bank account, or live somewhere lawless like in Russia.
Watermarking isn’t to stop you from buying a game on steam and cracking it, it’s to stop you from uploading screenshots or videos of a game you have alpha/beta access to.
If a game does ship with this, it’s also shipping with denuvo. A cracker that can bypass denuvo can bypass the watermarking too.
According to the article this is a watermark for the game file. Which could be hidden by modifying certain parts of the game in a way that functions the same but results in a unique file for each copy distributed. (Similar to adding a unique pattern of double spaces to a word document.) Without knowledge of the watermarking algorithm a leaker couldn’t be sure the watermark has been removed/obscured.
So basically nothing will change.
There’s no need for a bank account, since you can buy games on steam using gift cards bought with cash.
Oh great! Then that is no problem at all.
you can top up your steam account with cash directly at any payment terminal