Software Pirates Worried About PC Games Becoming Too Hard to Crack

By 2018, anti-piracy measures on PC games will be so advanced that it may bring about an end to pirated games. That's according to a Chinese cracking group that goes by the name of 3DM.

3DM forum founder Bird Sister said in a blog post that efforts to crack the Denuvo anti-tempering measures for Avalanche's open-world game Just Cause 3 have so far proven unsuccessful. Though 3DM thinks the game can eventually be cracked, the group is not optimistic for the future.

"I still believe that this game can be compromised," Bird Sister said in the blog post (via TorrentFreak). "But according to current trends in the development of encryption technology, in two years time I'm afraid there will be no free games to play in the world."

As TorrentFreak explains, Denuvo is a secondary encryption system that adds to whatever form of DRM a developer/publisher may put on a game. BioWare's 2014 RPG Dragon Age Inquisition used the product, and it was able to keep pirates at bay for an entire month, which was deemed a long time.

Of course, the technology world is in a state of constant change, with new advancements made all the time. It wouldn't be too difficult to believe that piracy will live on beyond 2018, as hackers are a committed bunch.

Kotaku reports that Denuvo is also used for games like Batman: Arkham Knight, Mad Max, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and Rise of the Tomb Raider.

DRM is a controversial and debated topic in gaming. Assassin's Creed publisher Ubisoft has admitted that DRM cannot stop piracy, while The Witcher developer CD Projekt Red doesn't put any DRM on its PC games because it thinks DRM is the "worst thing in the gaming industry."