1y ago

Capcom's Steam Deck Verified Games are being made unplayable with new DRM that only punishes paying customers

www.tomshardware.com Capcom's Steam Deck Verified Games are being made unplayable with new DRM that only punishes paying customers

Patching in new DRM years after launch seems unlikely to impact pirates, but actively harms legitimate users who play on Steam Deck or mod games they paid for.

106 comments

What? ALL DRM only punishes paying customers.
- Not necessarily. All DRM punishes paying customers, but some also punishes pirates. Very few games with Denuvo ever get cracked, instead the publisher removes it after a while because Denuvo charges a license fee as long as its in your game. E.g. the Hatsune Miku game on steam hasn't been cracked in the two years it's been out. So there's an argument for using it, even if it's a flawed one.
  But these games already went without DRM for years. They're long since cracked. The only purpose this DRM serves is to make it harder for paying customers to use mods. Not pirates, they can keep using the same mods they've always used. This is literally for the purpose of degrading the experience of paying customers. That's what they mean by "only punishes paying customers".
  
  Very few games with Denuvo ever get cracked
  I was under the impression that all the major Denuvo games got cracked within the year they launched if not the first couple weeks? Maybe there wasn't the right attention for that game?
  Do you know of a place that tracks that kinda thing? I'm pretty curious now about the statistics of release to cracked.
- It's pretty frustrating that I had to buy a different version of fallout 4 to use serious mods, just because the Xbox app adds an extra layer of DRM.

At the time of this post both the game and proton had been updated and the game was working again.
Adding DRM to a two year old already cracked game is still an insane decision, but the problem of it breaking the game was fixed relatively quickly.
- It's an long-term decision meant to kill modding. Having to seek a cracked version for modding isn't a problem for some users, but it's an imposing thing for users on average. It makes it less likely that your average user will attempt to engage with mods, which reduces the audience for mods, and that in turn makes mod developers less likely to develop them.
  It's about strangling the life out of modding communities slowly.
  
  Which is incredibly stupid since mods prolong the lifetime of a game's value
  
  I don't understand why some publishers of singleplayer focused games are against modding.
  I understand that it could impact other players experiences in a multi-player setting. And I support any game developer segregating modded clients from vanilla. What I can't wrap my head around is why some try to ban modding all together. If a player ruins or enhances their experience with mods, it's on them, not the developers.

Every DRM punishes paying customers, not only this new thing.

Lmao, this is months after they released a steam deck focused patch for Monster Hunter World that made it run on the deck, World was suddenly being played by several people again, congrats capcom for the fumble.

This is why I primarily shop at GOG. There are almost no other storefronts left that promote DRM-free games.
- But they don't promote linux platform.
  
  That's true, they don't. But they're at least open enough to allow community efforts on Linux like Heroic.
  
  It's a missed opportunity.
  
  the beauty of no DRM is that if a game runs fine on wine (and I'm sure most games in GOG will) then you can just install them.
- GOG lost my trust with the Hitman situation, and lashing out at customers that were leaving reviews detailing the situation.
  https://www.eurogamer.net/hitman-gog-release-sparks-drm-row-review-bombing-accusation
  They also sneakily updated the page to mention the DRM after people had bought the game.
  
  There’s an updated article that includes GOG’s follow-up to that situation: https://www.eurogamer.net/gog-pulls-hitman-from-its-own-store-admits-it-shouldnt-have-released-it-in-its-current-form
  Dear Community,
  Thank you for your patience and for giving us the time to investigate the release of HITMAN GOTY on GOG. As promised, we’re getting back to you with updates.
  We're still in dialogue with IO Interactive about this release. Today we have removed HITMAN GOTY from GOG’s catalog – we shouldn’t have released it in its current form, as you’ve pointed out.
  We’d like to apologise for the confusion and anger generated by this situation. We’ve let you down and we’d like to thank you for bringing this topic to us – while it was honest to the bone, it shows how passionate you are towards GOG.
  We appreciate your feedback and will continue our efforts to improve our communication with you.

Digital rights management - who's rights? Certainly it's not in my best interest.
Digital restrictions management.
- More like digital wrongs management.

All this because Capcom heard that a Street Fighter tournament participant was using a nude mod for Chun-Li. Just blacklist him and move on, let me keep my flashlight lasers on dropped materials in MH:W please.
- I imagine it's about prevention rather than discipline in their eyes. I'm not defending the idea (who cares if we see chun li naked? There is much worse on the internet) but I don't think blacklisting the player would assuage their fears of it happening in the future.
  
  No, that's the actual reason.

While this is awful for a company to do and I'm 100% against drm in games in general I do think the steam deck issue is being overblown. Valve quickly put out a proton update that fixed compatibility on steam deck. The game works fine now.
- Only because it's a game big enough for the relevant people to take notice. A smaller game would just stay broken, due to some suit's whims. This practice needs to end.

Capcom has been really shit for a while now, they completely lost all of my trust with how they launched MHW. It was a barebones minimum viable port that runs a 3090 hot and frequently had network failures, and they refused Refunds for thousands of people.
It's like Asian Disney.
- When you say MWH, did you mean MHW, as in Monster Hunter World? I can't think of another Capcom game that MHW could be.
  
  Thank you! I really hate super ambiguous gaming acronyms, that even as a gamer myself, I either can't understand or have to rack my brains to figure out. It's really bloody annoying!
  
  Monster-World Hunting
  This hunt just went interstellar
  
  When you say MWH, did you mean MHW, as in Monster Hunter World?
  From the article...
  As reflected in the official patch notes for Ver.16.0.2.0 of Monster Hunter: Rise on Steam
  MHR isn't MHW, but I think you're still right.
  
  Yes, sorry.
- This article isn't true
  
  Howso?

I've bought many games specifically because of mods developed for them. There are many games that aren't appealing in their stock "as-the-developer-intended" implementation. Capcom's actions are foolish here. Hopefully they see a significant hit to their game sales.
- I feel you, I can't play unmodded skyrim because the quests and plots are so paper thin I just lose interest after a few hours, but it's a great sandbox for modders to play around in and I'm enjoying my run as a monk with an entire unarmed perk tree.
  
  I just bought Skyrim, 10 years or so after its initial release. Only because of the 60 000 mods on Nexus. I am playing it now with 400 mods installed and after a bit of configuration I am quite happy with it.

I'll never pay for another capcom game but you can be damn sure that doesn't mean I'll never play another capcom game.
Good work you old dipshits, shooting your long time fanbase instead of doing literally anything else

Maybe people should stop supporting these companies. I know saying it for the 729,631st time won't change anything, but all I'm gonna say is I don't have issues with Capcom, EA, Ubisoft, or a few other studios, because us simply 🌠 dont play their games 🌠
- I have issues with Ubisoft even if they make shitty games I don't play. (I've played older titles but have since quit supporting or playing the ones I have), since the company is still preying on whales, children and gamers who are less savvy about dark patterns. Ubisoft also still continues a toxic work environment in which the upper management preys sexually on the clerical staff and then works to bury any scandals and silence the victims. And I'd regard that as offensive and bad for the economy even if it was happening in a fissile fuel rod manufacturing company I never personally engaged with.
  Ubisoft, and much of the gaming industry generally is really awful across several compound practices. I mean EA and Gearbox have the same kinds of developer abuse climate and they routinely crunch and do massive layoffs even though both practices make their games measurably worse.
  That said, Capcom has been a problem for a long time, and I've ceased getting or playing capcom games over a decade ago. But I hope it tanks and stops taking money from gamers who don't know better.

So, I don't know how to put this, and I don't this actually isn't true . Not sure how this blew up, but yeah.
- That article feels autogenerated, it repeats the same four lines over and over. Basically one guy says that thousands of other people are wrong.
  
  Is the DRM already out? I assumed this was for some upcoming update they announced but I haven't had any mods break, including the light pillar mod which I thought Capcom's DRM was supposed to prevent. Even just 3 or 4 days ago someone went in and one shot a monster.
  
  I'm at work so I can't do deep dive searching, and honestly I will probably forget about this by the time I get home, but there are other people I follow who report on this stuff, unfortunately only in podcast format, who have also talked to modders in person. All of them say mods are fine. Take that for what you will.

This is why I only play unlicensed Tengen games on my NES. R.B.I. Baseball, Gauntlet, and Pac-Man are really all I need and I like their cartridge shape better anyway.

Damn. This is why my recent steps in Steam, after seeing a good sale is: does it have Denuvo? Do I need to install a separate launcher? Is the discount worth it?....

I still have a PC copy of 2007(?) Sega Rally I can no longer play because the DRM software is no longer supported in Windows.
- I still have a PC copy of 2007(?) Sega Rally I can no longer play because the DRM software is no longer supported in Windows.
  I'm curious if it would work on Steam Deck using Proton.

So MH Rise is still busted? I figured they would have done something about that far more quickly
- Not busted anymore, works now.

106 comments