Hello there Crackstatus. I'm tired of everyone making presumptions here, so I contacted Denuvo people by using the form on their website, pretending to be some unknown game dev on steam. Surprisingly they answered and gave me lots and lots of info.

I will copy and paste all the info here from all emails so please mind the block of text. Here goes:

Hello!

Thanks for reaching out and your interest in our Anti-Tamper solution.

Our core competence are C++ based games, will you upcoming large project (Dead End Road?) be written in Flash too or do you plan to use C++ or Unity?

I’m happy to follow up with more details when this is clarified!

Best regards, Thomas

Thomas Goebl Director Sales & Marketing

Dean Boyle boyleboy02@gmail.com 15:56

Hello Thomas.

Our next release is called Dead End Road, as you guessed, and this larger project is written in C++ language.

Kind regards, Dean

Hi Dean,

Thanks for the quick reply. Great news!

I cover some basic intro below and some questions I usually get when talking about our protection.

Brief intro:

Our mission is Anti-Piracy for PC focusing on games being published on the various game platforms like Steam, Origin, Uplay,...

Although there is news that we might prevent piracy completely going forward, we have a more realistic view: our focus is to help publishers to secure the initial sales windows of their games hence delaying piracy.

Games released with the Steam, etc. DRM / license management are always cracked on day of release, the piracy groups have automatic tools to remove those – this was one of the motivation why we developed our Anti-Tamper solution mainly on request from EA, our first backer for this technology which was released September 2014 – since then many other publishers jumped on board and we see a growing interest based on the recent successes.

During design we had three major points in mind:

Security: Current game platform license management system (e.g. Steam, Origin, Uplay,…) are all compromised, but there is no need for a second DRM (hence extra hurdle for the paying consumer) just a way to protect and strengthen the existing one Convenience for paying consumers: the paying consumer does not even feel we are there (no extra hurdles, no drop of the in-game framerate,…) Convenience for developers: the protection is very easy to apply for development studios (we talk 2-3 days work)

What’s our offering:

The services you get along with our Anti-Tamper solution are a long list:

Remote and optional on-site 2-3 days support of Denuvo engineers Automatic online encryption toolkit (OETK) integration into built process Anti-Tamper, Anti-Debugging, Anti-Loader technology for the game released on Steam,… (automatically applied by our encryption engine) Tamper Detection implementation with game specific Spotcheck / Trigger system (game play changes for cracked versions) DeepBinding module including manual revalidation website (Steam Ticket revalidation service) Manual profiling of the game for performance uncritical functions used for Anti-Tamper protection Manual testing of the protected game (on all major Windows OS and hardware configuration; performance testing with FPS comparison between protected and unprotected game) Early Leak Detection (scanning online for piracy releases) Manual piracy monitoring (piracy forums) with regular updates per mail

Plus you get all security updates over time to be released on future games patches, DLCs,… You can also use the protection on all pre-release builds like betas, preview versions, Early Access, etc. and post-release builds like addons, GOTY, etc.

Integration workflow into a game:

The protection is a post-compiler step and does not need any source code modifications on your end (only three compiler / linker settings must be enabled in VS).

We have an online encryption service which is available as SaaS (hosted in the AWS).

Step 1: Provide us (access to) a (running) build with three compiler / linker settings enabled: /pdb /map /fixed:no; the Steam app ID and Steam private key

Step 2: We create and run our performance profiler and play the game collecting performance uncritical functions

Step 3: We setup the game project on the protection server and send a cmd line tool to the dev team with instructions how to embed it to the build process

Step 4: When running the protection our engine decompiles the exe, parses the collected functions from step 2, injects the security code and recompiles the executable (and creates an updated pdb for debugging)

We usually see this workflow done in 1-2 weeks but suggest to start integrating it 1 month prior goldmaster date to have enough time and focus – also for testing.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best, Thomas

Hey.

I like the services package. I personally researched Denuvo performances looking through game reviews on the Steam Platform (Hitman, Just Cause 3) and I'm quite satisfied. I will proceed sending you a build of our game and what else is required. But before, can I ask you how much all of this will be priced?

Awaiting your answer.

Hi Dean,

Thanks, indeed currently we have quite a run with the protected titles. Just to manage expectations (also for the future), we don’t position our Anti-Tamper as uncrackable, but as hard to crack – the ultimate goal is to prevent a cracked version in the initial sales window. For sure, the longer the protection holds, the better ;-)

When do you plan to release ‘Dead End Road’?

I cover all sizes of titles regarding pricing, please provide your estimate under which category ‘Dead End Road’ will fall.

Pricing:

We offer a wide range of business models to cover different scenarios intended by you as a publisher / developer. I’m also happy to discuss tailoring something reflecting your needs.

Official ordering and invoicing is done by our partner Sony, we do the technical fulfillment.

The standard pricing models:

Lump sum model:

AAA title (bigger 500k units on PC): 100.000 EUR

AA title (smaller 500k units on PC): 50.000 EUR

Indie title (less than 100k units on PC): 10.000 EUR

Or

Per unit pricing:

2.500 EUR setup fee.

0,15 EUR per unit reported monthly based on Steam,… owners.

(optional) cost covering for on-site visit if requested.

Return of investment:

As I often get the question regarding the ROI when using our Anti-Tamper… as every unprotected game is cracked on day of release every day crack free secures additional sales for you, for sure: the longer it’s uncracked, the better.

If you want I can share collected posts of pirates stating that they bought the game as no crack was available (we see this for every game we protect). That’s good feedback and shows that we do something right, but no quantification. Usually it's hard to show hard numbers of additional sales and how long a crack free windows should be ideally to generate additional sales but yearly franchises like FIFA from EA or Football Manager from Sega can be used for comparison.

For Sega’s Football Manager the sales numbers are publically available (approx. numbers from SteamSpy) and you see that Football Manager 2013 (good crack free window of 1 month vs. 0 days on FM 2012 / 2014) sold ways better: Football Manager 2012: 1,173,175 units Football Manager 2013: 1,340,023 units Football Manager 2014: 1,177,011 units

This shows that a 4 week crack free window already gives far ~15% more sales (at full price as this is the initial sales window) in this sample.

The titles protection with Denuvo Anti-Tamper see a crack free window of 1-12 month.

Recently protected games are all uncracked for weeks and months:

FIFA 16 (EA, Origin): uncracked since Sept, 18th Star Wars (EA, Origin): uncracked since Nov, 17th Just Cause 3 (Square Enix, Steam): uncracked since Dec, 1st Rise of the Tomb Raider (Square Enix, Steam & Win10 Store): uncracked since Jan, 28th Unravel (EA, Origin): uncracked since Feb, 4th Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 (EA, Origin): uncracked since Feb, 18th Anno 2205 (Ubisoft, Uplay & Steam): uncracked since Feb, 29th Far Cry Primal (Ubisoft, Uplay & Steam): uncracked since Mar, 1st Hitman (Square Enix, Steam): uncracked since Mar, 11th Need for Speed (EA, Origin): uncracked since Mar, 15th ADR1FT (505 Games, Steam & Oculus): uncracked since Mar, 28th EVE: Gunjack (CCP, Steam & Oculus): uncracked since Mar, 28th The Climb (Crytek, Oculus): uncracked since April, 28th Doom (Bethesda, Steam): uncracked since May, 13th Homefront: The Revolution (DeepSilver, Steam): uncracked since May, 17th Total War: Warhammer (Sega, Steam): uncracked since May, 24th Mirror's Edge Catalyst (EA, Origin): uncracked since June, 1st Edge of Nowhere (Insomniac, Oculus): uncracked since June, 6th

And finally it’s a statement that we don’t take it as given that the PC Windows platform is a piracy platform.

Getting started:

The easiest way is to send us some Steam keys and the beta branch information + password.

For the special built executable + map + pdb file with the three compiler settings we can provide you an sftp account or you can upload it to any location:

The three compiler / linker settings:

o /pdb

o /map

o /fixed:no;

Steam info: o Steam AppID

o Steam Private Key - in the Stream back-office go to “Security” -> “SDK Auth” and the key is displayed

Best, Thomas

Dean Boyle boyleboy02@gmail.com 17:24

Hey.

All of this information sounds convincing. Well we are planning to release our Indie game early in August, if everything goes well. Also I have seen you mentioned you gathered messages from pirates stating they bought the game. Can you please share some of those posts here? I'd like to see it with my eyes, this could be the end of piracy if this really happens.

Hi Dean,

Great, just let me know when you are ready to roll, which biz model you want & I’ll setup the paperwork with Sony.

Please find below some recent examples from Doom – posts found in some dark corners of the net like nfohump, cs.rin.ru,… It’s not the end of piracy, but it’s a good sign… ;-)

Here is a screen with the posts he sent me: http://imgur.com/uw4xod3

Yeah it's a lot of text, but it has all the information you guys need.

From the looks of it, they really are monitoring Crackstatus, cs.rin and other websites where pirates discuss. And omfg, 100k euros for protecting an AAA Game ?!!?!

Thanks for being good pirates ;) Dont let Denuvo win.

Edit: I did not take pics and post them here cause it would be too much of a headache since not even a single email fits a screenshot. So I just copy pasted while separating my emails and his emails

Here's a pic with the fake email account so no one says this thing isnt legit: http://imgur.com/R10WeHu