Witcher 2 'cracked within two hours of release' despite using SecuROM, says Marcin Iwinski
Anti-piracy measures such as DRM does not protect games from being illegally downloaded, claims CD Projekt RED's CEO.
Speaking to Joystiq, Marcin Iwinski said that the measure causes problems with legitimate users, whilst failing to prevent piracy.
"DRM does not protect your game," he said.
"If there are examples that it does, then people maybe should consider it, but then there are complications with legit users."
During his presentation, Iwinski announced the developer would never use DRM again, claiming that the SecuROM on its Witcher game was cracked within two hours of release.
Advertisement
"Every subsequent game we will never use any DRM anymore, it's just over-complicating things," he said.
"We release the game. It was cracked in two hours, it was no time for Witcher 2. What really surprised me is that the pirates didn't use the GOG version, which was not protected.
“They took the SecuROM retail version, cracked it and said 'we cracked it', meanwhile there's a non-secure version with a simultaneous release. You'd think the GOG version would be the one floating around."
Iwinski previoulsy claims that Witcher 2 had most likely been pirated more than four million times, whilst selling a quarter of that amount.
---
GDC - LIVE! Breaking news, latest news and up-to-the-minute developments: HERE
iPhone owners should download our free app (iTunes link). It puts Develop’s daily must-read online news content – including all the stories from GDC – in the palm of your hand.
As someone with an assembly background (and maths), companies really need to be educated on how cracking works, and the pitfalls of relying on already cracked systems. There are countless guides on how to crack securom and the others.
The truth is that it's completely unavoidable without dongles, no amount of obfuscation can hide the line(s) of code that performs the checks.
Perhaps we should do away completely with checks and instead focus on creating an encryption formula that accumulates into needed values of the game. Without knowing the keys it is difficult (and hopefully mathematically impossible) to fake it, and all that happens is that the game plays slightly unsatisfactory. It functions, but with somewhat iffy gameplay. You can't verify whether it has been successfully cracked or not, just hope it won't topple over where a legitimate game would.
Sounds like a nice little pet project too, even if I don't care much for DRM.
