Piracy General

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TorrentFreak: Block Mirror: Dystopian Site-Blocking Triggers Circumvention Innovation (archive)
Site blocking and similar censorship measures are vulnerable to circumvention, helping to popularize VPNs and other encrypted solutions all over the world. That includes Spain, where LaLiga is ramping up its pirate site blocking efforts and at the same time (and with the court's blessing) rendering thousands of innocent sites inaccessible due to overblocking. People are now fighting back against dystopia, transforming conventional site blocking workarounds into tools that reinstate freedom of expression.
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The Mass Shooter Ron Soye said:
They will probably work out the kinks and try to export the approach to other European countries.
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I know it's been already been used in a couple of European countries. What really bothered many people was that the block list was classified. And it contained errors(overblocking, I think a dentist ended up on it), then it leaked(in both Finland and Sweden iirc) so people could look at it and the list was shit.
It felt like they poured a lot of money into it then suddenly an office drone remembered that they got paid 30 mil two years ago to create a block list that was due tomorrow.
 
Smaug's Smokey Hole 2 said:
What really bothered many people was that the block list was classified. And it contained errors(overblocking, I think a dentist ended up on it), then it leaked(in both Finland and Sweden iirc) so people could look at it and the list was shit.
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TorrentFreak: Non-Transparency Resumed After Pirate Site Blacklist Publicly Exposed in Error (archive)
Since shutting down most pirate sites is impossible, Germany's ISPs are given a secret list of pirate domains to block, which in theory hides the existence of the pirate sites from internet users. After it emerged that a local ISP had accidentally exposed the list to the public for the last 10 months, the unintended transparency was quietly yet swiftly reversed. This response provides another point for debate as site-blocking proposals heat up in the United States.
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What's the games piracy scene like these days? I'm not looking to pirate I'm just curious how things have changed. It used to be that most games didn't last a week or two before being available to download and cracked. Someone could go on Pirate Bay or any of a number of other sites and take their pick. But I barely game and don't really talk about gaming with others much so I've completely lost touch. Did DRM win? Did online play make it impossible for any mainstream game? Did a shift to primarily console gaming change things? Did gamers just grow up and decide that £40 for a hundred-plus hours of entertainment was reasonable? :)

Or is it all just as it ever was out there and I'm just unaware.
 
Overly Serious said:
What's the games piracy scene like these days? I'm not looking to pirate I'm just curious how things have changed. It used to be that most games didn't last a week or two before being available to download and cracked. Someone could go on Pirate Bay or any of a number of other sites and take their pick. But I barely game and don't really talk about gaming with others much so I've completely lost touch. Did DRM win? Did online play make it impossible for any mainstream game? Did a shift to primarily console gaming change things? Did gamers just grow up and decide that £40 for a hundred-plus hours of entertainment was reasonable? :)

Or is it all just as it ever was out there and I'm just unaware.
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The TES: Oblivion remake was up on torrent sites within minutes of being released so games piracy is pretty good, at least for Steam games.
 
Mr. Racewar1488 said:
The TES: Oblivion remake was up on torrent sites within minutes of being released so games piracy is pretty good, at least for Steam games.
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So I guess that it's just I'm no longer around people who game then and it's as active as it ever was. And/or it's just discussed less. I thought maybe the anti-piracy tech had gotten good enough or everything required server authentication now and games piracy was less the thing. It used to be that people cracked games just for the challenge and prestige of it. I guess I figured that scene had died down and I couldn't see much profit motive for it, honestly.
 
Overly Serious said:
So I guess that it's just I'm no longer around people who game then and it's as active as it ever was. And/or it's just discussed less. I thought maybe the anti-piracy tech had gotten good enough or everything required server authentication now and games piracy was less the thing. It used to be that people cracked games just for the challenge and prestige of it. I guess I figured that scene had died down and I couldn't see much profit motive for it, honestly.
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As far as I can tell the scene is pretty much dead - at least in terms of going for the challenge.
Yes, games using Steam DRM and the likes are cracked in no time, but then there is Denuvo. If a game implements it, then it's basically game over for piracy, as the last person (Empress) who was able to crack it doesn't seem to bother anymore (last I heard was that "she" cranked the insanity lever up to 11, founded some "cult" on telegram and what not). And that's the sad current state of things.
The only silver lining is, that Denuvo seems to go for some kind of subscription model, meaning publishers usually remove it from the games after a while.
 
Nick Obre said:
Hit me, lad. I'm sure I can find at least some of the stuff you're looking for, I've seen Frog shit at the place.
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This is late, but if you don't mind me asking for the sites you know. I'm looking for French / European movies to save in my drive. I found a gem in Russian facebook but I can't download shit from there.
 
Dunkin DoNUT said:
This is late, but if you don't mind me asking for the sites you know. I'm looking for French / European movies to save in my drive. I found a gem in Russian facebook but I can't download shit from there.
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I can't give out the site (secret club bullshit, I know, but it's their rules), but I'll gladly look for anything you need and fetch you a copy if they have it. Just shoot me a message.
 
LowLowHighLow said:
As far as I can tell the scene is pretty much dead - at least in terms of going for the challenge.
Yes, games using Steam DRM and the likes are cracked in no time, but then there is Denuvo. If a game implements it, then it's basically game over for piracy, as the last person (Empress) who was able to crack it doesn't seem to bother anymore (last I heard was that "she" cranked the insanity lever up to 11, founded some "cult" on telegram and what not). And that's the sad current state of things.
The only silver lining is, that Denuvo seems to go for some kind of subscription model, meaning publishers usually remove it from the games after a while.
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It is worth noting though that if you're dead set on playing a game that implemented Denuvo on the PC (or even on a phone or Android handheld) and the game was released on the Switch, you can try emulating that version. There's obviously compromises made on some titles due to the Switch's weaker hardware, some games won't run well (though many run perfect on PC), and high-end titles don't get released on the Switch, again, due to its weaker hardware, but it is something worth keeping in mind.

As an example: I didn't want to pay full price for Dragon Quest III-HD Remake because of the genderqueer crap and it potentially being too similar to the other releases (a prediction that turned out to be correct), but the PC version uses Denuvo, so I couldn't play it on that platform. It had problems running on Yuzu on PC (a fork may have solved the issue, or I may have overlooked something though), but I was able to get it running on a high-end Android handheld. Had to update a driver being used to stop it from crashing and there are some occasional graphical glitches, but it worked, and I was able to play the game on a device more portable than a Switch even.

Again, not really applicable in all situations, but at least something worth considering when it comes game piracy.
 
Dunkin DoNUT said:
This is late, but if you don't mind me asking for the sites you know. I'm looking for French / European movies to save in my drive. I found a gem in Russian facebook but I can't download shit from there.
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Last time I tried, admittedly a while back, yt-dlp worked on Facebook
 
LowLowHighLow said:
The only silver lining is, that Denuvo seems to go for some kind of subscription model, meaning publishers usually remove it from the games after a while.
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How long are the subscriptions for Denuvo? Planet Coaster 1 (released in 2016) still has Denuvo Anti-Tamper, and the game turns 10 next year. Unless of course, it was removed and Steam didn't remove the Denuvo tag on it.
 
Thiletonomics said:
How long are the subscriptions for Denuvo? Planet Coaster 1 (released in 2016) still has Denuvo Anti-Tamper, and the game turns 10 next year. Unless of course, it was removed and Steam didn't remove the Denuvo tag on it.
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I don't really know if the subscription model was officially confirmed at any point, but it definitely does make sense as I don't see any other reason why a publisher would decide to remove it from their games after some period of time (plus removing it also takes time and potentially needs QA -> it generates costs).
Make of that what you will, but there is this post from the piracy subreddit floating around that says that the monthly fee is 25k$.

So why is it then still a thing for Planet Coaster? My best guess is that they changed the pricing model and at the time you maybe only really paid for license activations (so when someone installed the game) but no additional monthly fee or the monthly fee was pretty low. But again, just a guess.
A potential confirmation for it would be "Handball 17".
When there was a sliver of hope a while back as older Denuvo games got slowly but surely cracked this game was memed about as the unbreakable one, as it was one of (or actually the?) longest uncracked Denuvo game around, while all others from that time got their medicine (reason simply was that no one gave a shit about it - at least not till April 2024, so 7.5 years after release, when someone really did crack it)
This one was also release in late 2016 and uses Denuvo and to that day it never got removed according to Steam.
If the publisher really had to pay 25k$ (or any amount in that realm) then it would be pure insanity to a) implement it for such a niche game and b) still have it implemented a year after it got cracked and overall 8.5 years after release.

PS: In case you don't know, but Planet Coaster was cracked in 2017.
 
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