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Dragon Age Inquisition: Crack Delayed by Denuvo and Modding not in Danger

Dragon Age Inquisition companions and support characters

Dragon Age Inquisition is launching today in the United States of America and Russia. However, a piracy leak has been running around the internet for several days now. As usual, the issue is with the crack. Apparently, crackers are having a hard time breaking through the code due to the new technical protection measures implemented by BioWare and Electronic Arts Games.

Inquisition’s PC version uses a unique and original online activation process called Denuvo, an “anti-tamper technology that prevents debugging, reverse engineering and changing of executable files.” The whole objective with Denuvo is to stop illegal bypassing DRM (Digital Rights Management) platforms such as Steam and Origin. It is known that piracy can’t be stopped to all its extent but it can be delayed, at least in the first days or weeks of a title’s release.

But Denuvo doesn’t simply block piracy, it can also barricade the process of modding, which is making players upset. BioWare has already published an official statement claiming that modding is surely not in danger:

Denuvo is anti-tamper on the executable. This has nothing to do with mods or attempts to change textures or anything like that. (…) If someone’s mod is going to be based on modifying the executable, then yeah, that won’t work. If the mod is based on game data, then that has nothing to do with the anti-tamper system.

An update: The BioWare Forum is now offline.

Dragon Age Inquisition stands against piracy is causing a huge polemic among gamers, mostly because Denuvo has a twisted reputation when it comes to games’ fluidity and performance. On the other hand, crackers are not about to give up. Popular piracy groups like Skidrow and 3dmgame are looking forward to publishing a working crack anytime soon. Now, the question is, how long will Denuvo last against the ferocity of crackers? OR could this prove to be the method all publishers and developers were looking for to stop piracy in gaming?

25 Comments

  • Danny
    Posted November 20, 2014 at 4:06 am

    I glad modding won’t be affected by Denuvo, I can’t wait until mods start rolling out.

    With the whole Cracking thing, thing about it like this. If it was built up, and can be torn back down, it may be tough, but it’s absolutlety possible, no coding is un-crackable. I’m not promoting pirating, but I hate EA.

    • Mohamed
      Posted November 20, 2014 at 1:17 pm

      the problem is in my country (Egypt) that we depend on this cracked games to be played if we wanted to buy it i will be very difficult due to the few shops that sells video games in the country and also if you find one you will have to pay a big sum of cash to get it bec of our currency compared to the dollar or euro you will have to multiply it by 7 and result will be from 400 LE to 500 and w cant afford that much money and i love dragon age i played every game for it and i hope they crack it soon bec i cant wait

      • mohammad Amin
        Posted November 21, 2014 at 2:13 pm

        same here in iran :((((
        the problem is that in iran i don’t know of even one shop that sells the original games… and by the way we don’t really have that much money for a game you know! parent’s don’t give money for games that are 1/12 of their payment of the month… :(

        • Farooq_Shahzad
          Posted November 23, 2014 at 8:37 pm

          Same here in Pakistan. The original games dont come. plus the original is not even downloading if you buy it.

          • wizardofozz
            Posted November 27, 2014 at 7:42 am

            Malaysia, same problem. If they want to reduce piracy maybe they could adapt their prices to the countries, but that’d work only IF you live in a country whose government allow those games. Thanks to hackers like the Skidrow team games aren’t a first world christian luxury product. Let’s enjoy it while it lasts.

        • Afraz
          Posted November 24, 2014 at 2:59 pm

          I’m anxious about any progress on cracking Denuvo’s DRM.

      • nashathedog
        Posted November 9, 2015 at 8:24 am

        Pirating is a big issue that has a negative effect on PC gaming overall. The issues not so much about people in countries where the game is not readily available but more about the thousands of people that seem to think that there entitled to something when they want it and will pirate it simply to save a few quid that they’ll then spend elsewhere. If they haven’t got the money they should save up or do as I do and wait until it’s cheaper. Look at Watchdogs I didn’t buy it until it was £5.00 in a sale, Same with Unity, I haven’t even got Inquisition yet. I got it via Origin on a use it for free for a weekend deal and liked it so I will get it but I will get it when money allows. Too many gamers have the attitude that they sit there and think “Hmm I can’t afford it for a couple of weeks so rather than wait I’ll pirate it and play it today”

  • Steve
    Posted November 20, 2014 at 12:29 pm

    Sucks that it will affect modding, other games were totally free to mode.

    • Calin Ciabai
      Posted November 21, 2014 at 7:52 am

      Bioware stated that it won’t affect modding, though.

      • EtherMan
        Posted November 22, 2014 at 12:42 am

        Not quite. They actually said that modding IS affected but only in so far as mods that modify the exe. Given the history of modding games, that won’t affect minor stuff, but it does stop all sort of overhaul mods later which generally do mod the executables as well. So yea, it affects modding, but hopefully as little as possible…

        • Rogork
          Posted November 25, 2014 at 2:33 am

          Are you serious? NO mods alter .exe files, last one that did was probably Skyrim’s 4GB patch, which alters the way the application works.

          And major overhauls are usually game data edits, not exe hijacks.

          • Xanarius
            Posted November 26, 2014 at 10:20 pm

            SKSE ? :)

  • Vubi
    Posted November 20, 2014 at 12:42 pm

    Well. I believe we will suffer from this. If you look at Nexus, wich was the primary mod site for DA titles…. You have quite talented devs working on some insane mods out there.

    If we look at TESV:Skyrim, the modding communtiy has extended the life of that game to insane lengths. ATM im running it with 105 Immersive, lore friendly mods, graphics overhauls, lighting enhancements, animations scripts , behaviour and weather patterns etc. When I boot up Skyrim it literally loads up a world that I can customize to suit my preferences fully.
    I personally prefer to stay within the norms of the devs intent so i insist on lore friendly mods.

    I feel that PC gaming as a whole is going to suffer greatly, as the modding community won’t have chance to play around in Frostbite… and that sucks its an amazing engine that would benefit greatly from creativity.

    Not to mention that ill be moving in a week and won’t be able to have internet acess for a few weeks.. now i pre ordered the game.. but wont be able to play it cuz of the DRM???? Who is that helping or protecting? Its certainly not protecting me as a consumer. And it is most certainly isn’t protecting the game, because it will get pirated Everything gets cracked eventually….

  • KaushiK
    Posted November 20, 2014 at 5:03 pm

    I sincerely would have bought this game,but unfortunately mine country(INDIA) has banned this game,so there’s no way i can play this game without cracking :(

    • Arjun Salwan
      Posted November 21, 2014 at 11:19 am

      Just to clarify, India did not ban this game. EA pulled it back from the market due to some vague sexual laws under the article 377. If EA was really sincere and was thinking about Indian Gamers like you and me, who buy their games though proper means, then they would have clarified it with the Indian Government officials (The department who would monitor the digital media like Movies, Games etc.)

      But no, they are playing safe and we are paying the price. I was really looking forward to play it and it looks like I will have to get it though the ‘other’ means.

      • EtherMan
        Posted November 22, 2014 at 12:52 am

        Sorry Arjun but that’s not how law works. The government officials in any democracy cannot directly interfere in the justice system like that, nor can you get preemptive rulings. They can only either release it and HOPE that no prosecutor takes up a case against them, or not release it… They have legal advisers for every country they export to so as to calculate the risks of that happening, and weight that against the potential profits as calculated by their market analysts, and in this case, they deemed the potential profits too low compared to the risks. Either because the profits are too low (unlikely given the number of potential buyers), or the risks is too high, as in the risk that a prosecutor would take it up, is deemed very high. Think about it for a moment… If it was possible to get preemptive judgements on everything, no company would EVER be sued or prosecuted. All decisions with even the tiniest risks would have been tested and the legal system of every country would be completely overwhelmed… There would be nothing done in the courts other than this stuff… Ever… And it still wouldn’t be enough time…

        • 12
          Posted November 22, 2014 at 8:15 pm

          Of course they can interfere with the justice system, and they do it. Don’t be naive.

      • original
        Posted November 22, 2014 at 6:26 am

        I hate EA man, but don’t blame this on those aholes. Blame it on your country(and mine which is another censor-happy country) I don’t believe my officials can wake up and notice that they should have banned it but I believe they would if they knew… Regardless protest censorship, not EA on the matter.

      • Stephen Smith
        Posted November 23, 2014 at 5:13 am

        Well, that’s kind of missing the point, I think. The problem isn’t with EA, it’s with India’s laws. Don’t blame EA, blame your laws. The best way to solve problems is at the source.

  • Adiktdtololi
    Posted November 20, 2014 at 7:26 pm

    Q.Q god damn it.. If only my hardware can support this game at launch i would use my money to buy this game… but sadly the game needs a 64bit processor so i would need to buy 1… my PC is seriously in need of an upgrade >.>

  • yuggoth
    Posted November 21, 2014 at 9:00 pm

    I hope that somebody will crack it soon. I would gladly buy the game but I do not want to waste my money only to find out that my 2 years old PC sucks, I just want to try it first and see if I can run it or not.

    • Nathaniel
      Posted December 8, 2014 at 9:00 am

      They offer a refund if you don’t like the game.. no questions asked.

  • original
    Posted November 22, 2014 at 6:22 am

    I have purchased a few games from origin before. I won’t again for every difficulty and stupidity they have provided. And I will play DA:I. If they can not find a way for us to let us play our games without their stupid launchers, they can go to hell. If I have to crack a game to double click then play it, that’s what I am going to do. And I will NOT log on. FU

  • original
    Posted November 22, 2014 at 6:47 am

    “Microsoft is reporting that “Purchase and Content Usage” is currently limited on both Xbox One and Xbox 360″ -EA Games
    FU

  • corporal
    Posted November 25, 2014 at 6:50 pm

    For me I only pirate games to make sure they’ll run well on my computer before I go and buy it because I don’t like going out and spending $60+ on a game and finding out my computer can’t even run it. That’s why I think there should be demos of literally every game, sure it’s a pain but you can’t always rely on the system requirements because according to Skyrim’s my computer shouldn’t have been able to run it, but it does even on the highest settings + a boat load of texture mods and it doesn’t lag at all.

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