TorrentFreak is reporting that the software piracy group, CODEX, has broken the MSStore, UWP, EAppX, XBLive, and Arxan copy protection mechanisms protecting Zoo Tycoon Ultimate Animal Collection. Because this is the first and currently only case of an Arxan-protected title being cracked, TorrentFreak is cautious to claim that the copy protection is broken, just in case there’s a flaw in this specific title that allowed circumvention.
Image Credit: LadyOfHats via Wikipedia (Public Domain license)
That said, piracy groups are smart engineers, and DRM essentially amounts to saying, “I’m giving you all the pieces required to unlock this content, but I’m doing it in a way that you hopefully won’t figure out”. At least with most encryption, there are some components (keys and passwords) that are never public, and they are required to unlock the content. DRM doesn’t have that option, because otherwise no-one would be able to use the content it “protects”. (Then there’s also the whole “what are you spending and what are you hoping to gain by using DRM” argument that is often overlooked, because exerting control often correlates with a decline in sales, but that’s another discussion.)
Regardless, CODEX claims that this is the first time a UWP titles has been successfully pirated. It took about four months after its release, but it eventually happened.
I wish all DRM were cracked
I wish all DRM were cracked the moment it was invented so I wouldn’t have to deal with it. Makes me want to pirate everything.
It took 4 months because
It took 4 months because nobody cared enough for these games.
Those were bad games with
Those were bad games with tons of DRM. The paying customer ends up with a game that becomes much harder to run, and ultimately when the game no longer sells well and the DRM servers are no longer profitable to run, they will be shut down, turning those games into digital paperweights.
This is just like what happens with older IOT devices where the device has largely stopped selling, and allowing those older devices to connect to any of their servers ends up costing more than continued sales of the device, then they EOL them and they become bricks.