DRM and game preservation¶
History of DRM¶
As early as 1980s, video game publishers used anti-piracy measures or digital rights management (DRM) to prevent players from copying and illegally sharing games they bought. [1] These measures were initially physical rather than done in code. For example, a game might require to input a code from the game’s manual (which was designed to be hard to photocopy) in order to start it. Naturally, as long as the player owned a legitimate copy of the game, he could still play it at any time in the future.
Anti-piracy measures kept evolving in the 1990s. Activation keys, codes unique to every sold copy that had to be input during the game’s installation, became widely used. Copy protection software like SecuROM could add data to a CD which would be difficult to replicate when copying the disk, preventing the game from being installed. [2] These measures by themselves did not prevent a legitimate owner from running the game, as long as he owned the original CD and activation key. Arguably, they only interfered with his right to make a personal copy.
Other new anti-piracy measures started using the Internet to validate game ownership. During game installation, the installer would communicate with anti-piracy tool owner’s servers to decrypt the game’s files. Shutting down such a server would make the game impossible to install. Another technique collects a unique hardware timestamp to limit the number of computers a game could be installed on. [3] In part because of these anti-piracy schemes, release of the game “Spore” in 2008 caused significant player backlash.
In 2010 onwards, easy access to Internet allowed for always-online DRM. The game would no longer check if it’s legitimate only on installation, but would authenticate with a server during gameplay. If the server that authenticates such a game is shut down, the game would immediately become unusable. Notable examples of games with always-online DRM for which support was shut down include “Darkspore” [4] and “The Crew” [5]. [TODO more good examples?]
Impact of DRM on game preservation¶
Online DRM often relies on cryptography to ensure that only publisher-operated servers which contain the secret keys can authenticate a game. [6] If the publisher shuts down such a server, does not remove DRM from the game and does not publish the secret keys, the only way for the player to circumvent it is to remove the DRM check from the game.
While there is prior law e.g. in the US that allows players to circumvent the DRM in this situation [7], this can be unreasonably difficult to do because of game-side obfuscation techniques. Irdeto, company that develops Denuvo anti-tamper, claims that it can prevent debugging, reverse engineering and changing the application and that it can increase the time needed to circumvent protection to “weeks and months”. [8] If not removed from the game, such tools effectively prevent players from circumventing DRM (as they might be allowed to do) and launching their game.
According to some estimates [9], of the games released from 2021 onwards that use Denuvo and never removed it, only 24% have had it circumvented. [TODO: better source than reddit?]