A famous China-based cracking group that declared Denuvo unbreakable has officially retired today, the start of the Lunar New Year.
In a message on her personal blog, the leader of Chinese cracking group 3DM, Bird Sister, announced their plans to the public to stop cracking single player video games.
3DM also manages a forum, and Bird Sister implies that overseas crack and warez groups that will share cracked games in it will not be allowed to do so anymore as well.
3DM was the group that famously announced they could not crack Denuvo copy protection in Just Cause 3. Bird Sister shared their opinion that this copy protection may be the beginning of the end for video game piracy.
However, Bird Sister says they are not retiring because they have given up from Denuvo, but to partake in an interesting experiment. They want to see firsthand if piracy really has an effect on sales. So, 3DM will be tracking down sales of new releases to see if there is an improvement compared to the years before it.
3DM does more legitimate work for the Chinese gaming community as well. While their cracking efforts are on hiatus, they will continue to help translate and localize games for their fellow Chinese gamers.
3DM’s announcement is interesting for several reasons. What I noted is that they chose to do this at the same time they started working on Denuvo protected games. Perhaps 3DM wants to see if the effort of cracking Denuvo is even worth it. If 3DM decides a lack of piracy did nothing, or maybe even lowered, potential game sales, they may raise their cudgels and work on breaking Denuvo again then.
