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Tremorah

Member
Dec 3, 2018
4,955
I had heard about performance issues but damn that's awful. Capcom fix this, whatever it is.

Stealing this..

unknown.png

Wow, thats a lot for DRM

Really makes one wonder how much we brute force games to run when we play them legit
 

Deleted member 16136

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,196
So glad DF are doing this, could have done with you guys during the 360/PS3 days šŸ˜‚, lawd so many games that just ran like ass back then (and continue to come out, like Village).
 

Zelda

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,079
Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the frame drops were from specific animations in the game, and that the cracker removed those animations to improve performance in the cracked version. The DRM wasn't actually removed and only bypassed. Also if the DRM is at fault wouldn't it affect the entire game throughout and not only certain specific instances in the game?
 

Maximo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,200
I got Village at a decent price but everytime something like this happens I'm reminded to never buy games in the first week, sucks cause you wanna support certain developers.
 

Mifec

Member
Oct 25, 2017
17,758
Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the frame drops were from specific animations in the game, and that the cracker removed those animations to improve performance in the cracked version. The DRM wasn't actually removed and only bypassed. Also if the DRM is at fault wouldn't it affect the entire game throughout and not only certain specific instances in the game?
You are wrong. The triggers for the DRM are coded into specific actions and game states. Those grabs being some of them. You can also fix this with the mod posted here and it still has the grabs in it.
 

Duxxy3

Member
Oct 27, 2017
21,789
USA
Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the frame drops were from specific animations in the game, and that the cracker removed those animations to improve performance in the cracked version. The DRM wasn't actually removed and only bypassed. Also if the DRM is at fault wouldn't it affect the entire game throughout and not only certain specific instances in the game?

The DRM checks happened after each enemy killed and some animations with the daughters. That's why there's a stutter after every kill or when around the daughters. I have no clue why they would code DRM checks into animations or kills, but that's where we're at.
 

Linus815

Member
Oct 29, 2017
19,842
Isn't this the case for capcom games on PC for some time? If I remember well, MHW and DMC5 also ran worse because of DRM.

theres a difference between running 7% slower when you set the game to 480p all low to fully eliminate any gpu limitation and the game dropping to 30 fps on a 3080 and i9 at normal settings during specific sections lol
 

professor_t

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,341
I'm not caught up on the whole pirating conversation; are there ways for publishers to minimize piracy that DON'T take a figurative dump on paying customers?

I'm not looking for answers along the lines of "you can't stop piracy so don't even try" because regardless of whether that is true, I don't think publishers will ever stop trying.
 

Duxxy3

Member
Oct 27, 2017
21,789
USA
I'm not caught up on the whole pirating conversation; are there ways for publishers to minimize piracy that DON'T take a figurative dump on paying customers?

I'm not looking for answers along the lines of "you can't stop piracy so don't even try" because regardless of whether that is true, I don't think publishers will ever stop trying.

Steam itself is a form of DRM. In general, people are ok with it. Why Capcom insisted on a three forms of DRM is beyond me.
 

RoboitoAM

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,118
I'm not caught up on the whole pirating conversation; are there ways for publishers to minimize piracy that DON'T take a figurative dump on paying customers?

I'm not looking for answers along the lines of "you can't stop piracy so don't even try" because regardless of whether that is true, I don't think publishers will ever stop trying.
Denuvo on its own worked for most of Capcom's last releases, no idea why they decided to fuck this one over so hard.
 

Pargon

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,043
I'm glad to see Digital Foundry cover this - I wasn't sure that they would.
It's certainly not the first time DRM - or Denuvo specifically - has been causing performance issues in games, either. It's just the first time I can think of where it's been obvious even on higher-end systems.
Denuvo's performance issues go back at least as far as Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - if not earlier. And the Steam version of that game still uses Denuvo, despite a DRM-free release on GOG.
That's part of the problem: once the DRM is there, many companies don't bother to remove it - even long after there is any reason to use it.

This was an excellent and level-headed take, and I hope that Capcom pays attention.

Are you getting the same performance increase with that new dll fix people were talking about, or does that just fix the stutters?
For me, the RE Framework mod eliminates the stutter when killing an enemy, and I don't get the severe performance hits when being attacked by the daughters. But there's still a lot of stutter during world traversal.
Enabling ray tracing makes any stutters that remain quite a bit worse. At times, the GPU utilization still jumps up to 100% for no apparent reason, dropping the frame rate to ~20 FPS until the game is restarted.
People have referred to the latter as a "memory leak," but neither the RAM nor VRAM are maxed out when it happens on my system.

All in all this PC port has really been shat out by Capcom with absolutely zero fucks given to its quality, or options, or performance.
No idea why the game got such high scores on PC.
Yes, it should be noted that it's more than just the game's performance that is wrong with the port.
The anti-aliasing does not work correctly, nor does the film noise option (which should improve image quality).
There are performance issues if you change the graphical options without then restarting the game before playing.

And there is a lack of comfort options like an adjustable FOV. It's locked to ~80Ā° and zooms in to ~70Ā° when aiming.
The mouse aiming is generally good, but the sensitivity is significantly reduced when using the sniper rifle - to the point that I can only cover a quarter turn when moving the mouse from one edge of the mat to the other when zoomed all the way in.


On top of all this, it's not like it's a bad game. It's my game of the year so far, and I've had a lot of fun with it despite the performance issues.
I would have preferred that they had delayed the PC version until it was ready than pushing it out of the door in this state for the sake of "parity".

Even if they fix it tomorrow and the game runs perfectly smoothly - I'm already done with it. I just hit 100% completion last night.
If I could have got a refund for my purchase, I would have. But since I could not, I wasn't going to avoid playing the game - that would have felt like I wasted my money buying it at launch.

This is a specific developer or publisher thing.
Most PC games even with Denison [Denuvo] do not have these issues. This is Capcom being capcom.
I think most games using Denuvo do incur a performance hit, but it's not usually visible on higher-end systems.
On a high-end system it might be the difference between 150 FPS and 160 FPS.
On a lower-end system it might be the difference between smooth gameplay and a stuttering mess.

Resident Evil Village just happens to show a stuttering mess on most systems - including higher-end ones.
There still seems to be people with Ryzen 5000-series CPUs saying that they are not affected by this - though not all of them.

But I recommend you use this mod instead.
It manages to fix the same problems the crack does somehow.
github.com

GitHub - praydog/REFramework: Scripting platform, modding framework and VR support for all RE Engine games

Scripting platform, modding framework and VR support for all RE Engine games - praydog/REFramework
Or at least it worked for me.
I believe it patches out the DRM checks during gameplay without bypassing the DRM entirely.
It helps, but does not fix all of the performance issues I've experienced with the game with a Ryzen 1700X, 32GB of RAM, and a 3060 Ti.

Denuvo on its own worked for most of Capcom's last releases, no idea why they decided to fuck this one over so hard.
Many people were complaining of persistent stuttering issues in RE7, RE2, and RE3 on lower-end PCs - which could have been this DRM at work.
It's just that higher-end systems usually have enough overhead to push through it.
 

Sei

Member
Oct 28, 2017
5,724
LA
When I played the demo on PC it stuttered like crazy and drove my GPU to 100% at all times, that's why I bought it on the PS5.

If it is really DRM, than I might consider buying less of these games on PC.
 

MegaXZero

One Winged Slayer
Member
Jun 21, 2018
5,079
It's certainly not the first time DRM - or Denuvo specifically - has been causing performance issues in games, either. It's just the first time I can think of where it's been obvious even on higher-end systems.
Again, the crack didn't remove denuvo. It removed Capcom's drm.
 

Yuuber

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,153
This is terrible. Is it illegal to buy the game and use the crack, though? If I were a PC user I might consider it.
 
Aug 30, 2020
2,171
I'm not caught up on the whole pirating conversation; are there ways for publishers to minimize piracy that DON'T take a figurative dump on paying customers?

I'm not looking for answers along the lines of "you can't stop piracy so don't even try" because regardless of whether that is true, I don't think publishers will ever stop trying.

It's all matter of degrees, but I disagree that even a little effort is at all worthwhile. It's impossible to not inconvenience legitimate users at all, and it's near impossible to inconvenience pirates at all.
 

-shadow-

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,110
MVG also went about this, and it's surprising that the DRM affects the game this bad.
Will wait until Capcom removes the DRM themselves down the line, because fuck no I'm not paying for this...
 

Pargon

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,043
Again, the crack didn't remove denuvo. It removed Capcom's drm.
I think this is a misread of the info file.
I don't think patching out "Capcom's DRM entry-points" means they bypassed "Capcom's DRM," but rather, the entry-points (for Denuvo) placed by Capcom.
As I understand it, the process is that you mark entry points for DRM checks in your application (game events like killing an enemy) and send it to Denuvo for them to add the DRM to your executable.

I seem to recall there being talk about Assassin's Creed: Origins even having DRM entry-points assigned to things like camera and player movement.
 

NoctisLC

Member
Jun 5, 2018
1,386
I still havent seen a response on this. Has anyone tested this with RT off? I had stutters with it on but none with it off on my 3070.
 

flyinj

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,985
I still havent seen a response on this. Has anyone tested this with RT off? I had stutters with it on but none with it off on my 3070.

Yes, the stutters happen no matter what your settings are.

I spent hours at release trying to fix the stuttering on my 3070.

You are saying that when the daughters attacked you there was no slowdown at all on your 3070?
 

Saturday

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
6,423
After reading up that the crack actually breaks some of the game (missing animations, no parry, this is internet hearsay so trust accordingly) and coming to the conclusion that the lag-spikes are tied to animations, it's wild that removing animations to bypass the weird DRM checks is a big factor in improving performance
 

jesterkap2

Member
Oct 28, 2017
537
This is a dumb question but I've been out of the pirating game fora while. Can I just put the crack DLL into my steam version to get rid of this? I stopped at a horrible enocunter with a maiden becuase it stuttered so hard it made me stop. It was one of the scenarios in the dungeon they highlighted.
 

MegaXZero

One Winged Slayer
Member
Jun 21, 2018
5,079
I think this is a misread of the info file.
As I understand it, patching out "Capcom's DRM entry-points" does not mean they bypassed "Capcom's DRM".
Think of DRM entry-points as markers that Capcom adds for the Denuvo checks to be placed.
As I understand it, the process is that you mark entry-points for DRM checks in your application and send it to Denuvo for them to actually add the DRM to your executable.

I seem to recall there being discussion around Assassin's Creed: Origins even having DRM entry-points assigned to things like camera and player movement.
The file says "Protection: Capcom Anti-Tamper V3 + Denuvo V11". Denuvo is still running in the crack, but they removed Capcom's protection.
 

Nzyme32

Member
Oct 28, 2017
5,247
After reading up that the crack actually breaks some of the game (missing animations, no parry, this is internet hearsay so trust accordingly) and coming to the conclusion that the lag-spikes are tied to animations, it's wild that removing animations to bypass the weird DRM checks is a big factor in improving performance

That's not accurate, as there is a mod for the crack that has the same performance the crack provided, with those animations back in the game. It's posted earlier in the thread I think
 

Mr.Deadshot

Member
Oct 27, 2017
20,285
Shit like this is what makes PC gaming so fucking frustrating. you can have the most powerful rig in existence but still have the possibly of having a worse performing game than vastly weaker consoles due to idiotic decisions from a developer/publisher gimping their PC release
Sure, but this isn't the norm.
But one should always wait a few days after release for PC games. It's a total gamble performance wise. Good thing is that its easy to refund on PC.
 

NoctisLC

Member
Jun 5, 2018
1,386
Yes, the stutters happen no matter what your settings are.

I spent hours at release trying to fix the stuttering on my 3070.

You are saying that when the daughters attacked you there was no slowdown at all on your 3070?

I did have the daughter slowdown either way yeah. I didnt get the persistent fps drops or the death stutter with RT off though. Only when on.
 

snausages

Member
Feb 12, 2018
10,381
hey capcom now that people have succeeded in stealing your game and your DRM doesn't do anything anymore can you fix this for the fucking people who paid you money for broken shit.
 

Pargon

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,043
Yes, the stutters happen no matter what your settings are.
I spent hours at release trying to fix the stuttering on my 3070.
You are saying that when the daughters attacked you there was no slowdown at all on your 3070?
The game's behavior is weird.
There was a brief moment near launch when the game was running completely stutter-free on my system after making a change to the damage display setting.
I was able to reproduce this several times and even record a video of it (check the frame-time graph) but not long after that, the stuttering returned and never went away.

So I can believe that some systems are actually stutter-free - particularly ones with Ryzen 5000-series CPUs - but it seems rare, and no-one posted a video of it.

The file says "Protection: Capcom Anti-Tamper V3 + Denuvo V11". Denuvo is still running in the crack, but they removed Capcom's protection.
A crack would have to bypass both of them, not just Capcom's anti-tamper.
It's almost impossible to remove Denuvo from an executable. You bypass the entry points instead.

I don't think the distinction matters either way since Denuvo is known for hurting performance, too.
In my experience, level streaming is one of the things most affected by Denuvo, and I still see streaming-related stutters in the game with the RE Framework fix in place (no crack).
 

Kazuhira

Member
Oct 26, 2017
4,186
I saw the video but does the cracked version give an overall performance improvement? Or is it just a fix for the bug swarm and enemy kill stutter?
 

MegaXZero

One Winged Slayer
Member
Jun 21, 2018
5,079
A crack would have to bypass both of them, not just Capcom's anti-tamper.
They removed entire animations to stop Capcom's drm from running. Denuvo is still running, but is bypassed as usual for a crack, meaning there really shouldn't be any performance improvements from that.
 

Saturday

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
6,423
That's not accurate, as there is a mod for the crack that has the same performance the crack provided, with those animations back in the game. It's posted earlier in the thread I think

Do you mean REFramework? I saw that; to clarify, I meant that it's so weird that how a crack for a game ends up improving performance is by removing animations on it's own.

It is hilarious that people would use a mod on top of a crack, though.
 

Nzyme32

Member
Oct 28, 2017
5,247
Do you mean REFramework? I saw that; to clarify, I meant that it's so weird that how a crack for a game ends up improving performance is by removing animations on it's own.

It is hilarious that people would use a mod on top of a crack, though.

It is. It's because Capcom's DRM addition (disregarding Denuvo), links to specific actions, and the specific crack has broken those to prevent its functionality
 

Deleted member 17184

User-requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
5,240
Do you mean REFramework? I saw that; to clarify, I meant that it's so weird that how a crack for a game ends up improving performance is by removing animations on it's own.

It is hilarious that people would use a mod on top of a crack, though.
It is. It's because Capcom's DRM addition (disregarding Denuvo), links to specific actions, and the specific crack has broken those to prevent its functionality
You don't need the crack for REFramework, do you?
 

jesterkap2

Member
Oct 28, 2017
537
I tried copying the Empress crack into my steam game folder and now it isn't using my save game. Any suggestions?
 

Shaz12567

Member
Jun 7, 2021
485
There are also certain major FPS drop points in the game EXCLUSIVELY on nvidia hardware, not related to the DRM which are not reported by DF and I am sure will never be fixed. Neither the crack nor the mod fix this. Look at the below video on my 3080



In the armoury at 4K, the FPS is dropping to a consistent 35-45 FPS from 100 plus for no reason. Turning down volumetric to medium increased the FPS by almost double but it's still low.

The same area on a 6900 XT runs at double the FPS.



another area where the FPS gets halved



I can reproduce a similar scenario at the start of the game when you survive the accident and are running towards the village dazed. FPS drops to 50 on a 3080 but is 90 plus on 6900xt. More areas include the third daughter portrait room, the doll maker cutscene fight and a couple of areas in the Heisenberg factory.

The above is in addition to the broken graphical features like AA,Interlaced mode, VRS and film grain which lie broken on PC 2 months after launch IN ADDITION to the constant stuttering throughout the game.

Its obvious they didn't give damn about the PC port at all as it hasn't gone through even basic QA testing to fix all this and I just ended up getting it on PS5 as I don't expect all the above issues to be fixed at all. I bet even the FSR will be completely broken at launch.
 
Last edited:
Apr 19, 2018
6,840
Very glad the game's performance issues are finally coming to light in such a big way. Whatever else you might think of Empress and crackers in general, they helped pushed the needle for us to get this point where we can hope Capcom will now sit up and take notice.

So far, REFramework, in conjunction with the latest 21.07.12 SpecialK64 build from Kaldaien, has been working wonders for me. No stutters or hitches from enemy kills or the daughters' swarms, no missing animations, and most importantly, all-around solid performance during normal world traversal.
 

test_account

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,645
If you replace steam's game exe for RE8 or any other game, it automatically means that you play without any of the steam's features directly connected to the game like steam achievements or trading cards as far as i know as steam doesn't detect it as a steam game but as a 3rd party external file.
Ah ok, i see. That makes sense. Thanks for the info! :)


Yes, but this doesn't change the fact that a paying customer has a worse time than someone who pirated it.
I don't even know where to get a crack. And I'm for damn sure not going to download an executable from some sketchy site
I am quoting these posts again since in my previous replies i used the word 'fair', and i just wanted to change/upgrade that word to 'good' instead, just to clearify and point out stronger that i do agree with what was said :) I do think its a good point (not just a fair point as i initially mentioned) that was mentioned, that its a worse experience for those who pay for the game compared to those who pirate the game, and that its also a good point that getting a cracked .exe file can be hard to find, and that such file can possible be infected with a virus as well depedning on where its being downloaded from, indeed.

I think that i maybe misunderstood in the begining because i was first interpreting that it as maybe payed consumers couldnt apply a cracked .exe and also get the same experience as someone who pirated the game, so i just wanted to ask if it was possible to use a cracked .exe file even for those who bought the game via for example Steam. But as i mentioned, it shouldnt be necessary to having to download a cracked.exe, no doubt, i was just wondering if it was possible and maybe work more as a workaround solution until Capcom hopefully comes out with an official patch that improved the performance in the PC version for Steam. Paying consumers shouldnt expect to get game that runs noticeably worse compared to a cracked and/or pirated version of the game, and it shouldnt be necessary to download a cracked .exe file if one bought the game, so i fully agree with that. I just wanted to mentioned this :)
 

jesterkap2

Member
Oct 28, 2017
537
I havn't messed with this games cracked .exe yet, but they usually use different save locations. Try googling / saving on cracked version and see where it went?
Awesome. Thanks. Found some guides. Like I said I have been out of the piracy game for a while so I'm not used to this stuff.

I am so damn frustrated that I have to do this.
 

Detail

Member
Dec 30, 2018
2,948
Can you get your stream account banned when using the cracked patch with the owned game?
 

horkrux

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,745
Do you think a single "thorough" check through Steam's servers at login could even be made "unavoidable"?

Although I feel like I'm getting a bit confused: if you buy and own the game on Steam, what exactly do they even need to constantly check when Steam could already provide ownership data?

Well, if the hackers ever figure out how to bypass that single "thorough" check, then the game is suddenly completely open. And Steam DRM has long been defeated. But if the DRM is more like a "cancer" in the game code, then hackers have more trouble isolating or removing it without breaking something.
 

Edward850

Software & Netcode Engineer at Nightdive Studios
Verified
Apr 5, 2019
992
New Zealand
Do you think a single "thorough" check through Steam's servers at login could even be made "unavoidable"?

Although I feel like I'm getting a bit confused: if you buy and own the game on Steam, what exactly do they even need to constantly check when Steam could already provide ownership data?
This isn't exactly on the right path at all. Anti-piracy and the cracking there of isn't done by replacing the services (well it can be but it's not typical), but by physically altering the executable to skip the checks altogether. What a hacker will do is they'll run the executable attached to a disassemble, catch any instances where the game quits out or otherwise due to a failed check, then go back and edit the actual machine code in that executable to never perform the check.

Essentially, no matter how "thorough" you make it, and no matter what information may confirm or deny its use, they are modifying the code to just never perform any of that in the first place.

This is why stealth or delayed options are used, because the more you have to play and know the game, the longer to takes to find the checks. Modern optimised machine code is dense, you can't just read it without any insight as to how the program performs. This also used to lead to some more creative failures, such as the infamous invincible pink scorpion in Serious Sam 3. The average hacker wouldn't think twice about its appearance, they don't know the game enough to know that's not supposed to be there, and thus also can't know something is triggered. And because it was delayed, it also becomes harder to find what triggered (usually, unless it's amateur hour and you tie it to something silly like miniboss animations thus making the triggers obvious).
youtu.be

Serious Sam 3 BFE - Immortal Fast Scorpion DRM

Digital rights management ARACHNOIDDSOGaming writes: "Okay everyone, I have a confesion to make; I simply love Croteam. It's not the extra and juicy details ...