this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2026
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SAAS. You never install the entire application. Large parts of the engine never run locally.
I think Denuvo technically does a little bit of this.
I forgot the exact details, but one of the keys that's used to unscramble the bytecode has to be downloaded from their registry server on first launch.
But after that, it's not required.
Although that still never totally protects it. I've seen a fair few number of passionate game communities bring online-only games back from the dead by reverse engineering the server architecture. It's a lot of work, but if you know how the software is supposed to function then you can write the other half of the software that gives the response to make that work.
Yeah, I can see that. I'm thinking of streaming assets and code on demand, similar to how an optical disk works. It's a terrible waste of resources, and they can be grabbed if they are not cryptographically secured.
Even that, a dedicated player can capture it. If it has to be rendered on the device then they have access to the assets.
City of heroes is a big example
The original code for that was leaked, most if not all replacement servers run that code, not reverse engineered code.
Or use the cloud gaming approach and just stream the video, no local engine at all!
That would protect the IP, but the response time is terrible. Pinging Google.com I get a response time of about 80 ms. At that delay, everything would feel spongy and laggy.
If they cared about your experience they wouldn't be using intrusive DRM at all.