Capcom adds new DRM to old PC games, raising worries over mods

Hodja_Nasreddin , 5 months ago

Just moving away from this toxic company and it’s product would be best solution.

butiloveu , 5 months ago

Oh no. How dares somebody to enhance his single player experience with mods. Let’s forbid them to modify a SP game they bought, this can’t backfire, right?

BobGnarley , 5 months ago

Ill just make sure to never, ever buy those titles and juat pirate them instead. Thanks Capcom!

vulgarcynic , 5 months ago

It’s a bummer we can’t decline Steam Game updates anymore. That would help avoid these types of situations. Being forced to update a game before launching it was always going to lead to this type of bullshit. Same with all the GTA fuckery.

domi , 5 months ago

In case anyone needs it, you can actually downgrade Steam games. It just doesn’t have an UI unfortunately.

There’s a tool for it here: github.com/SteamRE/DepotDownloader

SteamDB can be used to find the game ID and depot ID: steamdb.info

Steam itself will not care if the game files are not up to date, individual games might.

CallumWells , 5 months ago

You don’t even need the external tool, you can use the Steam terminal itself to download the depots, which I personally find more palatable than having another application that is getting access to my username and password (it needs those to get the access from Steam). Even though I don’t think that tool is malicious I would still prefer to not have to rely on it.

• Go to SteamDB, and search up your game.
• Click on the app ID of the game you’re looking for to go to its details page.
• Take a look at the depots, and click on the depot ID of the one that looks like the one you want to download.
• Click on the Manifests tab. Look at the list and find the version that you want to download. Record its manifest ID.
• Open the Steam console. You can do this by opening a command window “Run” by pressing «Win + R» and then enter the command: steam://open/console, and then press Enter, or by opening any browser and enter the URL-address field write the same command: steam://open/console. You can even have it always available when you start Steam by appending -console to the launch options of the shortcut to the Steam exe.
• The syntax to the “download_depot” command is as follows:
  download_depot <appid> <depotid> [<target manifestid>] [<delta manifestid>] [<depot flags filter>] : download a single depot
  You only need to worry about the first three arguments to it. Type the command, then the app ID, depot ID, and the manifest ID of the depot version you want.
• Wait for Steam to download the depot. You won’t see any indication of progress, but you can tell it’s downloading by looking at the network usage on your downloads page. The download can pause/resume if your connection goes out, but won’t if you restart the client.
• After the download is done, Steam will show you where the files were downloaded to.
• Go to the game’s installation directory, and move the files somewhere else. Then go to where the depot files were downloaded to, and move everything over to the game folder.
• You may have to rename the game’s EXE file if the dev changed the launch options recently. You can find the current EXE name by going to the game’s SteamDB page and clicking on the Configuration tab. 11. You should now be able to launch the old version through Steam.

Personally I found that you can just start the game from the download location and it will still have the Steam overlay if the game basically uses Steam as DRM.

domi , 5 months ago

Yep, that works as well.

I use depotdownloader because I automated my downgrade script for Beat Saber, makes things faster.

CallumWells , 5 months ago

Are you downgrading to several different versions? Because I’ve used the console variant and just run the game from the download folder and Steam doesn’t update it

domi , 5 months ago

Yes, I keep several Beat Saber versions for different mods and replace the files in the main directory when Beat Saber updates.

CallumWells , 5 months ago

I’ve just not replaced the files in any directory at all, just start the game from the download location for the depot (one should be able to rename the folder for it to the version) and then you keep any number of versions to play available by just going into that download location and starting the game.

At least that’s how it has worked for me. I just thought that was easier than having to replace files every time.

domi , 5 months ago

At least that’s how it has worked for me. I just thought that was easier than having to replace files every time.

It is, I just can’t do it because I have all the custom songs and plugins in my main folder and copying/linking all of that is a lot more work than just overwriting the game files each time.

CallumWells , 5 months ago

Yeah, that makes sense.

HopeOfTheGunblade , 5 months ago

What's that you say Capcom? Never purchase another title from you again? Well, if that's how you want it, I suppose.

BoiLudens , 5 months ago

I’d already left a couple of reviews on re5 and re revelations expressing my discontent. But otherwise there are more older collections that actually have that drm applied.

ZeroHora , 5 months ago

DRM in old games so you are only affecting people that bought the game? Genius

drislands , 5 months ago

They’re not worried about pirates, they’re worried about nude mods. It’s still idiotic, but it is consistent.

ZeroHora , 5 months ago

Bu than people could download a pirate version and install mods, in the end the pirate version is way more attractive than the original.

drislands , 5 months ago

I don’t disagree. But the inciting incident was when an official Street Fighter tournament went awry when the person hosting left on a nude Chun Li mod. I imagine they’re specifically trying to prevent that from happening ever again.

ampersandrew , 5 months ago

They probably care far less about that than they do the ability to mod in costumes instead of buying them.