The ongoing fight between crackers and DRM has reached a truly massive moment, as reportedly Denuvo DRM has been fully broken open in all games.
Denuvo DRM is generally pretty hated. Not just because of the limits it places on systems, but because of many reported performance issues that could be as a result of its inclusion in various games. In the past, Denuvo DRM was a pretty strong choice for publishers as it was difficult to crack open so pirates were always playing a long game of catch-up but it seems that’s no longer the case. Enabling publishers to feel like they’re protecting their initial sales revenue.
Containerize the game somehow so that it thinks it’s the same day every day. That way it never knows when to reach out and check. Groundhog Day hack.
I could swear I did something like this (although obviously not at a kernel level) decades ago with trial versions of software that would only work for 30 days or similar. At first, I did this by hand for the entire system, but I’m pretty sure I had a program for Windows 9x that could independently set time and day for any given application, without affecting the rest of the system.
I wish I knew how to do this back in the day. In the early to mid 2000s, I was getting free internet by uninstalling and reinstalling NetZero. It would never check to see that it had already been previously installed and the days were used up. Probably could’ve gone the route you did instead.
There was also software (probably still is) that records the state of your computer before using a program. Then you’d run the program and it recorded any changes (with filters, of course), which you were able to undo with a simple button press. At the time, it was usually a change to some registry entry. This was another method I used to reset timers and usage limits of software like the one you mentioned. As before, I tracked down registry changes by hand until I discovered a more convenient option. This was necessary, because many programs with usage limits left information behind when uninstalled so that you couldn’t just do what you did.