Playing Grim Dawn Unpacked (Quests Working etc.)

[atom0s]

Works on latest build: B25

One of the things that Grim Dawn implements as a course of 'protection' currently is Steam's DRM. As many have seen after removing the DRM (such as using cracks/patches from torrented versions of the game) certain things in the game no longer work. These are due to extra steps in the games executable to prevent unpacking the game executable.

Here is a quick guide to making unpacked Grim Dawn.exe's work again fully.

1. Obtain The Game
In order for this guide to be any bit useful to you, you will need to download the game. I recommend you buy it and support the developers as the game is still being worked on.
You can buy it from Steam or from Grim Dawn's website here:
http://www.grimdawn.com/contribute_buynow01.php

I do not recommend torrenting the game, just buy it. Support the developers in making the game better.

2. Unpacking The Game
Next, you will need to unpack the game executable (Grim Dawn.exe). This is only needed if you are playing the game through Steam. Which at this point in time it is the only way to play the game. (If you torrented the game then it probably comes with an unpacked copy of the exe already. Or if you are using a crack/patch the same goes for you, you can ignore this step.)

You will need a tool such as my Steamless project to unpack the file. You can find that here:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=47

I DO NOT release Steamless as a binary. You must download and compile the code yourself!

Once compiled simply drag and drop the Grim Dawn.exe onto the Steamless.exe and it will do all the work for you. A new Grim Dawn.exe.unpacked.exe should be created.

3. Fixing the Exe
Next we have to fix the executable to allow quests and other things to work again properly. This is super simple and very basic.
For this, you will need CFF Explorer. You can find that here:
http://www.ntcore.com/files/ExplorerSuite.exe

Once installed, open up CFF Explorer and open the 'Grim Dawn.exe.unpacked.exe' that Steamless created in it. On the left side of CFF Explorer, click on 'Section Headers'. You should see:


Now, on the right side in the top area, right-click and choose: 'Add Section (Empty Space)'.
When the box pops up, just put a 1 in the box:


Once that is finished, you need to rename the new section we created to .bind, so look for:


And name it like this:


Last, we need to rebuild the file header and resize the image. CFF makes this easy. Just right-click in the top right area again and choose:
- Rebuild Image Size
- Rebuild Image Header

Do them in that order! Then click the 'Save' button on CFF Explorer and overwrite the file:


4. Play The Game!
Last, rename the exe back to 'Grim Dawn.exe' and overwrite the original one in the game folder. (Backup the original just in case!)

Launch the game and enjoy quests, chest spawns / boss spawns, etc. all like before!

[Golem_x86]

That's pretty amusing. I wonder if the devs realized Steam DRM is fairly weak and decided to implement some lame second layer of protection. I suppose they had to at least open the EXE in an EXE editor to have noticed the .bind section was added. What if you only rename one of the sections to .bind instead of creating a new section? Would that work?

[Golem_x86]

That's pretty amusing. I wonder if the devs realized Steam DRM is fairly weak and decided to implement some lame second layer of protection. I suppose they had to at least open the EXE in an EXE editor to have noticed the .bind section was added. What if you only rename one of the sections to .bind instead of creating a new section? Would that work?

[atom0s]

That's pretty amusing. I wonder if the devs realized Steam DRM is fairly weak and decided to implement some lame second layer of protection. I suppose they had to at least open the EXE in an EXE editor to have noticed the .bind section was added. What if you only rename one of the sections to .bind instead of creating a new section? Would that work?

I would assume so since it does not seem to care about the size of the section at all. The section can be filled with the original steam stub information or be completely blank. Either way the game works fine again heh.

It was their way of preventing piracy after Steam's protection was removed. I will hand it to the devs, none of the crack teams figured it out so all the cracked copies of the games have the same problems lol. As far as I know I'm the first to discover the trick to make the game work again unpacked.

[machine4578]

^^
not the only one.. i figured out 2 different ways months ago(with cracked .exe and org .exe its possible)
i just haven't shared it publically because these devs seem hell bent in blocking any new crack posted with a new trigger. so imo its just best to wait for the game to be complete.

[Golem_x86]

So I went and searched for how exactly this is being enforced. In one of the DLLs, there's a check to make sure that the in-memory main module has exactly 6 PE sections, and that one of those is named ".bind", probably case-insensitive. There are also some anti-emulator triggers, and oddly one to make sure there's a steam_api.dll with SteamAPI_Init export loaded in memory (supposedly to ensure that Steamworks references weren't being patched out). This is all done through the PEB.