In the never-ending battle between pirates and game makers, it often seems like the pirates have the upper hand, releasing DRM-breaking cracks within hours or days of a game's official release. Now, the founder of a major Chinese piracy group is warning that it is losing the battle against a specific DRM protection scheme, to the point where game piracy may no longer be possible within two years.

TorrentFreak reports on a recent post by Bird Sister, the founder of Chinese cracking message board 3DM forum, that says the recent release of Just Cause 3 has pushed the group's cracking abilities practically past their limits. "The last stage is too difficult and Jun [cracking guy] nearly gave up, but last Wednesday I encouraged him to continue,” she wrote.

"I still believe that this game can be compromised. But according to current trends in the development of encryption technology, in two years' time I’m afraid there will be no free games to play in the world," she continued.

Just Cause 3 is protected by Denuvo, a robust "anti-tamper" scheme from the team behind Sony DADC's infamous SecuROM system. Denuvo protection has proven especially resilient to cracks in recent years; 2014's release of Dragon Age: Inquisition remained uncracked for an entire month under the Denuvo protection (a long time in today's game market). More recently, FIFA 16 has remained uncracked since its September 2015 release thanks to Denuvo.

There's a decent chance that both FIFA and Just Cause 3 could eventually be broken open by pirates with enough work and focused attention. But just pushing that eventual "crack date" well past the official release is worth a lot to game publishers. Most legitimate sales for major games come within 30 days of the release date, and pirates will likely eventually move on to cracking newer games rather than focusing efforts on games that are considered outdated.

This doesn't mean every game will be functionally uncrackable; TorrentFreak reports that Denuvo is relatively expensive, meaning only a few titles from a limited number of big publishers are able to implement it. For now, though, those publishers that can afford the protection probably feel like they're getting their money's worth.