[bni]

Today DRM exists that is quite hard and time consuming to crack (Denuvo). Some games exists that has not been cracked for 1+ year.

Has anybody tried to use this to provide scarcity for a digital artifact besides game developers?

A picture can always be screenshotted, so instead think more a 3D digital environment, sort of like a FPS but without the guns, instead a painting or sculpture you can walk around in.

[islon]

Denuvo is easily cracked for games people care about. It's not put in games to stop crackers, it's put there to allow the game to go through the first weeks (where 90% of the sales happen) without competition from pirated versions.

After this time some companies even remove the DRM because it already did it's job.

The whole game industry is based on hype in the hope people buy on day 1 or, even better, pre-oder the games. One reason most big games are released broken or in a very buggy state.