PC Gaming

... why would you go out of your way to install a mod and then fight against what the mod does?

Like, sure, it'd be fairly nuts to make a variant of the game exe such that it basically uses a variant of the native save file format that is such an extensive rework that it builds some kind of literal self corruption mechanic into the save file itself...

... but it would not be that hard to tell the exe (provided, of course, you have succesfully decompiled it, or the relevant parts of it such that you launch mod.exe which sufficiently acts as a wrapper that then launches the actual game.exe within it, or can manipulate the vanilla game.exe/directory in realtime) to check the last update/file creation timestamp of the ironman save file itself, and check if it matches up with some kind of hash based off of that, where the decoding method/table for the hash is built into the exe itself... and then the exe deletes any save file that has been pasted into the directory manually when you run the exe, to start the game.

Kenshi doesn't have a particularly complex DRM or AC service you'd need to actively fight against... you would just need a legit copy of the game with a valid key. It is a single player game that doesn't even use online verification, its an old school cd key method.

I pointed to NVSE as an example because... it is similarly an exe that entirely replaces the vanilla game exe of Fallout New Vegas.

You could make a New Vegas mod that does this iron man thing trivially with NVSE, they already did the hard work of decompiling and reverse engineering the game exe, and then expanded its capabilities.

...

Imaging your entire drive would wipe out everything and reinstall the os from scratch, probably a new partition table too.

Restoring from a backup is again, fighting against a mod you have chosen to install becauae you wanted to use the mod.

Finally, the user, especially in Windows, absolutely does not have full control over the OS, unless you are literally hacking into it to defeat parts of it that it normally won't let you remove.

Go ahead and try to entirely remove Windows ability to verify its own liscense, or hell, even fully remove advertisements from your Start menu, and then tell me how the user has full control.

Kernel level anticheats have more access to your system than you as a user do.

If the game exe itself can... write and delete save files... and it is fairly common for extensive mods to just... literally replace the game exe... I don't really see why a custom exe could not just ... say, delete any saves you'e introduced back into the save directory manually, other than the last one it has remembered save/exiting with.

I can think of other methods of doing something that would achieve basicslly the same result (an enforced iron man mode) via other methods as well.

... I can think of even more ways to do this by making basically an open source (so that anyone can look at the code and verify it isn't malicious malware) shell script/utility type thing that runs on linux, and would mod a windows game running on linux via proton, but then the problem is that windows users would not be able to use that mod.

You could probably do the same with windows bash scripts, but i am just more familiar with linux.

Like... by your logic, it is impossible to crack a game such that it runs without DRM.

This is obviously false.

... Or, am I misunderstanding you, and you are just saying the concept of an ironman mode is ... just stupid in concept, and no game would ever support this natively?

Because again, that is obviously false, there are many games, of many different genres, that at least support an Ironman mode without any mods at all, and even a few that actually do enforce it all the time, though yes, admittedly, the games that enforce it all the time are usually more niche.

Like uh, HOI4 and Stellaris and No Mans Sky, just off the top of my head, all have built in, vanilla ironman modes. Oh and Xenonauts!

There are many, many games that do not support an ironman mode, even with mods... but have significant chunks of their communities dedicated to self imposing their own rule sets, either to make casual play more fun, or as conditions for a class of competetive speed run.

Nuzlocke rules for Pokemon games is basically an Ironman mode for Pokemon, tons of players will just do that even for casual play, to make the game more challenging.

Every game every with a 'No Deaths' rule as part of a speed run ruleset.

Some even go further into... literally you are not even allowed to ever even take any damage, as well, a 'no hit' rule or what not.