2017 has been not a good year for Denuvo with most of the games with their technology getting cracked in a short period. The latest victim of the piracy attack is Total War: Warhammer 2. The game has been cracked just after 10 hours of its release.
Most people give the fault to Denuvo, an Austrian company giving videogame companies a kind of “protection” for their videogames called Anti-Tamper which basically prevents debugging, reverse engineering and changing of executable files through the use of their servers. While many may confuse this to the DRM policy, it is something completely different. DRM (Digital Rights Management) is essential for Denuvo Anti-Temper to work but not the same thing.
In the first years of its use, Denuvo Anti-Temper kept many games such as Lords of the Fallen and Dragon Age: Inquisition away from getting cracked for many weeks but this doesn’t seem so stable now. Prior to Total War: WARHAMMER 2 which has been released today and cracked the same day, TEKKEN 7 was the previous fastest cracked game powered by Denuvo Anti-Tamper, cracked in 5 days.
If you want to read more about the Denuvo Anti-Tamper and how it is used you can head to Eurogamer and get a full catch up on the matter.
Does this mean though that videogame companies should stop using Denuvo Anti-Tamper? As it seems more and more titles are diverting on the idea of using it since it is said to be affecting performance, forcing users to remain online, and becoming unplayable should any part of the DRM service chain shut down. Last example was that of Project Cars 2 not following the Denuvo policy.
Shadow Warrior 2 developer said last year about the Denuvo Anti-Tamper:
Denuvo means we would have to spend money for making a worse version for our legit customers. It’s like this FBI warning screen on legit movies.”
Some titles that were using this feature but removed it due to their game being cracked either way are: RiME, DOOM, Hitman, ADR1FT and Mass Effect: Andromeda.
