Friday, November 3rd 2017
"Scene Groups Have Figured Out Denuvo", Piracy Group Declares
Denuvo's fall from grace - and current thread of obsolescence waters - has been a long time coming for scene crackers and pirates. One of the only anti-tamper mechanisms to actually deter pirates in their cracking efforts as of late, Denuvo ushered in an era of unmitigated success upon the first months after its launch, by any measure. Marketed as a "best in class" solution, Denuvo's makers were smart enough to know that any kind of protection they made would be eventually surpassed by pirates' efforts - which is why they simply said that Denuvo's mission was to " (...) provide the longest crack-free release window compared to competitors." Looking to guarantee developers and publishers the arguably most important time-frame for new game releases and sales, Denuvo's sales and marketing director Thomas Goebl said that their aim was "to help publishers to secure the initial sales windows of their games, hence delaying piracy."However, after massively successful initial anti-tamper efforts, which saw Denuvo-protected games going uncracked for months after release, the death knell seems to be sounding for the company's protection mechanism. As users have been noting, and as scene groups have been touting, "(...) Denuvo protected games will continue to get cracked faster and faster." The new methods no longer involve reverse-engineering a game's executable to strip a game of its DRM software; now "[piracy] scene groups have found a way to get past [Denuvo's] encryption and keygen files in just a day. They do not crack Denuvo, they simply keygen it, so Denuvo thinks nothing is wrong on the pirated version."
Perhaps the most dangerous indicator for Denuvo has been the inclusion of a second layer of DRM protection on the latest Assassin's Creed Origins, which makes use of VMProtect on top of Denuvo's Anti-Tamper. That a publisher has decided to invest twice in DRM, not fully trusting Denuvo's solution to handle the assault from pirates, is likely the clearest sign of a company that has seen its products fall out of favor. It likely signals an industry-wide eye-opener that Denuvo isn't fitting the bill anymore, which will certainly make it harder for the company to keep selling its services. After all, a couple of days of piracy protection likely isn't the kind of "early sales window" publishers are looking for when they pay for Denuvo's royalties, now is it?
Perhaps the most dangerous indicator for Denuvo has been the inclusion of a second layer of DRM protection on the latest Assassin's Creed Origins, which makes use of VMProtect on top of Denuvo's Anti-Tamper. That a publisher has decided to invest twice in DRM, not fully trusting Denuvo's solution to handle the assault from pirates, is likely the clearest sign of a company that has seen its products fall out of favor. It likely signals an industry-wide eye-opener that Denuvo isn't fitting the bill anymore, which will certainly make it harder for the company to keep selling its services. After all, a couple of days of piracy protection likely isn't the kind of "early sales window" publishers are looking for when they pay for Denuvo's royalties, now is it?