DRM Denuvo can not stand, and day

In the past times, when the anti-piracy protection Denuvo games were considered as absolutely reliable and bombproof. The first news about cracking Denuvo appeared in December 2014, and since then, the joint efforts of hackers from around the world only perfected the technique of hacking. In the end, to the present time about any reliability Denuvo is not worth mentioning.

Lately, protection Denuvo increasingly hacked within 24 hours (!) after the release of the game. This has happened repeatedly. This week another victim was the game South Park: The Fractured but Whole, which "revealed" during the day. Last week, at the same time hacked Middle Earth: Shadow of War, and last month a crack for Total War: Warhammer 2 and FIFA 18 went the day of release. That is, publishers don't receive practically no benefit from this protection, but only bear the costs, paying the company Denuvo royalties for using its technology.

It seems that the protection of the game in the current version is ineffective. Indirect confirmation of the story of the game the Evil Within 2, which was allegedly used Denuvo to protect the copies that were released before the release, but then released the official version without this protection.

At the time of its inception more than three years ago, the anti-piracy protection technology from the Austrian company Denuvo Software Solutions GmbH is positioned as the most advanced and reliable. It protects executables from reverse engineering of debugging and changes. Unlike traditional DRM systems, technology, Denuvo Anti-Tamper does not have specific shortcomings: it does not require constant online, does not impose special restrictions on the number of activations of new equipment and allows you to play on any device where it is downloaded and installed.

The first crack for the games protected by Denuvo Anti-Tamper (DAT), was released in early 2015. It was crack for the game Dragon Age: Inquisition, which appeared about a month after release.

Although the technology DAT has lost the aura of "neprobivaemosti", but a period of a month quite satisfied publishers because the lion's share of game sales occur in the first 30 days. However, further investigation analyzing the DAT protection has stalled. Soon there were reports that Chinese hackers refused to hacking AAA title Just Cause 3 because of too much difficulties. There are fears that the technology Denuvo is really too complex to reverse engineer.

The situation changed in the second half of 2016, when another hacker group CONSPIR4CY (CPY) posted a cracking Denuvo in the form of a crack for game Rise of the Tomb Raider, which does not require Steam at all. Although this was done five months after the release, but it was a turning point. Hackers managed to pick up the keys to the defense.

Just a few days, the group CPY cracked the protection game Inside the same way, but since the release it's only been six weeks. Then the game fell massively, Doom, Mirror's Edge Catalyst, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Watch Dogs 2 and so on. And January 29, 2017 held shot in the head Denuvo. Just five days after the official release of the game Resident Evil 7: Biohazard group CPY has posted the cracked version on top of the site — and in a matter of hours she went on all popular torrent-trackers.

In the summer of 2017 many of the games with DRM protection Denuvo was cracked over a period of four to nine days, including Sonic Mania, Tekken 7, and Prey. It would seem that four days — a very short time, but even he has value for the publisher, because in the four days he manages to sell a significant number of copies of the game on the wave peak of its popularity. If the crack goes faster than a day — that the mass audience is already lost.

In such a situation, publishers still look for another way. For example, to concentrate only on game consoles, where the protection is more reliable. Or come up with a model of monetization, where a copy of the game is free, and the publisher earns by selling virtual goods and weapons inside the game. For example, the company Activision has recently patented a model pay-to-win. It suggests different ways to reward players for committing money transactions in the game. This is how it is described in the patent: "for Example, if a trader has bought a certain weapon, the engine microtransactions can pick up his game session in which this weapon is highly effective. This gives the player the impression that a certain weapon was a good purchase." As suggested by the developers, such a system "will encourage players to make new purchases in the future to achieve the same results in the game."

Representatives of Activision stressed that this promising technology is not used yet in any game, including Destiny 2.

However, the inefficiency of Denuvo at the moment does not mean that it always will be. Developers will certainly try to update methods of DRM protection. In the community Kramerov rumor has it that the company is preparing to release some "5th version" of protection that you may receive from day to day.