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Denuvo Anti-Tamper

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Editor's note: this article is subject to restructuring in the future to instead have Denuvo be the primary page rather than a redirect. This and the anticheat article names may be retired as a result.[edit | edit source]

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Denuvo Anti-Tamper (not to be confused with Denuvo Anti-Cheat) is a video game digital-rights management (DRM) software developed as the successor to SecuROM by Sony Digital Audio Disc Corporation (DADC) since 2014.[1] After a buyout in 2018, it is now distributed by the company Irdeto.[2][3] It is commonly referred to simply as “Denuvo”, and it is currently the most advanced video-game DRM on the market. The goal of Denuvo is to make cracking a game as difficult as possible, in order to protect a game’s launch window.[4] Denuvo does this successfully in most cases, but it has been cracked multiple times. These cracks have mostly been done by a mysterious cracker known as Empress.[5]

General problems[edit | edit source]

High resource usage[edit | edit source]

Despite Denuvo's denials,[6] its software has been documented to consume a lot of computer resources,[7] notably documented for Tekken 7[8] and Sonic Mania Plus,[9] both games where slowdown is extremely detrimental to players, especially in competitive settings.[10] This slowdown often encourages users to prefer a crack of the game as soon as a crack releases, as seen by early cracks significantly harming sales.[11]Consumers who run lower-end hardware are often unable to even launch these games without running cracked versions, especially when the game's publisher has under-optimized it.[12]

Notable anti-consumer events[edit | edit source]

[to be filled in][edit | edit source]

To maybe delete[edit | edit source]

Editor's note: This section of the article is unsupported and lacks significant development. It may be deleted, or if verifiable sources can be located, it will be integrated into the rest of the article.


According to a listing on AWS Denuvo has a base cost of $25,000 per month, with an additional $0.50 per game sold. However it is worth noting that Denuvo does not provide a standard price on their website, so this price may not apply in some situations.[13]

Developers have also blamed Denuvo for negatively impacting performance.[14] Many developers have stopped using Denuvo in their games[15], with others using it but removing it from their games after some time has passed[16]. Controversies surrounding performance issues has resulted in Denuvo’s brand image being severely tarnished, with them being unable to even host a Discord sever properly due to the amount of harassment and trolling they faced.[17]

References[edit | edit source]

  1. https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-12-19-denuvo-anti-tamper-drm
  2. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-01-23-irdeto-acquires-denuvo-in-bid-to-beef-up-security-in-the-games-industry
  3. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-08-29-denuvo-and-irdeto-on-protecting-early-sales-from-piracy
  4. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/02/denuvo-our-cracked-re7-protection-is-still-better-than-nothing/
  5. https://www.wired.com/story/empress-drm-cracking-denuvo-video-game-piracy/
  6. https://www.vg247.com/2018/09/04/two-point-hospital-no-longer-uses-denuvo-drm/
  7. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/12/evidence-continues-to-mount-about-how-bad-denuvo-is-for-pc-gaming-performance/
  8. https://web.archive.org/web/20180521071901/http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2018/04/14/drm-software-causing-performance-issues-in-pc-version-of-tekken-7-says-producer.aspx
  9. https://www.gamerevolution.com/news/409231-sonic-mania-plus-drm-protection-slowing-down-legitimate-copies
  10. https://megagames.com/editorials/does-modern-drm-really-hurt-gaming-performance
  11. https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/publishers-face-20-percent-game-revenue-reduction-if-denuvo-drm-is-cracked-quickly-according-to-new-study
  12. https://www.pcworld.com/article/2455340/are-modern-pc-games-badly-optimized-or-is-it-just-time-to-upgrade.html
  13. https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-x443idlstvufi
  14. https://techraptor.net/gaming/news/tekken-director-says-denuvo-behind-recent-performance-issues-on-pc
  15. https://www.neowin.net/news/bioware-confirms-dragon-age-the-veilguard-wont-have-denuvo-or-any-third-party-drm/
  16. https://hitmarker.net/news/square-enix-and-capcom-remove-denuvo-drm-from-multiple-games-2007312
  17. https://techraptor.net/gaming/news/denuvo-discord-suspended-inappropriate-content