Do you buy games protected by Denuvo?
Older news, but Denuvo is officially removed from:
1) Dishonored 2 (https://steamdb.info/app/403640/history/?changeid=U:9651159)
2) Dishonored: Death of the Outsider (https://steamdb.info/app/614570/history/?changeid=U:9651161)
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20/02: Metro Exodus cracked.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/016/729/large.jpg
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Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden - Denuvo removed today.
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What exactly this Denuvo is. I mean, this is DRM, right? But why are people so mad about it. It's because You have to play online? Cause it's pretty stupid to force that.
Actually I wouldn't care much if that's the case, until I lost connection for some reason and wanted to just play the game that has it.
Or are there any other reasons?
The only game I had problems with was Digimon Masters Online, which had something... to protect the game from hackers... must google it. Oh, got it, nProtect GameGuard. This is the worst malware I ever had on my computer. EVER. And this is legitimately installed with the software. It literally made my computer go crazy. Many programs was just crashing because of its effect. Battle.net was one of them, another one was... Steam. When You wanted to send a file, it crashed instead. Also it made Anti Malware Executable goes to 80+% of CPU, which is absurd.I stopped playing this game as it was just virus.
SO is that Denuvo like this? Or it has other issues? Or is it only about forcing online?
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To expound upon your point:
Performance issues with Denuvo might not be guaranteed, but are so overwhelmingly common that they're expected as a matter of course, and can be significant enough in their impact to make the difference between a game being playable or not. A less common, but more significant issue is when the game straight up doesn't run, as there are a handful of established game-breaking Denuvo issues that've never been attended to. Most recently, as I commented below, I can't get a free game to run because of those issues, which really emphasizes the absurdity that Denuvo can present with. (Not that it makes a lick of sense to have Denuvo in a free game to begin with.)
Anyway, here's an article that can be quoted to make the point:
Overlord Gaming ran some benchmarks on the with-Denuvo and without-Denuvo versions of these games. As Extreme Tech notes, Denuvo causes performance issues in nearly every tested game. From longer load times to frame rate drops, Denuvo’s protection appears to slow things down. Performance sometimes improves by 50% after Denuvo is removed by the developer.
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The latter part is not exactly true though. Overlord Gaming's channel is about as objective about Denuvo as Trump is about immigration control. They have tested the earliest builds of games against versions that have several patches released in the meantime, and they also deliberately searched for those handful of Denuvo titles that supported their claims. Their reports are about as accurate as stating that you cannot find any evidence about global warming during a January snowstorm in Minnesota or saying that you cannot see any increase in average temperatures in the Sahara.
The very few semi-independent researches into Denuvo performance hit only managed to conclude that Denuvo has a visible impact on load times, sometimes to rather large degree, but nobody ever managed to prove performance loss. Considering how Denuvo itself works, it is not even that surprising, it is not Tagés or StarForce to perpetually eat system resources.
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I agree about Overlord Gaming not being honest enough, but there are cases confirmed by many (even by developers) that cracked Denuvo game works better in terms of performances. I'm talking about Rime and Batman™: Arkham Knight. For other games, it's mostly longer loading times and nothing else. I'm not sure, but I guess there were performance loss if Denuvo was not initially planed and poorly implemented. I guess developers are more familiar with Denuvo implementation today.
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Sorry, I'm not familiar with Overlord Gaming, so you may be correct.
(Though there's also a reference in that article where the Tekken 7 developer bashes on Denuvo, for an alternative consideration.)
All I know is, my personal experiences match to that- all the Denuvo games I've played have gotten significantly more functional after Denuvo was stripped, and back when my Steam library was still just a few dozen games in size [and thus, having an unplayable game was a bit more of a bother], I even downloaded a few cracked versions to find that they achieved the same effect (in allowing me to play games I wasn't able to get to load properly before).
While I can't speak for overall influences, I do know that my personal experiences with Denuvo have been rather poor [though that was more for the sake of the handful of games that I couldn't get to run at all until Denuvo was removed from them, than for the severity of any performance issues]- though, as that article notes, it could be down to how Denuvo is implemented by the developers involved as much as it may be something inherent to Denuvo.
Similarly, I know when Akamai/Awesomium was added to Dungeons & Dragons Online, performance took a massive hit [both for me personally and, by the extreme player reaction, for everyone else], and I've had similar experiences with other services with bad reputations among players. So I don't think these kind of backlashes are just rumor alone, though it may at times be hard to tell to what kind of severity they actually do impact players and to what degree responsibility for issues falls on developer implementation.
*Yes, Akamai is a completely different type of software, it's being related just for the sake of the point on gamer impressions, not for any direct relationship to the current topic.
In this most recent case with Captain Spirit, it was a crash prompt I was familiar with from another Denuvo game and, googling it, I confirmed its association with Denuvo. While I don't have any reason to have bias against Denuvo [even if I don't quite grasp the dynamic involved, where the difference between purchases and pirating is determined by impatience alone], I do know that a lot of 3rd-party software, Denuvo included, have had negative impact on my own gaming.
Uplay is another example of that, where a handful of [earlier] releases were significantly troubled by poor DRM implementation, especially when overlayed by Steam DRM, but where there was no reason whatsoever to concern oneself about the matter for their typical or later game releases, where there wasn't any readily discernable effect to be bothered by.
In short, "Denuvo is bad, forever!" isn't a stance I'd hold myself to, but "Denuvo seems to cause problems and Denuvo seems to not care about that fact, and why the hell is Denuvo in a free game" is a stance I think I'm okay sticking with, for the time being. :P
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Denuvo is a third-party software that needs to be integrated into the build at a late point (since you apply it before you make most of the compilation with multi-platform games). Like many similar external libraries, how you build them into your product can be different. If a developer is really bad at it, we get an Arkham Knight or AssCreed Origins situation, where it simply bogs down something internally: memory management, performance management, anything. RiME was also a prime example for this.
However, this is not on Denuvo, it is on the devs. Well, mostly. Denuvo is famously not easy to work with, but there are enough proof to show that it can be worked with. Nobody managed to find any performance improvement in games like Resident Evil 7 after its removal, for example. Overlord Gaming is not really going around testing that, since anyone who plays the game showed zero fps or loading time improvement. Deus Ex 4 was also blamed its poor performance on Denuvo, yet it turned out that the dev studio simply wrote a terrible graphic API (DX11/DX12) support.
Denuvo is not good, but not because it is Denuvo but because it is an external DRM implementation that can be finnicky to use and built into your product. All of them are not good.
However, it is neither a performance killer or the worst DRM we ever saw, like many want to claim. (Ironically, Steam's old DRM was among the worst DRMs we ever saw.)
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Sure, but in response to the question of why gamers dislike Denuvo, it remains true that Denuvo- under whatever basis- seems to trend towards causing stability and performance issues, and that that is the basis under which Denuvo is primarily criticized.
Honestly, it's probably been a year or two since I last had Denuvo-related issues, up till Captain Spirit recently. Had that not reminded me of it, it would have remained comfortably out of mind. :P
In any case, if a developer implements something and it compromises their product, then that's on them, regardless of whether such fault is due to the inherent nature of the software or to the developer's poor implementation of it. Denuvo wouldn't remotely be alone among software that is considered easy to muck up, as a developer. However, unlike, say, Flash, there's no inherent foundational reason for a developer to require Denuvo, which further emphasizes how offensive it is to gamers when there are issues related to it.
As far as Denuvo itself, well, the company hasn't presented themselves well, so it's easy to criticize them directly. That said, it ends up being a developer (or publisher) choice and, as gamers, that's the side of things that we're interacting with, so the real criticism should certainly go towards the developer regardless, when such issues arise.
At the moment, all I have in consideration is the fact that I want to play Captain Spirit and can't, and it seems fairly reliable [due to the familarity and google-confirmed association of the issue] that the issue is down to the inclusion of Denuvo. That said, Captain Spirit also best emphasizes just how much the responsibility goes to the developer for such matters given that, seriously, why the hell is Denuvo even there.
Bleh, really. Well, as far as life stresses go, Denuvo is a minor one, but it's one that makes it hard at times to respect the developers involved in such matters (regardless of if that criticism can best be attributed to their using faulty software, to implementing software in a faulty way, or to implementing such software in nonsensical situations).
While I don't find it worth the energy to involve myself with now, I've had reason in the past to be grateful for DRM-crackers for their fixing broken games- though, in fairness, that likely wasn't the primary intention that most of them went into such efforts with. :P
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The funny part is that no single crack ever actually removed Denuvo; they simply rerouted its home call IP address to the local machine and added a fake verification service that pretended to verify the game files. Denuvo is fully functioning in all cracked games to its full extent. This is why we can mostly blame devs, since it is how a simple network call influencing their performance is where the problem usually lies.
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Hmmm. So it's not about forcing online, but also performance. It's pretty bad.
Any more issues known?
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Here's a few more things to consider with Denuvo:
That along with performance issues and the fact that it's developed by Sony DADC (the same company that experimented with installing root-kits disguised as copy-protection).
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Wow, online activation system sounds pretty awful. Depending of the servers that won't always work to play the game... The same goes with mods. It's killing the community.
Usually I would say that it's paranoid to say that some software collects data, but I believe it's pretty possible this time, as it probably check information to improve itself in some reason.
Also many of the software leave unwanted files after the deinstallation. Usually some malware like this Denuvo. The same goes for that nProtect GameGuard from DMO, I said about earlier.
Wow, Sony is really a bad guy here. Is this this one? Terrible.
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:eyes your list:
I suppose that since The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit is free-to-play, there's not much push to crack it, huh?
It's been a while since I encountered a game with game-breaking Denuvo issues, so it's kinda amusing that it'd be for a free game.
Then again, it's not like having Denuvo in AAoCS ever made a lick of sense to begin with.
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if you wish to update. Devil May Cry 5 has a non denuvo exe. for testing purposes.you can download it via steam commands.
Seems like that was a major oversight from them, i wouldn't be surprised if they were to remove denuvo entirely
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Denuvo removed from sonic Mania
https://steamcommunity.com/app/584400/discussions/0/1836811737977650742/
It seems the exe went from 117MB to 3MB
https://twitter.com/thesewer56/status/1104019306239746049?s=21
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Denuvo removed from Rage 2
https://steamcommunity.com/games/548570/announcements/detail/2565275416672419265
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Meanwhile, in relation to that, I am just silently leaving this here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIGyLnew7Pc
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Btw have you guys noticed that some Denuvo shills keep editing the Wikipedia article?
https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/bjfuk7/wikipedia_user_has_edited_out_most_citations/
https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/bp59hk/after_removing_the_cracked_games_column_from_the/
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stop with hacked games titles please
Hey, orono; On that note:
♪ Do what you want cause a pirate (adjacent) is free, you are a pirate (adjacent)!
Yarr har fiddle dee dee
Being a pirate (adjacent) is alright to be
Do what you want cause a pirate (adjacent) is free
You are a pirate (adjacent)!
You are a pirate (adjacent)!
Yeah!
We made us a purchase (Ah, our money!)
To get us access to a game that rocks
But it's all blocked up with blocks (with Denuvo!)
And thus broken in many a way
We'll wait to play the game (though it rocks!)
We know its worth the wait
Clear out the bloatware
And then we say hooray!
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What is against rules? it's exactly the name you must type on google for find it easy on a certain site ( example Wolfenstein.Youngblood-CODEX ) This is against rules. this topic it's for say if a game removed its Denuvo drm. so Wolfenstein.Youngblood-CODEX must be Wolfenstein Youngblood. Don't take me for a dumbass.
In few word: CODEX is a warez team like reloaded etc.
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Is that how you imagine piracy works? That you have to know the exact release name so you can google it instead of just going to piratebay or whatever and searching for "wolfenstein" and getting a list of all available. That was a valid strategy in the 90s with Altavista&co tho, so points for old school.
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Already tried that for fun to see what kind of malware pushing fake sites you get as results and wasn't disappointed. Kids would know these things already, by being totally clueless about it you're looking more like an old person than a kid. At least you have your delusions of knowing something to keep your old bones warm.
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Nonsense, they know better that Reddit is the main related site. So better to go back to discussing when a bought game on Steam gets rid of bundled malware because it got cracked rather than giving horrible and dangerous advice on how to download even more and worse malware from public toilet seats.
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it easily might be (nonsense), as we're not talking about exact science. and is not that we're searching for main related site, only just related
i'll put in this way: you wouldn't be allowed to write this things on my site.
also, really not saying this thread is against the rules (there's already so much going on, and thread is very old, so, OP shouldn't be worried about that) i'm only talking (and agreeing with krakxx) about the related search part.
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But what really is the harm in that? Some kid who tries to pirate a game for the first time finds SG instead and figures out that this is the better way to get free games? Also it would take couple thousand links to here more for search engines to even notice some kind of relation these days.
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Some kid who tries to pirate a game for the first time finds SG instead and figures out that this is the better way to get free games?
LOL
huge as usual.
but... no more talking about that, deal?
(we could go on for months and nobody would know who's wrong and who's right)
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I never post the group in the OP, I only write *name of the game*
cracked and the corresponding date. This thread is merely informative and is three years old, no rule was infringed since the beginning. There's also a warning to not paste links to warez sites.
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IMPORTANT: Please, add (type) the tag "Denuvo" manually to all Denuvo games you visit in the Steam Store, there aren't still enough games tagged as "Denuvo" so the tag does not appear. I'm adding direct links to the games below.
Also you can join this group and you will get a notice in every game profile with Denuvo.
Please, don't post links to torrents or warez related sites.
I opened this thread to post news about this protection. There's a Previous thread with interesting info but was closed by the author.
Latest news (2024):
(date format DD/MM)
17/11: Dragon's Dogma 2 "cracked" (developer build from February 2024).
16/11: Assassin's Creed Mirage "cracked" (full game with .exe from debug version).
20/10: Metaphor: ReFantazio "cracked" (full game with modified .exe from demo version).
12/09: Denuvo removed from Star Wars Jedi: Survivor: Steam Community
27/03: Denuvo removed from The Callisto Protocol: SteamDB
Archive
Cracked games (disinfected versions are in bold text):
Upcoming Denuvo games:
List of Denuvo games: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denuvo#List_of_Denuvo_games (not available anymore, some Wikipedia editor has removed the most useful info from the article). Info
New link (even better than Wikipedia's old table): crackwatch.com/drm/denuvo/games (not available anymore. Reason: "As very little AAA games are being released right now, our advertising revenue is very low and we can no longer afford to pay for servers.": Reddit thread
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