A group of games released recently, and protected by the latest version of Denuvo, has been cracked in record time again, leading to suggestions that other recent AAA titles, such as 'Madden NFL 19' and 'Shadow of the Tomb Raider' could be cracked soon.
Courtesy of CrackWatch, which monitors piracy channels to indicate whether a game has been cracked, a series of new games that appear to use the latest version of Denuvo have been cracked recently, including 'F1 2018' and 'Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age'.
Both games have been cracked within weeks of release (23 days after release for 'Dragon Quest XI', and only 13 days for 'F1 2018').
And in the case of 'Naruto to Boruto: Shinobi Striker', it become a "zero day crack", meaning it was cracked on the day of release.
Denuvo, the anti-tampering tech, has been a thorn in the side of game crackers since it first became widely used a few years ago. It has proved particularly resistance to cracking efforts, with some games staying uncracked for months, even years. But in recent times, cracks have started to appear in Denuvo's armor, and game crackers appears to now have the upper hand.
Denuvo has also been criticized for being resource intensive, taking away precious frames-per-second from already resource hungry games. A recent comparison for the game 'Mass Effect Andromeda' with and without Denuvo protection (the publishers of the game removed Denuvo protection in a recent patch) showed as much as a 12% improvement in average framerate for the game post Denuvo removal. Efforts to contain cracking may lead to further performance issues with Denuvo in the future.
Denuvo has also been upping the pressure on game crackers via other means, with infamous cracked Voksi recently arrested and having his equipment seized.
Denuvo is currently in its 4.9 version, but the developers of Denuvo have rolled out several incremental updates as it tries to stem the piracy tide. It is unknown when Denuvo 5.0 will be released and whether it will add a whole new layer of protection that resets the progress game crackers have made in recent times.
[via Crackwatch]
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