DRM – What is Denuvo?

drm

There are a lot of articles and community posts going around mentioning Denuvo and how it's not letting people play games they have already purchased.

I know that it's an anti-piracy company that offers their services for video game companies. But what exactly does it do and why is everyone so pissed when Denuvo is used?

Best Answer

Great question!

"Denuvo Anti-Tamper, or Denuvo, is an anti-tamper technology and digital rights management (DRM) scheme developed by the Austrian company Denuvo Software Solutions GmbH, a company formed through the management buyout (MBO) of Sony DADC DigitalWorks." - Wikipedia

Too much technical jargon? I'll explain it to you.

What is Denuvo?

Denuvo Anti-Tamper is a DRM solution that protects games from being placed in the hands of pirates (people who obtain video games illegitimately from cracking, reverse engineering, i.e.) This way, only people who bought it can play the game.

Keep in mind that Denuvo itself isn't a DRM.

What Does it Do? How Does it Work?

No one truly understands Denuvo besides the people who made it. The latest discovery on it (2016, you can read more about it here) does not provide enough information to crack the program completely.

According to this user on Steam, Denuvo works like this:

  1. You install a copy of the game that is incomplete and is missing key files.
  2. If the game's DRM software allows the user to play the game, Denuvo is activated.
  3. It downloads the rest of files, encrypts those files, and ties those files to your hardware, making it so only you can play that game on that specific hardware.
  4. When a new major update is released, or there is a change in hardware, Denuvo replaces those files and reties them to your current hardware.

Because of this, Denuvo completes its two objectives:

  • The DRM is not bypassed.
  • The game cannot be reverse engineered.

So Why Is It Bad?

While Denuvo is an innovative approach to software encryption, there are a few drawbacks:

  1. Denuvo will not be around forever. When you download a game, Denuvo requires you to download the rest of your files from the servers. What happens if 20/30 years later, you decide you want to play a Denuvo-title, only to find out you can't because the servers are gone?
  2. Many speculate that performance is affected because of Denuvo.
  3. Activation can be a pain whenever you have to reactivate.
  4. It's a pain in the ass for modders, unless there is official modding support from the game.

There's a lot of downsides and upsides to Denuvo, but now whenever you hear about it, you'll know what they're talking about!

Cheers!

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