Denuvo strikes again!
Honestly, Denuvo makes me want to sail the high seas. When I browse Steam and see Denuvo, I mentally write off the game, saying “Might buy this in a couple of years if they fix this shit.” If the company fails to do so, the game becomes valid to pirate, far as I am personally concerned.
I am not paying money to be rootkitted.
The stupid part is it doesnt even work. Denuvo games are cracked just like any other. Pretty sure Hogwarts legacy was cracked day 1 as a fuck you to jk Rowling.
Denuvo cracks are extremely rare though. Gone are the glory days of CPY and Empress.
Hogwarts Legacy was literally the last Denuvo game to get a crack. Otherwise you just wait until the denuvo license expires, then get it.
Sometimes i pirate games I’ve bought so I don’t have to deal with this nonsense. Like titanfall.
Right? In the past we got software for free when we let companies use our data. Now they want to take our money too.
Yeah I don’t remember the last time I pirated a game but Denuvo just gives me an ick and I’d rather not.
“Might buy this in a couple of years if they fix this shit.”
Why wait? Pirate today.
Because early Denuvo cracks tend to not work correctly, and often require you to do stupid shit like set your OS’s year to 2015 or something like that just for the game to boot.
I rather just wait a year or two for either a proper crack, or for the developer to decide to remove the DRM themselves, a la Capcom. Especially it’s a single player game, cause there’s no need to worry about the player population dying down by the time a crack comes out. And you also get to reap the benefits of having bugfixes available since the game has been out for awhile.
Because Denuvo games take a long time to crack, and only a few people can do it reliably? There are games released as far back as 2018 that still haven’t been cracked.
High profile denuvo games are cracked pretty quickly, from my experience.
Steam deck is a thing now.
Whine at the developer and Valve. They will whine at Denuvo. Chances are it’s something Denuvo haven’t checked for and can fix quite easily.
Especially on a “Steam Deck Verified” game.
I actually doubt it’s an easy fix. The issue is that each version of proton looks like a different machine. So when Denuvo only allows you to boot on [x] machines in [y] days, it’s easy to get locked out of a game simply because it looks like you booted it on a bunch of different machines.
Some of the game streaming services have this same issue. Nvidia has that thing where you can boot it on Nvidia’s servers, then stream it. But the issue is that when you boot it, you don’t get the same server each time. So if you’re playing a game that is prone to crashing, you can easily eat through your [x] machines count quickly. Not because you were playing it on different machines, but because it was booted on a different server each time you launched it.
I would have thought it would be a client side patch rather than server side, but surely it’s a case of taking whatever Proton is changing out of the machine “fingerprint” when generating it on a Steam Deck. There’s plenty of other things they can use to identify a machine.
This problem is solved by not giving money to devs who use denuvo. If you gotta resort to malware to sell your game, it’s not worth playing.
How do I know which do? (Genuine question.)
As of a few months ago (IIRC the timeline) Steam shows this directly on the game’s store page. You’ve got to scroll down for it a little bit, but it’s right under where it lists features of the game, E.G. single-player, controller support, etc.
There’s even a Steam Curator you can follow who recommends against games that use Denuvo. https://store.steampowered.com/curator/26095454-Denuvo-Watch/
I literally came looking for this info. Ty for asking the questions and ty for answering them.
If it doesn’t exist on GOG, it doesn’t exist. Life is good.
Just ignore all games that have Denuvo. It’s actually working I don’t see much good games with denuvo lately.
It’s s actually working
You should keep following your principles, but that’s not the reason it’s working. The amount of gamers that even know about Denuvo is tiny, and those who care enough to not buy a game because of that is an even smaller fraction of that small number.
The reason is simply because Denuvo is expensive and a recurring cost. Once a developer removes it, they no longer need to pay for it.
Lmao imagine paying a monthly fee for software that ruins the game you made… Wtf
I don’t think that’s true about denuvo specifically. I’ve known some pretty big “normies” for lack of a better term that knoe denuvo makes games run worse.
Basically the only games I want to play that have Denuvo currently are a handful of games published by ATLUS like Persona 5 the Royal and Metaphor: Refantazio.
I actually bought Metaphor, not realizing it had Denuvo, and then was just randomly unable to launch the game. After fiddling with some proton settings and reopening the game I got a very generic error message with a link to a website that told me I was locked out of the game for 24 hours.
I wound up returning the game.
It’s a shame when amazing games like ATLUS’s stuff are kneecapped by shithead corpos.
If i’m ever desperate, I just install the cracks and buy the game on steam sale years down the line after denuvo gets removed anyway.
As far as I can tell, Doom the Dark Ages has it, and many reviews are quite good. I don’t know if they’re good enough to convince me to install it though. Maybe I’ll wait until they remove it months or years later.
CAD$90
Base or premium?
Base
Ouch
That’s before sales tax as well (5%-15% province-dependent)
From what i’ve heard the game crashes a lot
Can confirm, I gave up after my fifth crash in two hours. So much for Doom being a landmark PC series…
Yeah i’m not a doom player myself but i was surprised about it having so many problems as well, cause generally speaking i always heard people praise their pc ports for being extremely well optimized.
Denuvo, hearing that the music isn’t as good, the performance issues, and crashes have all but killed my hype for the game. I might still cave in and buy it, but I probably should just support a better company instead.
That would certainly make me request a refund and just pirate the game.
Heads up, Steam has stopped refunding even broken games if it passes the two hour mark (even if it’s from sitting there on your system process locked).
Illegal where I live, probably why they give me warnings about that but always end up approving the refund
What’s the law there?
Any online purchase can be refunded within 7 days, no matter the reason. I don’t even need a reason other than “didn’t like it” or “actually I’d rather use the money to buy some chocolate”
Brazil?
There are no groups currently cracking Denuvo.
In that case, request a refund and just forget about the game. It’s that little bit worse for the publisher who chose Denuvo.
Doubt it.
Now that it’s much harder to crack they’ll sell more. So many thiefs out there with plenty of money to burn who choose not to because they can get away with it.
Are the thieves with plenty of money to burn in the room with you, right now? Can you point them out? Where did they hurt you? Was it actually EA or Ubisoft but you’re scared to let us know? Was it Paradox’s DLC scheme, or Total War? Are they the ones who really hurt you? It’s ok. You’re in a safe space. The AI generated loot skins can’t hurt you, here.
There are several individuals though. Fitgirl and Empress come to mind.
Doesn’t fitgirl just repack stuff (compressing the game for smaller download sizes) rather than doing the actual cracking?
Oh I get it, fitgirl will Make It FIT! Huh.
Fitgirl
That’s a repacker, not a cracker.
Cracker? I barely know her?
ahh heard
I think Empress is too busy ranting about trans people to crack games anymore
And men in general.
Empress has not cracked anything for a long time and Fitgirl has never cracked anything
Is anything worth cracking? GTA 6 will be. But what has come out recently is worth the effort?
Yea I would think anyone who has a workaround is keeping it quiet, otherwise it’ll get fixed before then. Then it would be harder to break it for gta.
Is it because companies tend to strip denuvo from the games after some months?
The rumour going around, back then, was that Denuvo went under the table and paid crackers who had the ability to break their DRM to like – Stop doing that. And that this was the reason EMPRESS (actually insane woman) was the only person left who could crack it.
Of course, there is no way to prove that.
I think it is mostly due to it being difficult to hack and those with the skill are well employed and don’t want to risk legal action or spend the time to crack games.
Yeah, didn’t Denuvo themselves hire a few of the former crackers?
It’s always the paying customers, who get absolutely shafted. Wouldn’t be any other way, in modern society
Pirates never had Sony install a rootkit on their computer. Paying customers did, though.
Same with modern streaming services, you get awful resolutions on linux without them even telling you when you are a paying customer.
But the pirates get the full quality version no issue.
Fuck Denuvo
nice, I have some games that use denuvo in my wishlist: I’ll make sure to kick them from there.
and for anyone wondering, this profile seems to track games using it:
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/26095454-Denuvo-Games/
Any idea why some games are not recommended and others are “informational”?
I can’t seem to find an explanation on the informational.
As far as I can tell, this is a user who reviews games that use Denuvo, and always reviews them as Not Recommended, but will change that review to “Informational” and the review text to “Denuvo removed” when the game removes Denuvo. There may be other circumstances when they’ll change it, though, so if you’re thinking of actually buying one of these games, it seems wise to click on the game’s “Not Recommended” or “Informational” and then scroll down on the store page until it shows you the relevant review. It should be highlighted on the page, though you have to scroll a ways down to see it. There is also a box just after the controller support info that lists 3rd party DRM a game uses, which should be there if the games uses Denuvo.
Thanks!
Thanks for the list. I’m glad none of the games look like something I would buy in the future. Although I did see one or two that’s in my library, which I’ve already beaten years ago when I played on Windows.
That list is super helpful. So many games to avoid. Although, I was somewhat surprised by the number of Denuvo removed I’ve gotten through Humble.
Underrated comment, this should be at the top.
Remember kids, complain to the publisher and developer. They are the ones paying for Denuvo and you are the ones paying for the game.
If you are paying for a game with Denuvo then you are paying for Denuvo. Don’t buy games with invasive software in them you don’t want invasive software 🤷♀️ Sure, complain to the developer and the publisher, but you give them the money to waste on Denuvo if you buy the game
Do both. Don’t buy it and tell the publisher you’ll buy it when they remove denuvo.
Are there even any good games worth putting effort into that use Denuvo at this point?
the damn yakuza series is amazing but sega has such a hard on for denuvo
Anno 1800
Denuvo makes games bad, so no, there aren’t.
The Steam release of Persona 5 Royal, unfortunately. Which is kind of insane, it’s a single-player game.
There’s some others that I can’t personally attest to, but that sure look good from what I’ve seen. Monster Hunter: Wilds, for example. And the new Doom from a few days ago, if you’re into that sorta thing. Metaphor Re-Fantasio. The new Prince of Persia from last year. Hi-Fi Rush. Rocksmith, of all things.
I don’t buy anything with Denuvo.
Like I needed more reason to never buy games with Denuvo. But hey added to the list.
DeNOvo.
I genuinely wish nothing but the worst for Denuvo. Scum of the earth. DRM sucks, I do my best to avoid games with Denuvo.
