Denuvo was behind those game outages over the weekend

[Daniel Sims]

Why it matters: If you couldn't boot up the PC version of Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy or Football Manager 2022 over the weekend, it was possibly because of a problem with Denuvo DRM's servers. This will likely be seen as another flashpoint among the arguments against DRM in PC games.

Over the weekend, users in a Resetera thread and on the Steam forums reported errors related to server access when trying to boot up games like Guardians of the Galaxy, Football Manager 2022, Yakuza: Like A Dragon, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Persona 4 Golden, and Total War: Warhammer II. Eventually it was theorized that Denuvo had accidentally allowed the domain name for one of its servers to expire. Denuvo later confirmed this to PC Gamer, stating it had fixed the issue and would make sure it didn't happen again.

An event like this is particularly distressing for single-player games like Guardians, Persona, or Yakuza, which aren't supposed to be dependent on internet connections once they've been installed. Denuvo has been unpopular with players pretty much ever since developers started employing it to fight piracy.

@PlanetZooGame @shadowofwargame your DRM provider has let their domain name lapse, and it's killed your game startup... along with multiple other games I imagine. pic.twitter.com/rQk58K4AuJ

— Alex Buckland (@alexbuckland96) November 7, 2021

Most recently it was discovered that many games might not boot on Intel's new Alder Lake processors because of compatibility issues with DRM like Denuvo. Intel released a temporary fix last week.

Earlier this year, Resident Evil Village suffered performance issues that were traced to Denuvo when cracked versions of the game were shown to run better, and Capcom had to release a patch to resolve the problem.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/92130-denuvo-behind-game-outages-over-weekend.html

 

[winjer]

Denuvo must die.
For the sake of all PC gamers.

 

[Squid Surprise]

Piracy as a "problem" was merely invented to control the means of distribution... the prevention of it has now exploded out of control, accomplishing little - if anything - and annoying legit gamers to no end.

There has yet to be a study done that proves that piracy has had a negative impact on sales of ANY media (be it music, movies or games) and any studies that show otherwise are generally scoffed or ignored.

I love when companies claim "piracy cost us xx million dollars"... that's generally just an excuse to explain why their venture failed so spectacularly and to convince their superiors to invest in them to make another...

By the way: I am not ADVOCATING piracy here... I acknowledge that it is theft and wrong... I just don't think it's an actual problem - just an opportunity for some people to make a few extra bucks...

 

[brucek]

As an adult with a job, I pay for all my software. It's frustrating to look back on my school kid days and realize my software worked better then because it was the pirated/improved version of the game. (I'm probably also conflating the fact that the games were designed just to be as fun as possible, instead of mixing that with also having enough missing to better sell you microtransactions and DLCs.)

 

[hahahanoobs]

Are they super duper sure it's not ADL?

 

[Xallisto]

Whilst I'm not against folks proactively looking to protect what is theirs when it becomes obtrusive it has gone 2 far DRM should be as unobtrusive as it possibly can be.

 

[Mister_K]

Inb4 piracy is just a tax escape to claim back (no idea how corporate finance works)

 

[BSim500]

Pirates:1, Paying Customers:0, yet again...

 

[antiproduct]

Pirates:1, Paying Customers:0, yet again...

Actually, considering pirates got it for free, maybe it's more:
Pirates: 2, Paying customers: 0.

 

[kiwigraeme]

Has Steams Launcher ever been hacked ? - ie the online check before running say AAA new games .

I haven't heard of any software mimicking Steam checks - not looking to be fair .
So I assume denuvo is to stop ripping and repacking a game - as oppose to check legitimate buyer .

I can understand 1 month of extra drm - but not ongoing if Steam etc is enough .
Don't most of these games get cracked in a day now?

 

[Danny101]

It's funny that I have a purchased and a pirated version of a game. One for the developer and one for me.

 

[arrowflash]

Has Steams Launcher ever been hacked ? - ie the online check before running say AAA new games .

I haven't heard of any software mimicking Steam checks - not looking to be fair .
So I assume denuvo is to stop ripping and repacking a game - as oppose to check legitimate buyer .

I can understand 1 month of extra drm - but not ongoing if Steam etc is enough .
Don't most of these games get cracked in a day now?

Not sure if I understood right what you meant. But if my guess is right, you're waaay out of the loop. Steam DRM, including any online checks, was cracked over a decade ago. There are several Steam emulators available, that allow people to illegally run Steam games that have no extra DRM in them (in most cases online features don't work, obviously - it's a pure offline single player experience).

That's what most "cracked" games nowadays are in the first place - just a Steam rip packed together with a Steam emulator in the form of a .dll file and a .ini file. Usually these will work not only with the game it was packed with, but will work with any other game that uses the same version and features of the Steam API. And there are also many "generic" Steam emulators that aren't used by crack groups and are supposed to work with any game that doesn't have custom / third-party DRM, some can even provide online features. The exception, of course, are games that use third-party DRM such as Denuvo, or custom DRM developed in-house by the developers.

Steam DRM itself is optional, and many games (usually small indie titles) choose to not use it. With those games, you could just copy its Steam folder to a different PC and run it without using any crack (with a few of these games you might still be required to have Steam launcher installed, though).

 

[kiwigraeme]

Not sure if I understood right what you meant. But if my guess is right, you're waaay out of the loop. Steam DRM, including any online checks, was cracked over a decade ago. There are several Steam emulators available, that allow people to illegally run Steam games that have no extra DRM in them (in most cases online features don't work, obviously - it's a pure offline single player experience).

That's what most "cracked" games nowadays are in the first place - just a Steam rip packed together with a Steam emulator in the form of a .dll file and a .ini file. Usually these will work not only with the game it was packed with, but will work with any other game that uses the same version and features of the Steam API. And there are also many "generic" Steam emulators that aren't used by crack groups and are supposed to work with any game that doesn't have custom / third-party DRM, some can even provide online features. The exception, of course, are games that use third-party DRM such as Denuvo, or custom DRM developed in-house by the developers.

Steam DRM itself is optional, and many games (usually small indie titles) choose to not use it. With those games, you could just copy its Steam folder to a different PC and run it without using any crack (with a few of these games you might still be required to have Steam launcher installed, though).

Thanks - that's what I meant - suppose it's what some Windows OS cracks did - I don't pirate games = not worth if to me - as buy cheap - get updates - and it's there for my family to use

 

[pcnthuziast]

What Denuvo doesn't do: Prevent games from being pirated.

What Denuvo does: Gives rise to issues that potentially ruins the experience for paying customers.

 

[Eldritch]

Denuvo is basically used to FORCE people to buy when the game is the hot new thing in the market. Most people wont return a product even if they dislike it. That's also why most games don't have demos anymore.
Gamers who would try a cracked game and remove it after a couple of hours could have been sales if they had bought it.

 

[Yenega]

If I see Denuvo listed as DRM, I won't buy the game. It's that simple for me.

I want 100% performance without stutters. Denovu has caused low performance and stutter in numerous titles and still does. Stealing ressources.

I know tons of people with the same opinion. So are they actually LOOSING SALES because of Denuvo!? They might.. On top of paying for Denuvo.

 

[Kosmoz]

Those that don't want to/can't afford to buy, will never buy a game/games. Denuvo will not make them buy, will just make them wait longer for the game to get cracked.

Seeing as more and more games are in a horrible state at launch, those who buy the new game, get that **** Denuvo (or other DRM) to make their game worse, get an unfinished game with bugs/issues and they pay for that too. They get to be beta testers and suffer through it while paying money. That's some next level consumerism brainwashing and servitude.

Never get a game day 1, or worse, pre-order if you care to be safe from being exploited by these progressively worse companies. But that would mean one needs to have self respect, principles and the most scarce resource on the planet right now: PATIENCE.

So the Denuvo excuse is a LIE, a big one.

 

[VaRmeNsI]

Boycott games with Denovo!

 

[Yenega]

Those that don't want to/can't afford to buy, will never buy a game/games. Denuvo will not make them buy, will just make them wait longer for the game to get cracked.

Seeing as more and more games are in a horrible state at launch, those who buy the new game, get that **** Denuvo (or other DRM) to make their game worse, get an unfinished game with bugs/issues and they pay for that too. They get to be beta testers and suffer through it while paying money. That's some next level consumerism brainwashing and servitude.

Never get a game day 1, or worse, pre-order if you care to be safe from being exploited by these progressively worse companies. But that would mean one needs to have self respect, principles and the most scarce resource on the planet right now: PATIENCE.

So the Denuvo excuse is a LIE, a big one.

Exactly, most games are rushed today.

When DRM is removed 6-12 months later, the bugs are mostly gone and the game is optimized.

This means that people who buy on launch often gets the worst possible edition + DRM that steal their performance on top.

HOWEVER If we, as PC gamers, never buy PC games, PC platform might see less and less focus.

 

[Kosmoz]

Exactly, most games are rushed today.

When DRM is removed 6-12 months later, the bugs are mostly gone and the game is optimized.

This means that people who buy on launch often gets the worst possible edition + DRM that steal their performance on top.

HOWEVER If we, as PC gamers, never buy PC games, PC platform might see less and less focus.

Well, it's not like it's our fault for them making unfinished, buggy games, or is it?

The more I think about it, I can see the fault of all those that support these unfinished, buggy, bad DRM games with their money pre-ordering and day 1 buying, so maybe it is...

The truth is that it's a shared fault between those kind of buyers and lazy devs that know they get paid no matter the state of their games.

 

[Shaitan]

Boycott games with Denovo!

Exactly.
So, asa reminder:
Guardians of the Galaxy
Football Manager 2022
Yakuza: Like A Dragon
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Persona 4 Golden
Tottal War: Warhammer II
will be off my list forever. If I'm treated like a pirate, no issue, I'll quit buying their games.
Denovo = NO BUY.
If you go to the game-debate site /games/gamesWithDenuvo => there is a LONG list of games not worth buying.

 

[envirovore]

Denuvo is malware and should be eradicated.

 

[ZedRM]

I'm going to say it and I hope not to annoy the mods: PHUQ DRM!!

Denovo = NO BUY.

While I agree, I must make one alteration;
DRM = NO BUY.

In addition I must say:
Internet Connection Required = NO BUY.

 

[Shaitan]

I'm going to say it and I hope not to annoy the mods: PHUQ DRM!!


While I agree, I must make one alteration;
DRM = NO BUY.

In addition I must say:
Internet Connection Required = NO BUY.

Exactly. Returned Diablo II when they decided to forgo LAN support. Blizzard is dead and buried. Activision games are non existent to me anyway. Happily playing single player games (Cyberpunk) and never ever paying for anything containing microtransactions.