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Bypassing Denuvo in Hogwarts Legacy
- jsheard 3y agoFor the curious, there's a running tally of which Denuvo games have or haven't been cracked over on Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/CrackWatch/comments/p9ak4n/crack_watch_games/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CrackWatch/comments/p9ak4n/crack_wa... Currently not a single Denuvo game released during 2024 has been cracked, and more games released during 2023 remain uncracked than those that were. It's actually pretty effective unlike most other PC DRM schemes.
- wincy 3y agoI was going to say Lies of P was cracked, but turns out they just removed it from their game. It was up on piracy sites the same day. I wonder why this happens? Does Denuvo cost a lot of ongoing subscription money for a developer or something? I’ve noticed this happens a decent amount.
- post_break 3y agoI think it’s because piracy at launch is the most important. Stopping it right at launch is key. Also I do believe it’s a subscription.
- codetrotter 3y agoEvery graph I’ve ever seen of video game sales from people who distribute via Steam etc typically has an initial spike if they caught on and got featured, and then a few spikes for things like holiday sales. Maybe the devs of the game you mentioned decided that after the initial spike had passed, and they are in a long tail period, it is cheaper to remove Denuvo. Or they just used Denuvo to protect the game during early time when most sales happen and they removed it because they want better performance and also they want people to be able to play the game 20, 50, 100, and 1000 years from now.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 3y agoAlso "X removes DRM" is an opportunity for a news cycle that could result in new sales.
- viraptor 3y agoI'm not sure how common that is, but I've definitely bought 2 games after the "removed DRM" event. (Basically allowing me to play on Linux in pre-steamdeck times) I'm aware that lots of people don't care.
- dugite-code 3y agoSure lots of people don't care, but if you save money on DRM subscription fees and see a tiny bump in sales it could be worth the tiny amount of dev time. Assuming you set it up to be easily removed ahead of time.
- pizza234 3y agore: performance, the submitted article has a very interesting analysis of it (at least, in the context of the game that has been cracked).
- bakugo 3y agoYes, Denuvo has recurring costs to the developer, it's not a one time payment. In the case of Lies of P though, the developers accidentally included a debug build .exe without Denuvo in an update, only afterwards was it actually removed entirely because there was no point in including it anymore.
- jsheard 3y agoIt's always funny when they go to the expense of licensing Denuvo but then accidentally release a DRM-free version one way or another. The other classic blunder is to release a free demo version with an executable that is complete enough to play the data packages from the full version of the game if they are swapped in. That's what "demo bypass" means in the Reddit table.
- miki123211 3y agoMy (unnamed) favorite was an indie game that you could download with no payment required, but that would prompt you for a key at installation time. If you had 7zip installed, you could just hit context menu on it, do "extract all", click on <game name>.exe and there it was, the full version with no key required.
- molticrystal 3y agoI believe Denuvo charges for access to the activation servers. [0] While the pricing structure has likely changed, for most game companies the long tail end [1] of the sales doesn't justify continuing. For example, Square-Enix(Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest) removes Denuvo 6 months into a release. For a counter-example, Atlus(makers of Persona/Shin Megami Tensei) are known to never purposely remove the protection. [0] https://www.techpowerup.com/275158/denuvo-drm-pricing-structure-specific-to-crysis-remastered-leaked-over-usd-100k-for-a-year https://www.techpowerup.com/275158/denuvo-drm-pricing-struct... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail?useskin=vector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail?useskin=vector
- wincy 3y agoWith Atlus games you can just emulate it for switch better than it runs on the original console.
- jsheard 3y agoDenuvo claims to have a solution to that as well, but to date it hasn't actually shown up in any games. I kind of hope at least one publisher bites just because I'm curious to find out what horrors they've cooked up to make emulation difficult. https://irdeto.com/denuvo/nintendo-switch-emulator-protection/ https://irdeto.com/denuvo/nintendo-switch-emulator-protectio... There is precedent for that kind of thing, Wii emulation matured early enough that a handful of retail games had code specifically intended to frustrate running them in Dolphin. They abused some details of the real Wiis L1/L2 cache which aren't simulated by Dolphin, and couldn't be without adding an unreasonable amount of overhead. https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2017/02/01/dolphin-progress-report-january-2017/#50-2204-hack-to-protect-lower-mem1-from-malicious-game-code-by-booto https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2017/02/01/dolphin-progress-rep...
- johnny22 3y agoIt could be they are just waiting for the switch 2 to really focus on it. Somebody mentioned how atlus never removes denuvo and also aren't releasing persona 3 for the switch, but will release it for the switch 2.
- aaomidi 3y agoDenuvo is awful on Linux since switching proton versions causes an activation to happen. You’re limited to 3 or 5 activations per day.
- wnevets 3y agoA side effect of temporary DRM is the decreased incentive to crack it. Sure the "street cred" is still important to some people but if you just wait a few months it will be gone.
- redder23 3y agoThe devs removed Denuvo from Lies of P because they accidentally leaked an unprotected version. Basically the same is if it was cracked. No point to bug customers with longer loading times and the bloat that comes from D.
- gonlad_x 3y agoWhat I saw in a YT video related to piracy [0] was that game companies remove their DRM after the game has been effectively pirated, since it doesn't really matter anymore, and cost them money + worse experience for paying end-users. The guy in the video makes the point that: Game is released --> paying users suffer the lower perf caused by DRM while pirates crack it --> pirates succeed, company removes DRM, paying users benefit from improved perf ^^ [0]: https://youtu.be/_Fu4pE46-zM https://youtu.be/_Fu4pE46-zM
- ryathal 3y agoThey aren't super public with their cost structure, though it appears to generally be a monthly cost for publishers. Most games remove Denuvu after about a year if it's going to get removed. Some of the bigger publishers may have better deals though as titles never remove it, even after multiple years and no new updates.
- armada651 3y ago> It's actually pretty effective unlike most other PC DRM schemes. I wonder how much that has to do with the actual technical merits of this DRM scheme compared to older DRM schems. Piracy as a service problem has mostly been solved on PC by now, so there's not a lot of incentive to crack games anymore. Most of what Denuvo does has been done by other DRM schemes before, VMProtect has been used by DRM schemes before Denuvo. It just seems that Denuvo is more aggressive with online verification than previous schemes.
- bdw5204 3y agoIt is most likely due to Denuvo being harder to crack because it is a widely hated DRM. Pirates probably want to crack it on principle. I don't think most of the pirates actually care that much about whether people download their releases. They just want the credit within the scene of cracking something that's hard to crack or leaking something before street date. For-profit pirates would be an exception to this but I doubt they're very prevalent because most people are pirating to avoid paying. Denuvo is also an exception to piracy as a service problem being solved because it is widely hated even by non-pirates. If pirates rendered it ineffective, companies would not be using it for their games but preventing piracy is worth the backlash as far as they're concerned.
- serf 3y ago>I don't think most of the pirates actually care that much about whether people download their releases. they don't care about who downloads what, but you'd better believe that the market hype drives the attention and sets the rewarded merit for accomplishing the crack.
- the_mitsuhiko 3y ago> Denuvo is also an exception to piracy as a service problem being solved because it is widely hated even by non-pirates. Maybe in an abstract Reddit community kind of way. For paying end users I doubt Denuvo comes up much. It works behind the scenes and is pretty reliable.
- 3y ago
- h1fra 3y agois it effective or just really everywhere in the codebase like this article suggest? I don't fully get everything Denuvo does but it seems like if I replace Denuvo with my own mandatory HTTP call it would be as annoying to crack.
- two_handfuls 3y agoOh good, I can use this list of games with Denuvo to know which games not to buy.
- lordgrenville 3y agoPity most of the interesting information is missing because of legal concerns.
- Arrath 3y agoAgreed, this write up felt more like a summary. I'd love to get into the meat of it!
- selectodude 3y agoHere's a long video the premiere Denuvo cracker Volsi (who may/may not also be EMPRESS) made before going to jail. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suABtb8_2Zk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suABtb8_2Zk
- Double_a_92 3y agoYeah kinda pointless read. It's basically "I did a thing... somehow".
- noname120 3y agoAnd he didn't prove that he actually did it at all. I will trust him on that given his reputation but the information in the article is so vague and basic that if we solely rely on that thin evidence literally everyone can claim the same.
- kiririn 3y agoThe performance impact Denuvo is known for is not due to the license checks, it is due to running parts of the game in a custom vm. Hogwarts Legacy is new enough that they might be taking a different approach entirely after the whole vmprotect controversy
- the_mitsuhiko 3y agoDenuvo protected games only let some functions go through that VM and typically not functions invoked every frame. Only when you screw up as a developer and hook the wrong thing will performance suffer.
- mksrew 3y agoOn the other hand, functions that go through the VM messes with the Branch Predictor and increases Cache Miss, which affects anything that runs after (for a short period tho, depending on how often it runs). You can argue that a good developer will configure Denuvo to only "compile" functions where those side effects doesn't matter (like after loading screens, during cutscenes, when the game is paused, etc). However, I've seen so many stupid mistakes in this industry that I would never trust the experience and skill of said developers, unless I can asses it myself by working on a daily basis with them.
- LightHugger 3y agoOnly when you screw up as a developer do games run below 144 fps on modern hardware. And yet most don't. This isn't a valid argument. Most games do not implement denuvo in a way that performance is magically unaffected
- fbdab103 3y agoI thought the latest Doom was released "accidentally" without the DRM[0]. Not the first time the studio forgot to properly bake the DRM into the final product. [0] https://www.pcgamer.com/bethesda-accidentally-left-a-denuvo-free-exe-in-doom-eternals-files/ https://www.pcgamer.com/bethesda-accidentally-left-a-denuvo-...
- asylteltine 3y ago[dead]
- metalcrow 3y agoI'm really disappointed this doesn't include technical details, especially the bit about "The game can not run without the token, as it is used to e.g. decrypt certain values at runtime and similar things." Is the game installed encrypted? What encryption schema allows you to decrypt the same set of data using multiple different keys in this way? If the game isn't installed encrypted it seems easiest just to not allow it to encrypt itself before running.
- jsheard 3y agoMy vague understanding is that Denuvo generates many redundant diverging paths through the executable, which are chosen at runtime based on pieces of the users hardware signature. The keys you get from the server only work for the paths your hardware is supposed to follow, so if you take those keys to a different machine it will branch in different ways and crash when it's not able to decrypt that path. That redundancy is probably why the protected executables are so large.
- metalcrow 3y agoThat makes sense, but how are these paths encrypted? If it's at runtime, you should be able to just not encrypt them. If it's at install time, do they generate a custom encrypted exe just for you per-download?
- jsheard 3y agoIt's all done ahead of time when the game is packaged by the developer. The executable you download contains every encrypted path that might be executed, but the authentication handshake only gives you the keys for a subset of those.
- Culonavirus 3y agoHence why a Denuvo protected game exe can easily be hundreds of megs.
- 3y ago
- redder23 3y agoThe so-called "rumors" that Denuvo kills performance are not rumors. It's just not true ANYMORE. Older versions impacted performance heavily, but later on the performance impact became negligible.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago[flagged]
- ranger_danger 3y agowaiting in jail that is.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y agoLol. Fooled ya did she.
- xref 3y agoFrom reading upthread it sounds like performance impact is heavily dependent on the skill of the game development team, ie: if they pick the wrong things to hook during the in-game runtime checks performance can suffer greatly
- gambiting 3y agoI used to work at Ubisoft during the whole controversy about Denuvo killing performance in one of the recent Assassins Creeds - all I can say is we've done extensive investigation into this internally, as well as worked with Denuvo to assess these claims and they were just not true, but of course the court of public opinion has spoken so nothing we did or said could have changed it at that point.
- mavamaarten 3y agoThere were some cases where there was a noticeable impact, there's quite some benchmarks out there that show a clear difference in FPS and frametimes. But it always seemed like a borked implementation to me, rather than a problem with the product itself.
- snvzz 3y agoDenuvo is why I do not own this game. And Denuvo will be why I pirate it, should I get tired of waiting for the vendor to remove that crap.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- zooweemama 3y agoI sincerely thought that Denuvo was a boss in the game.
- BlueTemplar 3y agoVoldemort's true name.
- badsectoracula 3y ago> It doesn’t do that very often. [..] It’s only once every few seconds. [..] To me personally, it tells that Denuvo executes checks so infrequently, that the likelyhood of it causing FPS drop seems rather low. Keep in mind that FPS drops are only one issue with Denuvo's performance. Another common one (which i think is more common in recent releases, judging from comments i've seen) is frame pracing/stuttering/etc - people very often mention in Reddit threads about Denuvo's removal from a game that the update that removed Denuvo fixed these for them (of course it could also be some other change the game had, but this has been the case with more than one game and games receive other patches before removing Denuvo, so i have a hard time accepting all are coincidences). A slow/lengthy call every few seconds wont affect your average framerate (which is what often developers check for performance measurement) but it will affect your frame pacing and give a stuttery feel. Most people tend to call this a "performance issue" (regardless if it is due to performance or not).
- TiredOfLife 3y agoKeep in mind that modern games generate/compile shader and other caches during runtime, that is one of the reasons for stutter. So when they try version with the drm removed the cache is already generated and so there are no stutters
- smcl 3y agoShader compilation is well known though, and anyone halfway serious about benchmarking these things (like Digital Foundry) factor this in and control for it
- TiredOfLife 3y agoYes, and anyone halfway serious including DF usually don't find Denuvo having any noticeable effect on performance
- badsectoracula 3y agoDF's claims isn't that it doesn't have any noticeable effect in performance (in fact in a recent video[0] they claim the opposite when Denuvo was introduced to Assassin's Creed Mirage after reviews were done - it can affect performance and thus because of that introducing it after the fact invalidated the CPU performance metrics reviewers had done) but - at least in the cases i remember - they cannot tell if the issues were due to Denuvo or not. Note though that in a case where they could test both versions, they did find Denuvo to both have lesser performance and affect frame pacing[1] (though that is for a 2yo game, things might be better more recently). [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LB1lRC4II4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LB1lRC4II4 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXZGCwAJpbM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXZGCwAJpbM
- p0w3n3d 3y agoThere are already many games that are not playable because servers used for DRM were turned off. In this matter I support cracking such "play only online" DRMs, because when I pay for a game I want to play it even after a few years, and maybe even especially after a few years
- iLoveOncall 3y ago> There are already many games that are not playable because servers used for DRM were turned off I'll need a source for that.
- remedan 3y agoHere is a (probably not exhaustive) list: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_using_Always_Online_DRM#Always-online_DRM_games_that_have_already_shut_down https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_using_Always...
- iLoveOncall 3y agoThis is an incredibly misleading link. Most of those are online-only games that have been shutdown (or the multiplayer part of the game has been), it's not at all the same as having a DRM that needs to reach a server for a purely solo experience.
- remedan 3y agoSure, but there are also single-player games on the list. You asked for a source that such a thing happens. The link proves that it does.
- iLoveOncall 3y agoAgain, it doesn't prove anything. If you see the top of the table it says "Specifically games no longer listed as being available for sale through any means.". It doesn't mean you can't play the game if you already acquired it... I have Steam games that aren't sold anywhere anymore but I can still install and play them just fine.