Denuvo dealt major blow as crackers claim all non-VR games with the anti-tamper have been bypassed

The war on videogame piracy may, for now, be a losing one, especially for Denuvo DRM maker Irdeto. According to a popular cracking forum, every non-VR game using what has become the industry’s go-to anti-tamper software has successfully had its protective layer circumvented. Sensing the danger posed by the recently-developed Hypervisor bypass, which is chiefly responsible for the current state of affairs, Denuvo last month announced that it was working on countermeasures. Until they materialize, the denizens of the high seas are on top.

With the advent of the Hypervisor bypass at the end of last year, it felt like it’d only be a matter of time before crackers finished cleaving through the catalog of Denuvo DRM games. Hypervisor essentially sits a level below your operating system (what we call the ‘kernel layer’), feeding Denuvo false information when it comes to check that everything’s up to snuff. At first, meddling with your rig in this way required the disabling of core security features like Secure Boot, but subsequent iterations have reduced the spuriousness of this method. It’s still not safe, though, as you still need to turn off Driver Signature Enforcement (DSE is the thing that ensures any installed drivers are Microsoft-certified… you can see why I say “not safe”).

For most powerusers who know not to download weird files from dodgy websites, however, using Hypervisor has been deemed a worthwhile risk. It’s substantially easier to implement than more traditional methods, judging from the fact that, as of right now, the CrackWatch subreddit is reporting that all non-VR Denuvo games have been cracked or bypassed in some capacity. Most recently, Capcom’s Pragmata popped up, completely bypassed, two days before the game itself officially launched – wild.

I’ve previously spoken at length about Denuvo and the potential issues surrounding it, so if you’re not entirely familiar with it, then head here and mooch through the article. One thing is clear, though: publishers making use of Irdeto’s service are certainly not getting their money’s worth right now. As noted in my rundown, cracking Denuvo within the first week of a game’s life can yield up to a 20% loss in revenue, which is certainly less than ideal.

Of course, Irdeto isn’t taking this lying down. At the end of March, Head of Communications Daniel Butschek gave the following statement to TorrentFreak: “We’re already working on updated security versions for games impacted by Hypervisor bypasses. For players, performance will not be compromised by these strengthened security measures.” Butschek further notes that Irdeto’s countermeasures won’t fight fire with fire, and will avoid moving Denuvo below your OS where Hypervisor currently operates. Until then, it’s open season.