Things go from bad to worse for Denuvo, as every game under its protection has now reportedly been bypassed

Well, it was only a matter of time, I suppose. Following the successful circumnavigation of Denuvo anti-tamper on all non-VR games Irdeto’s DRM protection service provided, it has now been reported that the full catalog has been bypassed. The ball is now even more in Denuvo developer Irdeto’s court, and I can’t help but wonder how the industry will respond long-term.

Last week, I reported that Denuvo had been cracked or bypassed in all non-VR games, most of which using the recently-developed Hypervisor bypass. This method isn’t a conventional ‘crack,’ but instead it sits below your PC’s kernel, feeding false information to the DRM anti-tamper when it checks in. As I noted in my previous article, it’s not exactly a 100% safe method of playing some of the best PC games out there, but many have accepted the risks.

Since the introduction of Hypervisor, Denuvo-protected titles have fallen one by one at a rapid pace. With only VR titles left, the writing was on the wall. Now, it’s being reported on the CrackWatch subreddit that every single Denuvo game, VR included, has either been cracked or bypassed. Irdeto said back in March that it was working on countermeasures, though I doubt this latest news will hurry its efforts any more than it’s already doing.

With Denuvo laying defeated for now, I can’t help but wonder what the knock-ons are going to be further afield. I can imagine publishers are less than pleased that they’ve paid for a now-defective product, though I also suspect Irdeto’s eventual solution, however that materializes, will do enough to sooth concerns – the current state of affairs was always a possibility, after all.

Or, perhaps more cynically, this could enable a harder push towards something like cloud gaming, where DRM doesn’t need to be considered. Though cloud gaming has come on leaps and bounds since it was first, and certainly prematurely introduced, game ownership is already in a spurious position as is. I’ve already given up on being able to buy physical copies of games from my local store, and, even though the current digital license model is essentially a glorified lease, I’d still rather know I can play some of my games offline if my ISP has an off day.

Of course, these are just the ramblings of a jaded millennial with his doomer hat on. The most likely outcome is that Irdeto’s promised fix will simply render Hypervisor defunct, and the cat-and-mouse chase between pirate and digital navy will begin anew.