With Denuvo Completely Defeated, 2K Turns To Annoying Online Check In Requirement
from the bad-to-worse dept
Ah, Denuvo. It’s been several years since we checked in on this once vaunted DRM tool that billed itself as undefeatable. The end of PC gaming piracy was said to be at hand, at least for any title using Denuvo. Then, predictably, the cracking community saw the target the company had put on its own tool and got to work. They were first able to crack games using Denuvo in months, which turned into weeks, which turned into days, which eventually turned into it being cracked essentially on a game’s launch day.
So, how’s it been going for Denuvo since? Well, it’s essentially been rendered completely useless at this point.
As recently reported by Tom’s Hardware, on April 27, a large Reddit thread tracking which games using Denvuo DRM still needed to be cracked or bypassed officially hit zero. (This list tracks games that don’t require an online server connection, not MMORPGs and other games that do.) What that means, effectively, is that according to Denuvo modders and hackers, the DRM tech is no longer able to stop pirates from downloading and installing games for free. This milestone for hackers is largely thanks to the MKDev collective and modder DenuvOwO. It was these people who created the hypervisor-based bypass (HVB) that installs a kernel-level driver to bypass Denuvo’s DRM checks.
Technically, Denuvo is still in the game, but it isn’t functioning as it should, and pirates can play without paying. And there is already some evidence that bypassing Denuvo has led to performance improvements in titles like Resident Evil Requiem, which might push some people to use the bypass even if they bought the game legally. We saw this in a previous Resident Evil game when hackers bypassed Denuvo in 2021.
This is always the life cycle of DRM in video games. Whatever audacious claims a DRM company might want to make early on with its product, the technology is eventually defeated to one degree or another and all that is left are the byproducts of the DRM that serve to do nothing other than annoy legitimate customers of a video game. If the technology is so intrusively bad that even legit buyers of a game want to crack it out of their games, and the pirates are completely unencumbered by it as well, then it’s a wonder why anyone would bother including it in their games to begin with.
DRM is pretty much always bad. The desire to protect a game from pirates is understandable, but ultimately pointless. There is almost never enough benefit in terms of generating more sales by trying to fight piracy to be worth pissing off your actual paying customers. And tactics such as what publisher 2K has decided to do in the wake of Denuvo’s complete failure aren’t any better.
2K Games has apparently begun adding 14-day online check-ins to some of its PC games. The check-in has apparently been added to NBA 2K25, NBA 2K26, and Marvel’s Midnight Suns. These games now reportedly use a “fixed offline authorization token” that expires after two weeks. Once that happens, the game will not be playable until you connect to the internet and let the game ping Denvuo to get a new token. Pirat Nation and hackers are claiming this new countdown isn’t properly disclosed on the games’ Steam Store page or in each title’s respective EULA.
I’ll just add that pushing this new requirement out via an update to existing purchases is also a problem. Customers bought these games with the understanding of how they would work or not when offline. 2K suddenly changing the product in a meaningful way after it had already been purchased is a flatly anti-consumer move.
And I have no doubt that this online check requirement will be defeated by the same folks who defeated Denuvo. This arms race continues, but it shouldn’t. Why not focus on making great games and connecting with your paying customers to give them reasons to actually pay instead?
Filed Under: check ins, denuvo, drm, video games
Companies: 2k, denuvo
Comments on “With Denuvo Completely Defeated, 2K Turns To Annoying Online Check In Requirement”
Thanks 2K! Now your falling quality isn’t the only reason I don’t purchase your garbage.
For something that’s the complete opposite of 2K Games here, remember the saga of Stardew Valley (from the archives). That’s the game that had people buying and gifting copies to the people trying to pirate it.
Nothing quite like MBAs (and Japanese companies in whole)so out of touch with their customers and fans that they constantly spit on them and treat them like the pirates they are trying to combat. And in a lot of cases, so many just get away with it because fans put up with it. Not that we have much of a choice if you want to support them.
Capcom seems to ebb and flow. They can’t make up their damn mind if they want to be assholes or not. They got through periods of being baseline not offensive to gimping their games with multiple DRM systems just to say “fuck you” to their paying customers. Particularly ones that like to mod and fix their broken shit they don’t want to. I was excited for some recent Steam re releases of older games. Only to procrastinate and find out elsewhere by accident they put super intrusive DRM in literal 2+ decade old games. Like what the fuck man, here I was gonna give you money. But yeah no thanks I just stick with emulated or pirated versions of these games I already own on older platform.
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Most of those PS1-era games are also being released DRM-free on GOG, so on the one hand you can buy a copy without DRM and support the official release, but on the other hand, an entirely DRM-free copy is already out in the wild, so why even have the DRM on other storefronts?
One mp3 player fir android requires on line check in which 8s annoying if I am somewhere there is no cellular data, like the radio quiet zone a ways out from area 51.
I have to drive 65 miles to eureka, nv where the wifi one one hotel is open and csn be connected to from the gas station in town where poweramp can connect and check in
When I do that I use a no log vpn so if the vpn is ever investigated they cannot identify me as a user.
A vpn in cuernavaa, Mexico is not subject to American laws
To buy gas for the 65 mile drive back I go inside and pay in cash so there is no bank trail.
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You “know” so much about VPNs and bank trails and driving across the US-Mexico border, yet not about completely offline music players that have existed on Android since before Donald “Mexico will pay for the wall” Trump ran for 45th POTUS.
How about you stop polluting the comments with anecdotes that literally never happened, nevermind giving “advice” that you yourself wouldn’t follow?
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Or you could use a different player and not relate these weird hacker fan fiction stories.
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I use poweramp daily and it doesn’t ask me for an internet connection, even with the bought version.
Denuvo down, Enigma is next.
Resident Evil 4 remake was one of the reported Capcom games trying a different DRM, Enigma. And it too have similar issues with Denuvo (espically older versions when that have performance hits). It is comparable to StarForce DRM of the old past, both made by Russian people, and both were extremely draconian.
DRM inconveniencing customers can lead to the cobra effect. Let’s not forget what happened to Spore long ago.
The video game equivalent to stores’s anti-theft when it falsely accuses a customer of stealing.
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The DRM is exactly why I never bought Spore, and have no desire to play Spore despite it looking interesting and fun at the time.
[smacks chubby lil baby fists on table repeatedly]
“Shareholder value! Shareholder value!! I wunt my–“
Extremely annoying.
This affects me personally since I still play Midnight Suns on Steam.
I’m gonna wait for a crack to get rid of this bullshit. I paid for the game, I should not have to have to keep “checking in” just to play a game I bought offline.
Piracy is a service problem. If your goods or services are more convenient than piracy and at a reasonable price, people will buy them. It not, then they won’t.
Companies should focus on trying to make paid products better, instead of trying, futility, to make piracy worse. It doesn’t work. It’s never worked. The definition of insanity and all that.
But try telling that to shareholders.
Easy. Circumvent the packets going out to the verification server.
Route all traffic through PhonyVPN.exe and then find the outgoing packets going to the verification server and return to the program a valid check no matter what input goes in it comes out valid and blocks the outgoing packets but instead replies in such a matter that all checks succeed no matter what.
Please drink a verification can.
Just wait until GTA VI.
Oh boy. This is the company that owns Rockstar. Can’t wait to see how they inconvenience the people who buy GTA VI. As if the game possibly being $100 USD was not reason enough to pirate it….