Denuvo FAQ

[Laptop]

Hi all,

This FAQ has been written to address any concerns or questions people may have surrounding the anti-tamper software known as “Denuvo” that is slowly having more of a presence in games released in this day and age.


Q: What is Denuvo?

A: Denuvo is a third party anti-tamper software measure that was brought in to combat piracy.


Q: Why is Denuvo used in this game? What + why has it been brought in?

A: Denuvo has been implemented in this as the developer / publisher would like to avoid the game being cracked for as much time as possible and as such have resorted to using Denuvo as an anti-tamper measure for this. It was brought in plain and simply to combat piracy and to encourage people to buy the game rather than illegally download it and have the devs end up with no money whatsoever from that potential customer.


Q: How does Denuvo work exactly?

A: How Denuvo does its job will remain a mystery as how it works is kept a secret for obvious reasons.

All that is provided by the company is that it enables game companes to still develop their ganes as normal and for Steam, Origin and Uplay clients to distrbute + manage them as normal also. Denuvo's role in all of this is to help protect this data and ensure mechanisms put in place to prevent cracking are prevented.


Q: Does this mean modding is no longer possible in games that use Denuvo if the game is encrypted?

A: It depends on which game it is and how the game’s owners have decided to implement it in their game. For example, they may choose to only encrypt the .exe for the game, leaving the rest of the files untouched and able to be accessed. However, other companies may wish to encrypt the entire game files instead, which will make modding severely restricted as you will be unable to touch the majority of the game files and modding-wise it will become quite limited in what you can do.


Q: I am a genuine customer looking to purchase this game that uses Denuvo, what considerations or problems should I be thinking about before buying the game (with Denuvo in mind)?

A: None.


Q: I am looking to crack the game which uses Denuvo, what considerations or problems should I be thinking about before cracking the game (with Denuvo in mind)?

A: …


Q: I have heard rumours about Denuvo spying on your PC files, hogging all of your system resources + network bandwidth and slowly killing your storage device by constantly writing data to it (especially with SSDs), is any of this true?

A: Partly, however a lot of the “scare stories” online have been greatly exaggerated.

As far as spying goes – someone would have noticed by now if Denuvo was poking around with files on your PC or uploading odd amounts of information up the Internet, so this would be incorrect, no “spying” is taking place as far as Denuvo goes.

As for system resources – The game (at most) may use a few more CPU cycles at a time and once in a while makes a quick “phone home” to verify the game is activated correctly and is valid for your PC. Note that this would be so small to the level that Steam itself would be using more CPU cycles + network bandwidth than Denuvo ever would, just to give you an idea of how much work it is actually doing.

As for your storage device – Denuvo does NOT write any data to your storage device, it is not constantly encrypting + decrypting data to your storage devices at all. The theory that it kills your SSD is not true and has been addressed by Denuvo themselves already. More than likely this rumour came about from pirates attempting to discredit Denuvo when it was just starting out in hopes they could damage their image / reputation as much as possible.

Hopefully the above will make it clearer now on what exactly Denuvo is doing on your PC.


Q: I have seen that Denuvo is eventually cracked in the long run and the game can then just be torrented as normal, why do publishers bother using Denuvo if it will get eventually get cracked anyway?

A: There is one main important factor here for publishers: Time. If they can delay their game being cracked for say 6 months, then that is 6 months of the only way of being able to procure their game is by purchasing it genuinely. The majority of game sales will occur on launch for most games, so this is the most critical time for game companies as they will be eager for their game to do well and of course sell well.



Q: But if the game isn’t currently cracked, surely pirates will just wait for it to be cracked rather than go ahead and instantly buy it, right?

A: For some people, yes. But there are plenty of people out there who are impatient enough to just go ahead and buy the game if it is taking a while for it to be cracked and if they are eager to play it.



Q: But [The Witcher 3 / any other popular game that doesn’t use Denuvo] doesn’t use this and has still sold well, why does this publisher feel they need to use it?

A: Let’s use The Witcher 3 as an example here – great game and has won many awards, no doubt about that. However, it is has still been pirated into oblivion no matter how many awards it did win. Indeed it has sold well, won a few hundred awards and the developer / publisher has captured the hearts of millions of gamers with respect, but at the end of the day, the game has still been pirated into oblivion by ignorant gamers who feel they don’t need to put any money toward the game.

Now how many of those people who did end up buying the game after pirating it is a different story altogether. Either way, fact of the matter is that games will still get pirated no matter how positive the reviews are.


Q: Is there any way to buy this game without it using Denuvo?

A: No, otherwise this would defeat the whole point of implementing it if you could just get another version of it that doesn’t have the anti-tamper measures.

Remember that this was brought into existence because of piracy, so if you are looking for someone to blame for this – look at the pirates and the torrent sites, if you were a game developer, you would be pretty annoyed after putting money, time and resources into a product only for people to torrent it and casually smile at you with a “you’ve made enough money already” attitude. So if you are unhappy this was implemented because of certain people’s actions – you know where to look.


Q: I notice that on some Steam store pages, Denuvo is not listed under the DRM or EULA section when I feel it should be - why is this?

A: Mainly because Denuvo is not actually DRM, but an anti-tamper measure. DRM (Digital Rights Management) is software that is meant to manage your online content and allow you to access and manage your games and make sure you are given access to a new game when you purchase it and so on. This is what Steam, Origin and Uplay all do. Denuvo does not manage your access to your digital content, rather its job to protect it as much as possible. So it is not DRM, but it helps protect DRM.

As for EULA - Not every piece of third-party software needs to be in EULA's, there's a lot of other software in a lot of games at times which would turn EULA's into an English essay... think of it as the only content in EULA's is what you only really need to know about.


Q: Does Denuvo ask you to re-activate the game every time you change your PC hardware [the hardware inside your PC case, not things like your mouse or keyboard]. What if I want to swap out my graphics card with an upgrade and perhaps change the RAM a few months after that, won’t I eventually run out of re-activations?

A: The amount of re-activations you will get long-term is unlimited, so you will never have to worry about needing to email / phone up a support desk asking for them to be re-generated once again.

It should be noted that there is a limit of being able to install the game more than 5 times in a 24 hour period. This is the only limit that is put in place, if for some reason you are installing the game more than 5 times in 24 hours on a PC then we hope you can understand and appreciate having to wait a few hours for the timer to tick down as this would obviously not be the average amount of installations carried out in 24 hours by most PC gamers.


Q: What would happen if Denuvo closed its doors suddenly one day without de-crypting any of products they have worked on beforehand? Wouldn't that mean any Denuvo enabled game would be impossible to play after this happens?

A: Firstly, this is a pretty extreme scenario (you would have to assume Denuvo would somehow go out of business in the span of 1 day and would turn eveything off without giving any notification whatsoever to their clients), but regardless there would be a plan B even if something like this did happen.

Secondly, no game company would sign up for something like Denuvo if there was no way for them to back out of it (in other worlds them not having control over their encrypted game).

Finally, if we want to assume that Denuvo SOMEHOW goes out of business in such a small period of time that they have no way or time to decrypt their games, remember that every game company would still have unencrypted versions of their games. So even if Denuvo did disappear off the face of the earth tomorrow, game companies could simply re-upload their games onto Steam but with the unencrypted game files instead.

Remember - the above is an extremely unlikely scenario, the only places that have suggested this idea are the same people who pirate games or are complaining for the sake of complaining about Denuvo.


At the end of the day, Denuvo is designed to have as much minimal impact as possible with the user when playing. In other words, it is designed so that it never bothers you to the point that you cannot even see it or even know it is there.

If you are looking to have a fun, a great experience while going with a genuine procurement of this game, then Denuvo is not something to even think or worry about as you are not affected by it whatsoever.

Thanks for reading everyone and if anyone has any other questions, concerns or just general queries still, feel free to contact Denuvo directly below.

Denuvo website: http://denuvo.com/