About Denuvo

[wendy4547]

While I already played a lot of PC games since the 90s, forgive me for my lack of insights about certain technical things. I'm not a tech-savvy guy.

I don't get why a lot of people hate Denuvo. We are living in 2022 and most gamer here already have decent (even powerful) PC that can handle a lot of things, so why all the hate?

If not because of performance impact, maybe Denuvo is some kind of spyware that steals personal data? Or something worse?

[BaLuX]

Publicado originalmente por Eiswolfin:

Denuvo doesn't stay activated forever. I have military friends who were deployed to places with no internet that had many denuvo games quit working because it required an internet connection to reactivate. I been on multiple 2 to 4 week vacations with no internet and had denuvo games not be playable after a week to 10 days without internet.

I'm not gonna lie, this sucks big time. But as internet becomes more and more accessible this is becoming less of an issue.

Publicado originalmente por Pinky:

Well, there have already been cases of paying customers losing access to their games because of issues with online verification, or publishers simply not bothering to renew their DRM license after it has expired.

Denuvo is a payable subscription for game publishers, but honestly I don't know what happens if it is not paid/forgotten. Does anyone know?

Publicado originalmente por Andrei:

Well piracy is almost dead. There is only 1 person left who can crack Denuvo. The few guys who are waiting until denuvo is cracked are probably not a big problem for big companies. People will buy games anyway with denuvo or without.

True that.

I'm afraid that if piracy is left unchecked then game publishers will turn to permanently-streamable games.

[Crashed]

Publicado originalmente por BaLuX:

Publicado originalmente por Pinky:

My mistake. Still, that wasn't my main point.

At best, Denuvo only protects against piracy during those valuable first few weeks of sales. After that, it's just an unnecessary restriction and should be patched out. It does nothing to stop piracy in the long term, and can even be counterproductive as some people turn to piracy because of Denuvo.

What kind of restriction? Normally you don't even notice that Denuvo is there.

Regarding pirates who are turning to piracy due to to Denuvo, they are just looking for reasons to justify piracy. Essentially they are lying to themselves in order to not feel bad.

And ignoring the Steam rules as they post nonsense.

[Crashed]

Publicado originalmente por Pinky:

Publicado originalmente por BaLuX:

Denuvo is a payable subscription for game publishers, but honestly I don't know what happens if it is not paid/forgotten. Does anyone know?

Different DRM, but here's an example of a game being rendered unplayable due to its SecuROM license expiring. I can easily see the same thing happening with Denuvo eventually. Things are running pretty smoothly right now, but who's to say what will happen in 10 years time if Denuvo shuts down? Unfortunately, game preservation isn't a big concern to many.

(video spam)

Publicado originalmente por Crashed:

And ignoring the Steam rules as they post nonsense.

What do you mean? Do you think the Steam rules should prevent open discussion or critique of DRM, such as this thread? I really don't see how they apply here.

They have rules prohibiting discussing cracking or piracy.

[kilésengati]

Publicado originalmente por Pinky:

Publicado originalmente por kilésengati:

An EU study they themselves tried to hide found that unauthorised downloads have almost no effect on sales[www.techdirt.com].

That's quite possibly why Sony hasn't bothered adding Denuvo to their PC releases. They know that even if the games get cracked on day one (just like how Spiderman Remastered already has been), they'll still sell extremely well regardless.

Quite ironic given that Sony dominated the DRM market with SecuROM and Denuvo is kind of its spiritual successor (not made by Sony though).

[Yzal]

It's simple:
-what does Denuvo does for the player? absolutely nothing.
-It's actualy required for the game to work? something like Nvidia Physx or Microsoft distributables? no, pirates have been bypassing denuvo since forever and their games work fine as far i can find.

It has zero uses for me, therefore it's bloat. I don't care if my PC can run a thousand instances of bloat + the game, i will still not allow it to do so.

[lukaself]

Publicado originalmente por kilésengati:

Publicado originalmente por Pinky:

That's quite possibly why Sony hasn't bothered adding Denuvo to their PC releases. They know that even if the games get cracked on day one (just like how Spiderman Remastered already has been), they'll still sell extremely well regardless.

Quite ironic given that Sony dominated the DRM market with SecuROM and Denuvo is kind of its spiritual successor (not made by Sony though).

Ironic indeed! Sony actually funded the research which lead to the creation of the middleware, then fired the whole staff and cut the whole branch when they realised they only managed to make another SecuROM with the funds they gave them. The managers bought that branch from Sony to form Denuvo and later sold it to Irdeto. Sony got through not one, but two global scandals linked to DRM causing serious issues to customers and it's only natural they weren't eager to go through a third.

Despite being arguably stronger, In ten years, Denuvo has been used only in less than a third of the games which used SecuROM in half that time (Source PCGW) and its adoption rate has been dwindling for the past five years down to only 25 new titles using it in 2021. It's clear that the industry is moving away from this kind of costly, unconstructive solutions and towards better marketing, quality and community management - way better incentives for customers to purchase a game than any technological barrier of preventing access will ever be.

[Paratech2008]

Sega hearts denuvo.

[molitar]

Ok let's explain this to you very simple the technology is very dangerous on your PC. If one person that has access to Denuvo code at the developer office or say a malware writer uses the driver it can install malicious malware. Denuvo is signed by Microsoft so it won't register as a rootkit which it is and rootkits are at kernel level so it could be used to literally destroy your PC.. encrypt data, wipe data, drive wipe, write to bios.. anything at KERNEL level is dangerous as it communicates DIRECTLY to the hardware itself and not use drivers.

This type of dangerous vulnerabilities are patched all day long by Microsoft on your current PC but this is considered to be a safe software so it works. So imagine a person who writes malware takes the driver and uses it to install malware on your system no virus detection will detect it because it's an official software.

Do you see now where the dangers from allowing suck activity to go on could destroy your PC? Not only that since it has kernel access it could with the right code do anything to your PC including spying on you for the government. This is a dangerous piece of software that is allowed to be on your PC to stop game theft but could do anything else it is written to do.

So why is this type of dangerous software allowed to exist? This should be the main concern by anyone when it has full open access to anything on your system! Are they working with the government to be allowed to exist so they can spy on you? Seriously why does any software need kernel access? Any server vulnerability found that could effect kernel is immediately patched and fixed! Yet a game theft software is allowed to exist to do just this!

Denuvo will not tell exactly how it works why is this?

Not only this.. this was released in 2021.

Monster Hunter: World’s latest patch has removed around 500MB of files from the game, and the steam page no longer states that MH:W has some form of DRM.

Why the hell does a DRM protection have 500MB worth of files? This is very concerning!

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Publicado originalmente por molitar:

Monster Hunter: World’s latest patch has removed around 500MB of files from the game, and the steam page no longer states that MH:W has some form of DRM.

Why the hell does a DRM protection have 500MB worth of files? This is very concerning!

Correlation does not equal causation.

[Crashed]

Old thread gets necroed with false claims of kernel-mode rootkids in a user-mode DRM that runs at asInvoker privilege aka not even Administrator.

[Crashed]

Publicado originalmente por cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Publicado originalmente por molitar:

Monster Hunter: World’s latest patch has removed around 500MB of files from the game, and the steam page no longer states that MH:W has some form of DRM.

Why the hell does a DRM protection have 500MB worth of files? This is very concerning!

Correlation does not equal causation.

:qr:

And they probably have two unrelated products confused. If they are so paranoid then EAC would be the boogeyman since it is not only kernel-mode but tends to cause bugchecks whenever a new preview branch of Windows comes out.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Publicado originalmente por Crashed:

Publicado originalmente por cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Correlation does not equal causation.

And they probably have two unrelated products confused. If they are so paranoid then EAC would be the boogeyman since it is not only kernel-mode but tends to cause bugchecks whenever a new preview branch of Windows comes out.

Does Ricochet have the same issues? Because it's already a bit buggy.

[molitar]

I was around in the early days of games and drivers had to work at kernel level writing directly to the hardware. Reason why an incorrect driver would actually crash the OS. Microsoft removed this necessity with the creation of DirectX.

So many do not understand that kernel level access means it has complete access to all hardware directly bypassing drivers. Kernel level there is no such thing as user mode and Administrator mode as it communicates at the very lowest level of the OS so the OS can not detect it. This is what a Rootkit is and how it works and why a Rootkit can be so dangerous.

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/09/19/ea-announces-new-anti-cheat-tech-that-operates-at-the-kernal-level/ (EA announced that the new game will be using kernel level anti-cheat Denuvo so yes it's kernel level)

[Crashed]

Publicado originalmente por molitar:

I was around in the early days of games and drivers had to work at kernel level writing directly to the hardware. Reason why an incorrect driver would actually crash the OS. Microsoft removed this necessity with the creation of DirectX.

So many do not understand that kernel level access means it has complete access to all hardware directly bypassing drivers. Kernel level there is no such thing as user mode and Administrator mode as it communicates at the very lowest level of the OS so the OS can not detect it. This is what a Rootkit is and how it works and why a Rootkit can be so dangerous.

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/09/19/ea-announces-new-anti-cheat-tech-that-operates-at-the-kernal-level/ (EA announced that the new game will be using kernel level anti-cheat Denuvo so yes it's kernel level)

Denuvo Anti-Cheat is a different product than Denuvo Anti-Tamper, the latter of which is far more often found in Steam games. Anti-Tamper is exclusively usermode, and requires no privileges above normal user privileges.

Most device drivers have kernel-mode modules.

[Squirrel With Acorn]

Publicado originalmente por molitar:

Ok let's explain this to you very simple the technology is very dangerous on your PC. If one person that has access to Denuvo code at the developer office or say a malware writer uses the driver it can install malicious malware. Denuvo is signed by Microsoft so it won't register as a rootkit which it is and rootkits are at kernel level so it could be used to literally destroy your PC.. encrypt data, wipe data, drive wipe, write to bios.. anything at KERNEL level is dangerous as it communicates DIRECTLY to the hardware itself and not use drivers.

This type of dangerous vulnerabilities are patched all day long by Microsoft on your current PC but this is considered to be a safe software so it works. So imagine a person who writes malware takes the driver and uses it to install malware on your system no virus detection will detect it because it's an official software.

Do you see now where the dangers from allowing suck activity to go on could destroy your PC? Not only that since it has kernel access it could with the right code do anything to your PC including spying on you for the government. This is a dangerous piece of software that is allowed to be on your PC to stop game theft but could do anything else it is written to do.

So why is this type of dangerous software allowed to exist? This should be the main concern by anyone when it has full open access to anything on your system! Are they working with the government to be allowed to exist so they can spy on you? Seriously why does any software need kernel access? Any server vulnerability found that could effect kernel is immediately patched and fixed! Yet a game theft software is allowed to exist to do just this!

Denuvo will not tell exactly how it works why is this?

Not only this.. this was released in 2021.

Monster Hunter: World’s latest patch has removed around 500MB of files from the game, and the steam page no longer states that MH:W has some form of DRM.

Why the hell does a DRM protection have 500MB worth of files? This is very concerning!

You are confusing it with Denuvo Anti-cheat. It's typical for anti-cheats to work on Ring-0 because the cheats work on Ring-0, and the only way anti-cheats can capture that stuff is if they are working on the same level as the cheats are.

But this topic is about Denuvo DRM. Denuvo DRM is not a driver, nor is it a root-kit, nor does it work on the kernel level.