Denuvo DRM is known for its performance issues and strict copyright protection, which prevents any game using it from being cracked. However, it recently faced a setback.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Assassin’s Creed Mirage, two recently released games with Denuvo DRM on Steam, have now been cracked and are available to download online through pirated websites. What caused this? It seems someone with backend access to the Denuvo servers, or perhaps a company insider, leaked two debug builds for Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Dragon’s Dogma 2. These builds had no protection, allowing pirates to swap them with the main game and crack it in the process.
While this doesn’t mean Denuvo itself was cracked, it is still a setback for the company, which now has to explain how these debug builds were leaked online.
In another story, Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance received a demo on PC. Like Metaphor ReFantazio, the demo version was used to unlock and crack the full release of Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance. Sega and Atlus were unfortunate to have this incident occur with two of their recent releases. There have also been instances where a Denuvo-less build was uploaded ahead of a game’s launch, allowing pirates to crack the game using the unprotected build. This happened with Persona 4 Golden and a few other games.
So far, Capcom and Ubisoft haven’t commented on the leaked debug builds for their games. It’s possible that Capcom or Ubisoft might remove Denuvo DRM from these games, as they have already been cracked. Capcom, in particular, has a history of removing DRM from their games post-launch after a significant amount of time has passed.
