Denuvo Anti-Tamper

"The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting anti-piracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates."

- Gabe Newell

Denuvo Anti-Tamper is an anti-tamper and Digital Rights Management (DRM) anti-piracy scheme developed by the Austrian company Denuvo Software Solutions GmbH.

Created as a method of discouraging people from cracking and pirating PC games, it has garnered a bad reputation for negatively impacting the experience of paying consumers of games that use this technology.

Why It's Anti-Gamer
'''Important note: This DRM is very controversial with many issues explained below. No positive pointers/section will be permitted on this page.'''
 * 1) The DRM prevents players from playing the games offline, even if the game is single-player only. The same with the DLCs as Denuvo SecureDLC for both expansions and microtransactions placed by the publishers.
 * 2) *If a Denuvo-enabled game's DRM servers are down due to internet outage or a company going bankrupt, the game will become literally unplayable for anyone!
 * 3) As a result of the DRM, it can often cause performance issues (such as input lag) and even random crashes.
 * 4) * Games like, recently released Sonic Origins requires 6GB of RAM and better CPU/GPU that can handle the DRM as a result, despite being a 2D game.
 * 5) The games usually get cracked and remove the Denuvo DRM because of how broken it is, with only a few games not being cracked, but most of the uncracked ones are online multiplayer-only titles or games with online as a major component.
 * 6) Denuvo gets cracked too quickly at first, mostly until now partially (with some games took even longer to cracked). Like all DRM, when a game's DRM gets cracked, the pirates get DRM-free software which arguably works and performs better than the official DRM infused software. This ironically promotes piracy rather than discouraging it.
 * 7) Publishers, SEGA especially, still insist on adding it despite its poor reputation and how quickly games with it get cracked.
 * 8) * While the reason is justifiable to protect first weeks to months of sales, many players rather wait for the cracked or removed DRM via the update.
 * 9) While mods for Denuvo games are still possible, said mods are rather limited in scope due to how Denuvo's anti-tamper tech works.
 * 10) It has the potential to slow down most computers and laptops by writing some unnecessary amount of data (likely to check for applications running which may crack Denuvo) to its' hard drive. Game load times are increased due to utilizing both reading and writing data to the storage. This might shorten the livespan of SSDs if Denuvo games were stored there.
 * 11) Basically a successor to SecuROM and older DRM solutions like Games for Windows Live and StarForce.
 * 12) Denuvo can sometimes make games incompatible with Linux and macOS without something like Steam Proton (and even then, some publishers would modify Denuvo to make it artificially incompatible with Proton). While the former is niche and the latter isn't used for games often, it's a low jab for people who have computers with these. Problem is Linux gaming is becoming more and more popular thanks to Proton and Deck, which in turn has a potential to cause problems with the OS.

Trivia

 * How games with Denuvo perform depends on the build and DRM versions. Games like Doom (2016) and mh:awesomegames:Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain actually run quite well, but other games take a big performance hit.
 * Because of this, a lot of publishers have removed Denuvo from their games, especially in 2021. Examples include:
 * Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment: mh:awesomegames:Injustice 2 & mh:awesomegames:Mortal Kombat 11
 * Bandai Namco Entertainment (stopped using starting on Tales of Arise): mh:awesomegames:Tekken 7, mh:awesomegames:Soulcalibur VI & Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown
 * Bethesda Softworks: Rage 2 & Prey
 * Capcom: mh:awesomegames:Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Resident Evil 2 (2019) and 3 (2020).
 * Electronic Arts: mh:awesomegames:Titanfall 2 & Mass Effect: Legendary Edition
 * 2K: Mafia: Definitive Edition & mh:awesomegames:Borderlands 3
 * Sega: mh:awesomegames:Sonic Mania & mh:awesomegames:Yakuza 0
 * Square Enix: Marvel's Avengers & Dragon Quest XI S - Definitive Edition

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