A description as to what Denuvo really is, would be an alternate form of “DRM” (Digital Restrictions Management) to that of Steam, Uplay or Origin. It can also be added to any game using those services as an extra safety measure as well.
Here’s what the company has to say about it themselves.
There’s a few more sections on the website but here are the sections that are relevant to this discussion – Media QC, I assume QC means Quality Control.
Media QC
“Usually the saying goes “quality not quantity.” But with Denuvo Media QC, we give you both. Our talented and experienced quality control team will carefully check your title’s menus, audio/video content, subtitles, disc functions, and more with an attention to detail unparalleled on the market. And we’ll test for any playability and compatibility issues across an enormous and ever-growing stable of DVD, BD, and 3D players. Get quality and quantity with Denuvo Media QC.” – Denuvo
Now if we go to the Games tab,
And counting. That’s how long one of the latest Denuvo-protected games from EA (FIFA 15) has gone without being cracked. That’s simply unprecedented and it’s a testament to one of Denuvo’s core principles: always keep innovating. Our latest innovation, Denuvo Anti-Tamper, allows EA to reap the benefits of stamping out all piracy attempts in the crucial first weeks of a title’s release. We’d love to do the same for you.
Denuvo Anti-tamper and SecuROM can be ordered through our close partnership with Sony DADC. Denuvo
Before I talk about the companies mistake in this statement, secuROM was a horrid form of DRM because it caused some legitimate users to be unable to access their title when reinstalling the operating system or you had to sign into something each time and if you hadn’t registered the product then you couldn’t access it without contacting support or cracking the game to remove it on a legitimate copy, which sort of defeats the purpose of actually owning the copy in the first place.
Anyway this is quite a surprising claim because above this it states 185 days which would mean that the game they are speaking of, Fifa 15, hasn’t been cracked in over 184 days. When that statement is completely untrue, a simple Google search reveals that Fifa 15, which used Denuvo, was indeed cracked by a scene group called 3DM on the 3rd of March 2015, this year.
So even with the earliest release for that title being on the 23rd of September 2014, the days in-between would only give us 182 days up to the 23rd of March 2015, if we calculate this correctly then it would be 182 – 20 = 162 days (20 is calculated by taking the 3rd of March from the 23rd of March or 23 – 3 = 20).
Now the total time isn’t really an issue but an oversight of the truth, but 162 days regardless is quite the achievement for a video game to go uncracked whilst using the Denuvo encryption, this is a somewhat good sign. Fifa 15 is by far the longest video game to date (unless there’s something else I am not thinking of) to withhold being cracked.
A previous game that also used Denuvo was Dragon Age Inquisition which came out on the 18th of November 2014 and was cracked on the 14th of December 2014 which took the scene group, 3DM once again, 26 days after launch to crack the Denuvo encryption. Although the time it takes to crack a game using this Encryption has decreased, it does seem to be an acceptable form of encryption for a while.
Regardless as to how you see piracy if it wasn’t for the pirates then we wouldn’t have seen that Denuvo only works for as long as a scene group takes to work out how to crack it, wouldn’t the next step to stop piracy be allowing all games to use this technology? Some have reported that the Denuvo form of DRM (that’s what it is) causes games to have performance issues as a result? Is this true, nor EA or Denuvo have made a statement as of writing this article.
Battlefield Hardline released on March 17th 2015 as of right now has not yet been cracked by any scene group, at the end of the day Denuvo seems to be an acceptable form of encryption but how long before they make it even harder to crack.. will they? Who knows. If we look at the time taken to crack previous Denuvo titles then it could take anywhere from 26 days to 162 days to crack.
All this copyright and pirating talk has me worried about the future of disc based media though, seeing as, recently I purchased a Blu ray drive for my PC thinking oh I can watch my Blu Ray movies on my PC, but nope you need to extract the movie file from the disc and convert the file before you can play it (not sure why I can’t just put it in and play it with either Windows Media Player or VLC player) or use the included Power DVD… even then I still cant use my mouse to navigate the menu unless I use the updated version and use the theatre mode?
I mean has this stuff gone to far? Just let me play the damn thing if I paid for a legitimate version.
Editor’s Note: Pirates are still struggling to crack Denuvo’s tech today. Is game piracy dead as we know it?
Source: Denuvo