A Hypervisor bypass recently appeared giving game crackers an alternative way to circumvent protections like Denuvo DRM. The bypass is so effective that popular game repacker, FitGirl, has declared that "all single-player/non-VR Denuvo games are now cracked/bypassed." The announcement comes after fo...
I just don’t get what the point of DRM software is. I don’t feel like it reduces piracy at all. As soon as one person cracks it, which they always do, the game is out there for people to download. Best case, companies have maybe a week or two between release and the crack. I really don’t believe there are that many people who want a game, would pirate it if they could, but are unable to wait a couple days for the crack and so just cave and buy it. Like, the extra revenue from these unicorns can not justify whatever they are spending to include DRM.
So what exactly is the fear these companies have of not including DRM? Leaving it off doesn’t make piracy more widespread. Again, as soon as one person cracks it, EVERYONE has it. So what difference does it make if one person cracks it vs 1000’s of people cracking it if the end result is that it’s out there for anyone?
For a few years before 2026, no one was cracking Denuvo. After Empress stopped there was genuine concern it might not happen again. It was not “a week or two”, games were going years without pirated versions.
Most of a game’s sales tend to be in the first few weeks, so the thinking is that even if it’s defeatable, Denuvo’s track record of taking weeks to months to crack (before the hypervisor exploit) made it worth adding to a game. If the only way to play the game while everyone’s still talking about it is to pay, their hope is that enough pirates will buy it to offset the massive Denuvo licensing costs.
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I just don’t get what the point of DRM software is. I don’t feel like it reduces piracy at all. As soon as one person cracks it, which they always do, the game is out there for people to download. Best case, companies have maybe a week or two between release and the crack. I really don’t believe there are that many people who want a game, would pirate it if they could, but are unable to wait a couple days for the crack and so just cave and buy it. Like, the extra revenue from these unicorns can not justify whatever they are spending to include DRM.
So what exactly is the fear these companies have of not including DRM? Leaving it off doesn’t make piracy more widespread. Again, as soon as one person cracks it, EVERYONE has it. So what difference does it make if one person cracks it vs 1000’s of people cracking it if the end result is that it’s out there for anyone?
For a few years before 2026, no one was cracking Denuvo. After Empress stopped there was genuine concern it might not happen again. It was not “a week or two”, games were going years without pirated versions.
Most of a game’s sales tend to be in the first few weeks, so the thinking is that even if it’s defeatable, Denuvo’s track record of taking weeks to months to crack (before the hypervisor exploit) made it worth adding to a game. If the only way to play the game while everyone’s still talking about it is to pay, their hope is that enough pirates will buy it to offset the massive Denuvo licensing costs.
As much as people hate Denuvo for its downsides, it has been effective at preventing piracy.
The real question is whether piracy has a negative effect on sales.