Denuvo

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Denuvo

Basic information
Founded	2014-09-26
Legal Structure	Subsidiary
Industry	Video games, Digital-rights management, Software
Also known as
Official website	https://irdeto.com/denuvo/

Denuvo Software Solutions GmbH is an Austrian company that develops the digital-rights management (DRM) and anti-tamper software Denuvo Anti-Tamper (DAT) and the anti-cheat system Denuvo Anti-Cheat (DAC) for video games. The goal of DAT is to make cracking a game as difficult as possible, in order to protect a game’s launch window.

Consumer-impact summary

Overview of concerns that arise from the conduct towards users of the product (if applicable):

• User Freedom
• User Privacy
• Business Model
• Market Control

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Incidents

This is a list of all consumer-protection incidents this company is involved in. Any incidents not mentioned here can be found in the Denuvo category.

High resource usage

Despite Denuvo's denials, its software has been documented to consume a lot of computer resources, notably documented for Tekken 7 and Sonic Mania Plus, both games where slowdown is extremely detrimental to players, especially in competitive settings. This slowdown often encourages users to prefer a crack of the game as soon as a crack releases, as seen by early cracks significantly harming sales. As a result of the high system usage, consumers with run lower-end hardware are often unable to even launch these games without running cracked versions, especially when the game's publisher has under-optimized it.

Developers have also blamed Denuvo for negatively impacting performance. Many of them have stopped using DAT in their games, with others utilizing it during the launch period but removing it from their games after some time has passed. Controversies surrounding performance issues has resulted in Denuvo’s brand image being severely tarnished, with them being unable to even host a Discordsever properly due to the amount of harassment and trolling they faced.

Machine Activation Limits

Many games that implement DAT's protections also come with machine activation limits, usually 5 activations per 24-hour period. By imposing arbitrary limits on activations, buyers that have legally acquired the game are unable to play it on all their devices.

There are also accounts of users being locked out of access to their games by simply changing the version of Proton multiple times to get the game working/running correctly.

Games with DAT require an always on internet connection

Games using DAT require an always online internet connection to play. DAT pings Denuvo's authentication servers to validate the legitimacy of the game.^{[citation needed]}

On October 2016, The following games during were unavailable due to Denuvo's authentication servers going offline for a couple days causing games to display an error on start up: Batman Arkham Knight, Mad Max and Shadow of War.[1]

On 07 November 2021, Guardians of the Galaxy, Football Manager 2022, Planet Zoo, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider trilogy, Wolfenstein Youngblood, Mortal Kombat 11, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, Persona 4 Golden, Demon Slayer, among others became completely unplayable due to the Domain Codefusion expiring and not being renewed.[2]

On 02 May 2024, Persona 5 Royal was affected after Denuvo's authentication servers became unavailable. [3]

Products

• Denuvo Anti-Tamper
• Denuvo Anti-Cheat

See also

Link to relevant theme articles or companies with similar incidents.

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