Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bypassing Denuvo in Hogwarts Legacy

momo5502.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 105 posts

Re: Bypassing Denuvo in Hogwarts Legacy

#71

Post by iLoveOncall »

remedan wrote: post #67
iLoveOncall wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an incredibly misleading link. Most of those are online-only games that have been shutdown (or the multiplayer part of the game has been), it's not at all the same as having a DRM that needs to reach a server for a purely solo experience.

Sure, but there are also single-player games on the list. You asked for a source that such a thing happens. The link proves that it does.

Again, it doesn't prove anything.

If you see the top of the table it says "Specifically games no longer listed as being available for sale through any means.".

It doesn't mean you can't play the game if you already acquired it...

I have Steam games that aren't sold anywhere anymore but I can still install and play them just fine.

Re: Bypassing Denuvo in Hogwarts Legacy

#72

Post by MikusR »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #69
iLoveOncall wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are already many games that are not playable because servers used for DRM were turned off I'll need a source for that.

From memory: Assassin's Creed 2, Hitman 2,3, etc.

AC2 only the multiplayer is missing. Game itself works.

Re: Bypassing Denuvo in Hogwarts Legacy

#73

Post by gonlad_x »

wincy wrote: post #3
jsheard wrote: post #2

For the curious, there's a running tally of which Denuvo games have or haven't been cracked over on Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/CrackWatch/comments/p9ak4n/crack_wa... Currently not a single Denuvo game released during 2024 has been cracked, and more games released during 2023 remain uncracked than those that were. It's actually pretty effective unlike most other PC DRM schemes.

I was going to say Lies of P was cracked, but turns out they just removed it from their game. It was up on piracy sites the same day. I wonder why this happens? Does Denuvo cost a lot of ongoing subscription money for a developer or something? I’ve noticed this happens a decent amount.

What I saw in a YT video related to piracy [0] was that game companies remove their DRM after the game has been effectively pirated, since it doesn't really matter anymore, and cost them money + worse experience for paying end-users.

The guy in the video makes the point that: Game is released --> paying users suffer the lower perf caused by DRM while pirates crack it --> pirates succeed, company removes DRM, paying users benefit from improved perf ^^

[0]: https://youtu.be/_Fu4pE46-zM

Re: Bypassing Denuvo in Hogwarts Legacy

#74

Post by badsectoracula »

TiredOfLife wrote: post #70
badsectoracula wrote: post #61

> It doesn’t do that very often. [..] It’s only once every few seconds. [..] To me personally, it tells that Denuvo executes checks so infrequently, that the likelyhood of it causing FPS drop seems rather low. Keep in mind that FPS drops are only one issue with Denuvo's performance. Another common one (which i think is more common in recent releases, judging from comments i've seen) is frame pracing/stuttering/etc -…

Keep in mind that modern games generate/compile shader and other caches during runtime, that is one of the reasons for stutter. So when they try version with the drm removed the cache is already generated and so there are no stutters

That'd be the case with any update, not just the one that removes Denuvo though.

Re: Bypassing Denuvo in Hogwarts Legacy

#75

Post by LightHugger »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #12
kiririn wrote: post #10

The performance impact Denuvo is known for is not due to the license checks, it is due to running parts of the game in a custom vm. Hogwarts Legacy is new enough that they might be taking a different approach entirely after the whole vmprotect controversy

Denuvo protected games only let some functions go through that VM and typically not functions invoked every frame. Only when you screw up as a developer and hook the wrong thing will performance suffer.

Only when you screw up as a developer do games run below 144 fps on modern hardware. And yet most don't. This isn't a valid argument. Most games do not implement denuvo in a way that performance is magically unaffected

Re: Bypassing Denuvo in Hogwarts Legacy

#76

Post by UltimateEdge »

gambiting wrote: post #58
mavamaarten wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were some cases where there was a noticeable impact, there's quite some benchmarks out there that show a clear difference in FPS and frametimes. But it always seemed like a borked implementation to me, rather than a problem with the product itself.

All I'm saying is that at ubisoft this kind of issue was treated very seriously, not least because if we found out Denuvo was making our game look poor it would put the entire business relationship in jeopardy. We've devoted significant engineering resources on our end to investigate these reports(and yes, we have seen the benchmarks people have done), and no one was able to reproduce this with Denuvo enabled and Den…

In other words, third party patched versions of the game were able to achieve better performance than the official one?

Re: Bypassing Denuvo in Hogwarts Legacy

#77

Post by smcl »

TiredOfLife wrote: post #70
badsectoracula wrote: post #61

> It doesn’t do that very often. [..] It’s only once every few seconds. [..] To me personally, it tells that Denuvo executes checks so infrequently, that the likelyhood of it causing FPS drop seems rather low. Keep in mind that FPS drops are only one issue with Denuvo's performance. Another common one (which i think is more common in recent releases, judging from comments i've seen) is frame pracing/stuttering/etc -…

Keep in mind that modern games generate/compile shader and other caches during runtime, that is one of the reasons for stutter. So when they try version with the drm removed the cache is already generated and so there are no stutters

Shader compilation is well known though, and anyone halfway serious about benchmarking these things (like Digital Foundry) factor this in and control for it

Re: Bypassing Denuvo in Hogwarts Legacy

#78

Post by h1fra »

jsheard wrote: post #2

For the curious, there's a running tally of which Denuvo games have or haven't been cracked over on Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/CrackWatch/comments/p9ak4n/crack_wa... Currently not a single Denuvo game released during 2024 has been cracked, and more games released during 2023 remain uncracked than those that were. It's actually pretty effective unlike most other PC DRM schemes.

is it effective or just really everywhere in the codebase like this article suggest? I don't fully get everything Denuvo does but it seems like if I replace Denuvo with my own mandatory HTTP call it would be as annoying to crack.

Re: Bypassing Denuvo in Hogwarts Legacy

#79

Post by TiredOfLife »

smcl wrote: post #77
TiredOfLife wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that modern games generate/compile shader and other caches during runtime, that is one of the reasons for stutter. So when they try version with the drm removed the cache is already generated and so there are no stutters

Shader compilation is well known though, and anyone halfway serious about benchmarking these things (like Digital Foundry) factor this in and control for it

Yes, and anyone halfway serious including DF usually don't find Denuvo having any noticeable effect on performance

Re: Bypassing Denuvo in Hogwarts Legacy

#80

Post by TiredOfLife »

UltimateEdge wrote: post #76
gambiting wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I'm saying is that at ubisoft this kind of issue was treated very seriously, not least because if we found out Denuvo was making our game look poor it would put the entire business relationship in jeopardy. We've devoted significant engineering resources on our end to investigate these reports(and yes, we have seen the benchmarks people have done), and no one was able to reproduce this with Denuvo enabled and Den…

In other words, third party patched versions of the game were able to achieve better performance than the official one?

The benchmarks are sometimes comparing an old build with bypassed denuvo with a newer build with optimizations and no DRM, and claiming that performance increase is only because of no drm and not because of optimizations.
Post reply on HN