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Bypassing Denuvo in Hogwarts Legacy

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Re: Bypassing Denuvo in Hogwarts Legacy

#91

Post by ryathal »

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.

They aren't super public with their cost structure, though it appears to generally be a monthly cost for publishers. Most games remove Denuvu after about a year if it's going to get removed. Some of the bigger publishers may have better deals though as titles never remove it, even after multiple years and no new updates.

Re: Bypassing Denuvo in Hogwarts Legacy

#92

Post by kruczek »

badsectoracula wrote: post #59
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Denuvo is also an exception to piracy as a service problem being solved because it is widely hated even by non-pirates. Maybe in an abstract Reddit community kind of way. For paying end users I doubt Denuvo comes up much. It works behind the scenes and is pretty reliable.

I am a paying user and i actively avoid games with Denuvo - there is even a curator on Steam that marks games that use Denuvo, which is helpful for doing exactly that. The reason is simple: i want to have access to the games i bought regardless of Steam and when i buy a game there i also make a separate offline copy for my own archival. Denuvo - or any DRM really - makes that impossible. Fortunately most games (like…

> there is even a curator on Steam that marks games that use Denuvo, which is helpful for doing exactly that.

Could you let me know which curator it is? I'm also actively avoiding any game that uses Denuvo, so I'd certainly find such a curator useful.

Re: Bypassing Denuvo in Hogwarts Legacy

#93

Post by ChoGGi »

orangeboats wrote: post #89
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.

Remember Games for Windows Live? Pretty sure the original version of GTA4 is no longer playable without cracking it due to GFWL being shut down.

Microsoft released a version of gfwl that uses Xbox servers.

Re: Bypassing Denuvo in Hogwarts Legacy

#94

Post by philippejara »

Terr_ wrote: post #39
molticrystal wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Denuvo charges for access to the activation servers. [0] While the pricing structure has likely changed, for most game companies the long tail end [1] of the sales doesn't justify continuing. For example, Square-Enix(Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest) removes Denuvo 6 months into a release. For a counter-example, Atlus(makers of Persona/Shin Megami Tensei) are known to never purposely remove the protection. [0] h…

From a digital historian perspective, I do like the idea of DRM that is just there temporarily to ensure the fat-head of sales before being removed... especially when there's an economic cost spurring companies to not keep it around indefinitely.

The flipside of that is companies not bothering to remove it and ceasing the payments to denuvo effectively making the game not exist anymore until someone is able to crack it, and very few people seem to be able to do so. Not that much of a stretch when you look at the amount of abandonware we have.

Re: Bypassing Denuvo in Hogwarts Legacy

#95

Post by itishappy »

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…

> if we found out Denuvo was making our game look poor it would put the entire business relationship in jeopardy

I think Denuvo is going to have that effect regardless of the performance impact.

> All I'm going to say is that the benchmarks you see online are for pirated versions of the game where the binary isn't the same as the official patched product, and that has various implications beyond our product or Denuvo.

Wait, are you suggesting that pirated versions might run better than the official ones, regardless of their DRM?

Re: Bypassing Denuvo in Hogwarts Legacy

#96

Post by gambiting »

itishappy wrote: post #95
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…

> if we found out Denuvo was making our game look poor it would put the entire business relationship in jeopardy I think Denuvo is going to have that effect regardless of the performance impact. > All I'm going to say is that the benchmarks you see online are for pirated versions of the game where the binary isn't the same as the official patched product, and that has various implications beyond our product or Denuvo…

>>I think Denuvo is going to have that effect regardless of the performance impact.

Sure, but as always it's a business decision - is the impact of Denuvo on the number of copies sold big enough to offset the fact that Denuvo does actually work and stops some games from being pirated for weeks if not months after launch? I don't know, I never had any view into that data, but I assume it must be the case or otherwise no one would use it.

>>Wait, are you suggesting that pirated versions might run better than the official ones, regardless of their DRM?

No, I'm not suggesting anything. I'm just saying that it's not directly comparable, for instance because the binary will be treated differently by graphics drivers, for better or worse. Also you don't know exactly which version was being compared by who and when and how.

Obviously, you don't have to believe me that Ubisoft engineers have spent significant amount of time testing this in all kinds of configurations - I have no way to prove that, especially since I don't work there anymore.

Re: Bypassing Denuvo in Hogwarts Legacy

#97

Post by two_handfuls »

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.

Oh good, I can use this list of games with Denuvo to know which games not to buy.

Re: Bypassing Denuvo in Hogwarts Legacy

#98

Post by redder23 »

gambiting wrote: post #46
redder23 wrote: post #25

The so-called "rumors" that Denuvo kills performance are not rumors. It's just not true ANYMORE. Older versions impacted performance heavily, but later on the performance impact became negligible.

I used to work at Ubisoft during the whole controversy about Denuvo killing performance in one of the recent Assassins Creeds - all I can say is we've done extensive investigation into this internally, as well as worked with Denuvo to assess these claims and they were just not true, but of course the court of public opinion has spoken so nothing we did or said could have changed it at that point.

> one of the recent Assassins Creeds

It seems you did not actually read what I wrote. I put anymore in caps for a reason.

I never said any recent AC title or any newer Denuvo version suffers from any FPS issues. The loading of games (startup only I think, not level loading) is in fact still very much impacted, especially in the first run.

So all what you wrote is pretty pointless. Denuvo in the past in fact slowed down FPS of games early on as it was making calls the slowed down FPS on every single frame. People did the testing of games after they got cracked, and the cracked versions ran faster.

Re: Bypassing Denuvo in Hogwarts Legacy

#99

Post by gambiting »

redder23 wrote: post #98
gambiting wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work at Ubisoft during the whole controversy about Denuvo killing performance in one of the recent Assassins Creeds - all I can say is we've done extensive investigation into this internally, as well as worked with Denuvo to assess these claims and they were just not true, but of course the court of public opinion has spoken so nothing we did or said could have changed it at that point.

> one of the recent Assassins Creeds It seems you did not actually read what I wrote. I put anymore in caps for a reason. I never said any recent AC title or any newer Denuvo version suffers from any FPS issues. The loading of games (startup only I think, not level loading) is in fact still very much impacted, especially in the first run. So all what you wrote is pretty pointless. Denuvo in the past in fact slowed do…

>>It seems you did not actually read what I wrote. I put anymore in caps for a reason.

And.....did you read what I wrote? I brought up AC specifically because people online have been saying that the cracked version is faster, which I know we have tested at Ubisoft alongside with engineers from Denuvo and found it not to be true. You can of course choose to not believe me, it's the internet after all.

If you say "well I didn't mean AC" then cool, but I had no possible way of knowing what you mean, or what your cut off point is, "anymore" is not a very definitive point in time.

Re: Bypassing Denuvo in Hogwarts Legacy

#100

Post by p0w3n3d »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #64
p0w3n3d wrote: post #63

There are already many games that are not playable because servers used for DRM were turned off. In this matter I support cracking such "play only online" DRMs, because when I pay for a game I want to play it even after a few years, and maybe even especially after a few years

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

https://www.techdirt.com/2021/07/06/drm-strikes-again-ubisof...
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