Denuvo DRM used to be unbreakable and when it first came out, pirates were unable to crack any new PC games. Since then, however, crackers took this as a challenge and now it is just a matter of days before a game gets cracked. This can be hazardous to the initial sales of any new title. Especially if the game is cracked within the first two weeks of release… At least that’s what Denuvo would have you believe.
Denuvo mentioned that a certain sports game was downloaded 355,000 times illegally during the first two weeks of launch and 12% of those downloads were on launch day. The following is what the company had to say regarding the matter:
“During the first two weeks, Irdeto detected 355,664 torrent downloads of the illegal copy of the title. Given the retail price of the game, this puts the total potential loss of revenue from P2P downloads at $21,336,283.”
That is a lot of money left on the table for both developers and publishers. And this is just the first two weeks, so you can imagine the amount of money the game will lose afterwards.
Even though Denuvo can now be cracked easily, game developers are still using the anti-tampering software in an effort to make as much revenue as possible. There are upcoming games that are at risk of being cracked and pirated on day one, such as Hitman 2 and Battlefield V.
While players should support the developers when it comes to games that they love and enjoy, not everyone feels that way. Games can be downloaded from all over the world and not every country has piracy laws. It will be interesting to see what Denuvo will do in order to protect upcoming games from being cracked.
