It took three months, but pirates claim they have finally managed to crack the DRM protections on Assassin’s Creed Origins.
Last year, an EU commission determined that piracy actually seems to increase legitimate game sales.
Italian release group CPY announced today on the CrackWatch subreddit that they had cracked the game. Assassin’s Creed Origins is a unique case, as it’s protected not only by Denuvo 4.9, but also by VMProtect and Uplay DRM.
This combination has frustrated some players, since these anti-piracy services run in the background and can cause performance issues for games.
Usually, hackers are able to break through these protections within a few weeks of a game launching. This past year, pirates cracked Denuvo protections on Total War: Warhammer II and Middle-Earth: Shadow of War in under 24 hours. That’s led to a tough last year for the company, who were recently bought by South African software company Irdeto.
Some companies have removed Denuvo protections once they’re cracked. Bethesda, for example, stripped it out of Doom in 2016 after it held out for four months, protecting the game’s initial sales window. Ubisoft has not done this in the past, however, so it remains to be seen how the company responds to the crack.
For their part, Denuvo has already released version 5.0 of their software.