In probably the worst news yet for besieged piracy protection makers Denuvo, a hacking group named Steampunks have released what they claim is a working key generator for their software. The tool supposedly generates keys that Denuvo thinks are legitimate, bypassing the protection entirely.
No need to pirate any of these great free PC games.
According to an image posted to the Piracy subreddit, Steampunks say the key generator will unlock Dishonored 2, which is protected by the latest version of Denuvo. If they’re right, they can likely make a keygen for any other Denuvo game with little difficulty, and posts on both the Piracy and CrackWatch subreddits claim numerous users have verified their claims.
In a second, almost equally serious blow for Denuvo, a hacker named Baldman appears to have set a new record for cracking their product. Baldman claims to have beaten the protection on Tekken 7, which came out just four days ago.
The news comes two months after Mass Effect: Andromeda was cracked despite the dual protection of both Denuvo and EA’s Origin platform, and five months after Resident Evil VII was cracked in less than a week. RiME and Prey were also cracked, in five and ten days respectively.
Denuvo have never claimed to be uncrackable, only “hard to crack,” and as long as this remained true they were still valuable for protecting game sales in the crucial period just after release. If their software can be beaten in just four days – or worse, circumvented entirely – their value is close to nil. Unless they can come up with a new version that retains its integrity for much longer, the Redditors predicting their demise probably won’t be wrong.
Piracy hurts the games industry and the talented people who work in it – please don’t share links to torrents or cracking sites.