In another major development in the seemingly long-standing battle between video game pirates, game publishers and Denuvo anti-tampering software, yet another Denuvo-backed game has been cracked before the end of the year. This time, Persona 5 Royal, the definitive way to experience Atlus’s massively popular Persona 5 entry, is now available for all to experience free of charge.
Word of its presence in the seedy underworld of piracy comes by way of Reddit, where a relatively hidden member of the piracy community has managed a way to bypass Denuvo’s anti-piracy protections to dump the game online.
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What’s more, the pirate believes that the tools they use could be part of a larger universal method of cracking future Denuvo-backed games.
Specifically, they wrote, “It can be improved and, in our opinion, it is the only viable option to deal with Denuvo in the long run.”
Persona 5 Royal, which was first released on Steam in October 2022, was among the final remaining titles that pirates had yet to get their hands on, owing to the strict anti-tampering protections that pay-for-use software like Denuvo maintain.
However, this recent development, plus several more in the last few weeks alone, have given bad actors some faith that Denuvo’s “reign” over video game protection could be coming to an end, provided the company does innovate on its current programs.
“They don’t even have to crack every game and Denuvo might go out of business,” one person wrote on Reddit. “If these game developers think that they might be paying Denuvo for nothing, they’ll stop, and they still have to pay them for older games if they want protection.”
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Prior to Sunday’s developments, Battlefield 6 found itself in the hands of pirates, and while the game does not make use of Denuvo itself, the strict secure boot requirements might as well be on par with what Denuvo-laden games have.
Elsewhere, another long-requested game by pirates, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered, also managed to get cracked, adding to what has been a massive year of releases in the piracy community. Perhaps most interesting about that particular crack is that the pirate believed that they were quickly making progress toward more modern Denuvo games, noting that the toolset they use is “maturing.”
Finally, a noted Denuvo researcher managed to crack Black Myth: Wukong, and while they didn’t share their results for privacy reasons, they too believe that the toolset in play could be further refined. All this has helped put Denuvo on the backfoot, a position they rarely occupy bbut now find themselves in, as pirates continue to figure out the makings of the once “uncrackable” software.
- Released
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October 31, 2019
- ESRB
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m
- Developer(s)
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P Studio, Atlus
- Publisher(s)
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P Studio, Atlus
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