A few days ago, a Bulgarian hacker who goes by the name “Voksi”, had managed to exploit Denuvo, a DRM (digital rights management) technology. Since then, creators that have depended on what was once the world’s most secure form of DRM technology saw their PC games falling victims to a swarm of “pirates” that have acquired them illegally. The feeding frenzy went on for three days before Denuvo claimed to have put an end to the bypass.
According to Denuvo, games that have been downloaded illegally but have not been activated will not work after its next routine activation checkup time. As for games that are activated, the “cracked” game may still work, but not for long. Notable PC games that have been exploited are Just Cause 3, Doom, and Rise of the Tomb Raider.
That said, the scale of the breach turned out to be higher than expected. Voksi, the hacker, claimed that over the past three days when the crack did work, more than 600,000 PC gamers were able to download Denuvo-protected games illegally; one could assume then that despite Denuvo’s efforts, the damage has already been done. Interestingly, the hacker seemed to know that Denuvo was capable of fixing the exploit, but still went on to release the bypass publicly anyway.
Regardless, knowing how even the world’s most “secure” DRM technology can be vulnerable to breaches, the future of preventing digital piracy becomes rather bleak. Nonetheless, we’d like to remind our readers that no matter how tempting it may be, acquiring games by illegal means isn’t something that one should consider taking part in.
(Source: Overclock3D, Guru3D)
