The first of the tools Denuvo is offering to Switch developers is Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection, a “revolutionary technology to protect games launching on Nintendo Switch from piracy”.
According to Denuvo, the new tech can be applied to Switch games to block the ability to play them on PC emulators.
“Even if a game is protected against piracy on its PC version, the version released on Nintendo Switch can be emulated from day one and played on PC, therefore bypassing the strong protections offered on the PC version,” the company says. “This can happen with any of the numerous games available on Nintendo Switch.
Personally, I’m not much of a PC gamer, so I don’t have a lot of personal experience with Denuvo; but this sounds pretty concerning.
My understanding is that by Denuvo LoJacking into every part of the game, it seriously hampers performance; and the Switch is underpowered enough as it is. I can only imagine how poorly games will run if the Switch has to devote resources to Denuvo as well.
Plus, from a preservation standpoint this is terrible too. Even if the studio drops Denuvo down the line, it will forever be included on the cartridge. This means that in the future, the only way to play this game will have to be an emulated copy, since you won’t be able to get the update to clear the (no longer supported) Denuvo from the game.
Exactly. But AFAIK every Denuvo game eventually gets cracked, so at least we will have the pirate copies. From a preservation standpoint, a dumped ROM is much better than a physical cartridge anyway, since it’s more portable and easier to back up. It’s the contents of the cartridge minus the physical limitations.
There’s plenty of games which haven’t been cracked. More often than not, a game is updated to remove denuvo or a drm-free .exe is released accidentally.
It’s been hard to crack games and from what I’ve read, it now relies on one person and they have been a bit of a lunatic.
EMPRESS is their name and yeah, they are bonkers. They are also very picky and influenced by donations, so obscure games won’t be cured from DENUVO ever. Judgement, a somehow popular Sega release, was cracked days ago, and it’s a 2018 game. They picked a fight with a ripper\cracker Skidrow in .nfo announcing that.
For clarity sake, Judgment only released
this MarchSeptember 2022 (thank you for the correction) on PC. But for example, Dead Space Remake, which released in January, is still uncracked.Judgement came out on PC in September '22.
You’re right! I was thinking of the sequel.
Lost your judgement for a sec.
EMPRESS may be a lunatic, but it’s not like we have any better options. If anything, I wish EMPRESS would teach the next generation of d€nuvø crackers and that they would be chill and just crack for the sake of piracy/preservation.
With what level of trust pirated releases need, it’s kinda worrysome to depend on that person. And they doesn’t seem like one to share their secrets.
I hope it’s not a single person but a group mascarding as one deranged individual so it means that capable crackers are more widespread than one singular genius holding it down.
Who really knows it’s all very strange to me, the scene has generally always been very much out of mainstream politics except when it relates to tech/IP law, and generally pretty egalitarian, insofar as no one knows who is on the other end of any conversation.
Pokemon Go added code obfuscation (I forgot the name of the company that provided it) some months after it was first released. Phones started running very hot, battery life dropped drastically, and people who played a lot had to replace their batteries (or phones) in a fraction of their normal lifetime. Also, as you imagined, performance dropped significantly.
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