cracked version runs faster, smoother, and uses way less VRAM and RAM
Well yeah, Denuvo is a cache defeat mechanism. It bloats executables for repetitious obfuscation. If CPUs still worked like 386s and 68000s, having eight copies of every function and bouncing merrily between them would make no difference. But modern processors are only fast because they spend negligible time waiting for RAM to get its act together. Every squandered microsecond is a thousand cycles burned.
This is an atrociously researched and misinformed article.
The cracked Requiem predictably runs faster, smoother, and uses far fewer resources than the HV version, and presumably by extension, than the full paid-for release.
The author is assuming the comparison to the Hypervisor crack applies to the legitimate version with no basis whatsoever. Voices38 themselves only claimed it runs better than the HV version, giving as reasons that the HV driver is hardcoded for a specific configuration that may not match the actual host (cpu cores, cpu instructions, ram) and can degrade performance. [1]
We can and should hate denuvo but since this crack is just a different kind of bypass (a userspace one) we can’t know how the game would run without it and anything else is pure speculation.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/PiratedGames/comments/1sh3kvt/comment/of9zt3s
I hate DRM, removing it is good, but I also am very concerned this will ruin Resident Evil on Linux.
Resident Evil runs great, even on my 5 year old computer in Linux. All of them do. I never even notice the DRM, it loads fast, plays smooth, nothing for me to do at all, meaning proton is handling it.
Now I assume they will somehow tighten this down and it will make it not work on linux.
I don’t buy or own many AAA games, but the whole series is excellent, I don’t really care who is publishing them, but I am not interested in finding cracked versions and trying to make them work on linux. It just will dead end the game for me.
Division 1 seems to get some freedom to create what they want, but obviously Capcom is just another heavy handed corporate sweatshop, so I have no love for corporation.
Damn, if only this presented some solution where the publisher isn’t in control of how you run the game.
I agree. Will they do that? Not likely.
And thats the funny thing right? On linux is it there? Yes. Do I care? No. It has zero effect on me because it didn’t take over the computer, only at a level inside of proton. Tab in and out, run at the same time, run on steamdeck. So much better than windows, and yet its going to get ruined.
… or you could run this cracked version.
I have no interest in finding cracked versions of software, and there is always a possibility that the cracked version no longer will even work in linux.
somehow tighten this down and it will make it not work on linux.
Unfortunately that’s the push and pull we have. This kind of research will enable more people to play more games, including Linux gamers.
I don’t think it will. It will just make them create another version of control, worse than the last. We already know that many kinds of anti cheat keep linux out already. Denuvo was more or less no big deal, I never even notice it exists. But now it is likely to change and make things shitty again.
Frankly I would rather they have not hacked it.
NOW WHEN WILL THEY REMOVE THE DENUVO OFF STREET FIGHTER 6???
It uses less VRAM? That doesn’t sound right. Does it encrypt or obfuscate video memory contents? That sounds implausible too.
Why does it use more VRAM? And no need for generic “because it sucks” comments.
Because the author of the article is a dumbass who shouldn’t be in tech.
Companies could spend the extra time and money to build their own cheat and pirate detection system with minimal impact to the players experience. Instead they take the ‘cheaper’ route and contracting out to BS services.
Enough people still buy the game, so why would they?
Pirated games have almost always been a superior experience. Games companies hate their customers almost as much as they hate their employees.
Same goes for physical media movies/shows. Forced warnings, trailers, pre-rolls, shitty menus… Just play the main content! Ripped content just wins every time.
I typically wait for a solid sale to get these games, but if the denuvo is still on I might as well sail the high seas just so it runs well. Its kind of fucked up, their anti piracy measure is whats encouraging me to pirate it. Otherwise it would be simpler to just hit the buy button and have steam handle it.
hate their customers almost as much as they hate their employees.
Such a sad state of affairs that this is so spot on.
Edit: for these big AAA studios anyway. Im sure indies are better.
stop buying AAA games
not even hard to do
I know that finding this answer is insanely difficult (or, at least, I imagine it is) but I really am left wondering what exactly the DRM is doing while the game is active to have such a process/resource overhead.
Like, async tasks that are holding a thread hostage until it’s sync point? Trying to run huge hash tasks to ensure local storage of game files are “intact”? And seriously, 1.5 - 2GB of RAM utilization? I have to imagine that’s not actually memory in use, but is just holding a giant block of gobbledegook so its harder to reverse?
I’m not a software engineer, so I must be way off the mark, but from my small experience in the dev world as a QA person, the performance uplifts from removing DRM should not be this palpable… Right? I feel sorry for the actual devs who essentially just “find out” that their work is getting quite literally crippled by something that is universally hated by the consumer AND got cracked in 40 days of release.
Based on this, I think it’s a combination of factors. Besides the periodic runtime checks to verify your hardware fingerprint, it also does on-the-fly decryption of some values, and apparently does weird things with the stack. The decryption could have a big impact on memory consumption and performance, depending on the amount of data.
That post says the performance impact in Hogwarts Legacy is negligible (even if their technique for measuring is imperfect), but I suspect that Denuvo is configurable by the dev. Maybe Capcom raised the slider up to 11, but WB kept it lower?
Yeah, how bad Denuvo is performancewise definitely depends on the specific integration - there have been titles where Denuvo just tanks the performance because it checks a ton of values per second, and others where it really doesn’t matter - I would say Hogwarts Legacy falls in the second category, where checks have been intelligently stuffed into loading sequences and scene transitions. Capcom normally falls into the first category.
How I heard it explained was that Denuvo picks a point in the program to insert its DRM checks. If it picks a point in a function that gets called a lot, like once every frame, it’s going to do that DRM check every frame. If the check is slow, every frame takes that much extra time to render.
I don’t know for sure, but some things that computers do are fast because the memory is in order in RAM and the processor gets to run something on it contiguously without interruption. If denuvo was doing something in the middle of that type of process it could easily hurt performance. If it straight up uses more RAM, just that could hurt performance, because a smaller percentage of the memory can fit in cache at a time.
I mean, it looks like there’s a new, not-crazy (afaik) denuvo cracker in the scene, so a fair amount of shocked is appropriate.
I will literaly turn my PC into a botnet just to have access to cracked stuff from scum companies. Use all my pc components to mine crypto, I’m yours, just cause more anarchy for me
Now do Monster Hunter Wilds so I can buy it.
Hella better headline & reporting. Cheers🍻
