Denuvo

Submission 23,123

About

Denuvo is a brand of digital rights management (DRM) software created by Denuvo Software Solutions, which is commonly used by video game publishers to curtail piracy. The software has been widely criticized online for being anti-consumer, with some claiming that it should be considered a type of malware.

History

On September 23rd, 2014, Denuvo was initially released for the soccer game FIFA 15. On December 3rd, the gaming news site PC Invasion reported that the Chinese warez group 3DM had cracked the Denuvo DRM software.^[1]

Email Leak

On February 5th, 2017, TorrentFreak^[4] reported that several private directories on the Denuvo website had been left open, which included a text file containing customer support emails.

Among the emails included an inquiry sent from a person identifying themselves as "Jun Matsumoto from CAPCOM Japan," who requested additional information about the DRM software. Another email was discovered from a person claiming to be "Jan Newger" from Google's security team, who asked for information on "how it would integrate with existing solutions." Additionally, an email written by an angry customer was included in the text file, which criticized the company for making "shit software to fuck over PC gamers." The following day, The Know YouTube channel uploaded a video about the email leak (shown below).

Criticism

In July 2016, Redditor lext published a blog post on Github^[2] titled "Why Is Denuvo Anti-consumer?", listing various reasons why gamers should avoid purchasing products using the DRM. On July 20th, 2017, Redditor Reckon1ng submitted a post asking "What's the hate with DRM Denuvo?" to /r/OutOfTheLoop.^[3] On August 30th, 2017, YouTuber Jim Sterling uploaded a video criticizing Sonic Mania for using the Denuvo software (shown below).

On September 5th, the gaming news site DSO Gaming^[5] reported the the Sonic Mania Denuvo DRM had been cracked by pirates within eight days of the video game's launch.