14 DAY TRIAL // Resident Evil 7: Biohazard ends up on torrents sites five days after launch after pirates outwitted Denuvo anti-piracy technology.
TorrentFreak reports now, however, that Resident Evil 7, launched just last week, is already on pirate sites, waiting to be downloaded by pirates. The cracked version seems to be working just fine according to many commenters.
Once called unbreakable, the Denuvo protection was supposed to hold off pirates for at least a few months so that vendors could enjoy extra revenue from those players who would normally download the game from torrent sites.
A few years back, Denuvo was a bit of a boogeyman for game pirates, as its protection sought to cut down on the hackers’ capabilities to steal the latest games immediately. Some of the older games protected with Denuvo are yet to be found on piracy sites, indicating that the technology works.
It has happened before
Of course, as with many security solutions, it can’t work all the time. Case in point, Rise of the Tomb Raider, which was dumped by cracking group CONSPIR4CY (CPY) on torrent sites back in August 2016, about five months after its release. It was the first time Denuvo was defeated.
Then, it was the turn of “Inside,” which CPY cracked six weeks after launch. Many others have followed since, including major titles such as Doom and Watch Dogs 2, to name a few.
Cracking Resident Evil 7, however, was the fastest so far, especially since January 24 was the retail release date. CPY put the game up on one platform, and the rest of the world did the rest, spreading it all over the Internet.
While Denuvo has never said its system was uncrackable, it is rather disappointing for game developers who were hoping to make a little extra money by delaying the inevitable for as long as possible. Denuvo’s system continues to work for some early titles, but it seems to have failed for many others, Resident Evil 7 in particular. That’s because developers must have invested quite a bit of money in this protection, only to be cracked in less than a week.
Denuvo has previously stated that it was not giving publishers refunds if the protection it offers is removed. With Resident Evil being cracked in 5 days, developers might have gone without paying Denuvo in the first place.