14 DAY TRIAL // Apparently, the 64 bit version of the infamous Denuvo DRM has been cracked, potentially opening the flood gates for all the FIFA 15, Dragon Age: Inquisitions and Lords of the Fallen downloads that the Internet can muster.
The topic of video game piracy has been debated to death, with many claiming that it's theft, no matter how you choose to look at things, while others decry the hoops legitimate users have to go through in order to allow corporate executives and investors to feel a false sense of security.
The truth is, as always, rarely pure and never simple, and while some might see the long-term benefit of piracy as something that gradually grows the industry and its audience, as well as providing people with a means to test games before committing to a purchase, others just won't have it, and point out that just like everything else in life, video games also have a cost, and if you can't afford it, you shouldn't play them.
Valve managed to convince the world to embrace a DRM system by dressing it up in shiny clothes and offering a lot of added functionality, such as being able to discover and purchase indie games that you would not have normally heard about, or older AAA titles at a fraction of their original price.
However you may sit in this debate, things are not likely to change dramatically from one day to another, and the reality is that yet another DRM service has been cracked, showing once again that simply erecting a barrier won't stop the world indefinitely.
The king is dead, long live the king
Denuvo is the latest form of DRM employed by people who don't want illicit users to get their hands on video games, and it's been used to safeguard EA Sports' FIFA 15, BioWare's Dragon Age: Inquisition, and CI Games and Deck13 Interactive's Lords of the Fallen.
The software comes from some DRM veterans, particularly some of the very same people who developed SecuROM and Starforce, and it's meant to protect expensive software from those who don't want to pay for its use.
It's been criticized, just like any other DRM system in the world, by many who feel that it's easier for pirates to enjoy games than for legitimate users, and it's also been rumored to negatively impact SSDs, by performing a huge number of read/write cycles, and thus wearing down the drives.
Fortunately, the rumor has been debunked, so it seems that Denuvo's sole impact is to prevent people from illegally playing video games. Or at least it used to be, since 3DM has reported that it has managed to successfully crack the system.
The Chinese team did not yet release cracked versions of the protected video games, as its purpose was simply to prove that Denuvo can – eventually – be cracked, which was the culmination of more than two weeks of work.
For the time being, there is no telling how this will impact future game releases that were counting on Denuvo for protection. What's certain is that the groundwork for cracking the system has already been laid out.
