Xbox-published shooter Doom: The Dark Ages has been cracked by anti-DRM pirates, it’s been revealed, with a Reddit user who goes by voices38 announcing the bypassing of its unpopular Denuvo software on 13th March (via TheGamer).
It marks the first game released in 2025 to have its digital rights management software illicitly circumvented so far, with last year’s games previously proving particularly resilient to attempts until now.
DRM, in particular Denuvo, has been rather effective at slowing down attempts from pirates to crack recent games, but the anti-piracy technology also been super effective at compromising games’ PC performance. Coupled with the sense of wider retrictions on owners of legitimately-purchased digital media, the result has been a general distrust of the technology – Denuvo is wildly unpopular amongst many – leaving publishers in an awkward position as they seek to protect their interests.
There’s a subset of PC players that tends to avoid buying games that have Denuvo applied, for instance. Others who legitimately purchase DRM-covered games meanwhile have in the past found many of these cracks useful, due to CPU performance gains that come as a result. The latest blood-soaked shooter from id Software is an example – it was a great time overall, but its use of Denuvo attracted criticism at the time.
As for the Reddit post about its ‘cracking’, the original poster added a note that “the next one will surprise you,” suggesting their anti-Denuvo efforts might impact an even more recent release soon.
In recent years, we’ve seen some publishers move away from Denuvo once popular games are further along in their life cycles. At the opposite end, however, Capcom recently removed Denuvo from the Resident Evil 4 remake, only to apply an even worse form of DRM that’s made its performance suffer even further.
Meanwhile, the anti-DRM distribution platform GOG is seeking to expand its operation under new leadership. The storefront has famously been anti-DRM, raising the question of whether that is something that will continue to be a central pillar of the store’s philosophy in the future.
