It’s getting harder every year to fully crack Denuvo, but it’s still not impossible, and now Resident Evil Requiem has been cracked by voices38 (via TheGamer).
Resident Evil Requiem has been around for about six weeks, and while pirates were technically able to get around the Denuvo DRM by running a virtual machine, or hypervisor, it was risky and complicated, requiring you to completely disable Windows security and Secure Boot. With voices38’s crack, though, you just have to modify the game’s .exe file, making it much safer to actually run.
In the past, Denuvo cracks came a lot faster, but the DRM has been getting harder to patch out of a game’s files. These traditional cracks are still coming, but they’re much slower, with last year’s Doom: The Dark Ages only getting its crack about a month ago, according to TheGamer.
While Resident Evil Requiem’s crack came a lot closer to its launch than Doom: The Dark Ages, future games might take a longer time. There is a constant battle between pirates and Denuvo, and it’s very likely that future implementations of the DRM will patch out the vulnerabilities that allowed for Requiem to be cracked.
On the other hand, the hypervisor ‘cracks’ will continue to be the quickest workaround for DRM-loaded games, but they carry a ton of risks. After all, with all of the safeguards you have to disable, it’ll make your system very vulnerable to hackers and rootkits, even if the VM you’re running isn’t itself infected with malware.
The safest and fastest way that you can play new games is still just buying the game and running it normally, even if Denuvo impacts game performance. If anything, maybe the DRM being cracked so quickly this time will persuade some developers to opt for less invasive and heavy copy protection methods. That’s probably just wishful thinking, though.
Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
