this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2026
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What do y'all make of this?

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[–] Joejoe582@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I've seen other comparisons that found little difference between RUNE cracked version and the official Ubisoft version with Denuvo.

This comparison is between RUNE and voices38, so the only thing you can infer from this is that voices38 crack is worse than the Ubisoft version.

[–] REDACTED@infosec.pub 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

The crack does not remove denuvo, it essentially emulates the security check. If anything, that only comes with extra performance hit (but very minimal)

[–] barooboodoo@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Would you mind sharing those comparisons?

[–] Mordikan@kbin.earth 142 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Denuvo's CEO (I think it was) tried to explain that it couldn't impact performance, but that's basically impossible. They are pushing parts of the game through a VM and doing encryption/decryption on the fly. That's going to generate significant overhead. Whether it were to get pushed to GPU over CPU, blah blah, their DRM is still adding additional hoops for the machine to jump through.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 35 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Even if it were incredibly straightforward and performant, it's still impossible to add no overhead. Is the process doing something? Ok, then something else has to not happen in that time

[–] Liz@midwest.social 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That's not strictly true, since your frame rate could be either CPU or GPU limited. If your process is light and running on the thing that has compute to spare, well then it's running on "free" compute time.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I guess, but it isn't shifting between GPU or CPU depending on what's free. It might happen to not have a significant effect (heat is still an effect), but doesn't know.

[–] Liz@midwest.social 2 points 1 day ago

No I'm just saying that, as a concept, it's fair to say you can add a background process without impacting game performance. I'm not at all saying that's what is happening here, it's obviously not. Generally speaking, if your game isn't hitting the maximum refresh rate on your screen, it's probably GPU limited, but there can be games that are CPU limited, like flight simulators. It seems like this process is adding so much to the stack that it's got a huge effect.

[–] TemplaerDude@sh.itjust.works 15 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] dalekcaan@feddit.nl 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Do you really think a CEO would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?

[–] athatet@lemmy.zip 6 points 2 days ago

No. I don’t think they would lie JUST on the internet. I think they would also do it in real life.

[–] Hazzard@lemmy.zip 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This just in: Doing something takes longer than not doing that thing. Only Denuvo stupid enough to act surprised.

[–] Mordikan@kbin.earth 6 points 2 days ago

Denuvo CEO: "Well, actually, it makes things faster. We streamline the process through several other processes to output the same result. We like to think of it as a fun multiplier. That's how Denuvo math works here."

[–] Tattatta@lemmy.dbzer0.com 31 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

""""It does not affect performance""""

- commented by many shills all over the internet

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 days ago

Which is obvious bullshit

Any additionally software and or layers will affect performance, be it by a few clock cycles to 100%, but some performance will be lost; its just a matter of how much. Its the same with a car; every piece you add to it will increase weight and decrease performance.

Saying its 0 is automatically bullshit and in this case its an outright lie

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 3 days ago

Corporate malware is corporate malware.

Water is wet.

Things tend to fall downward.

-yawn-

[–] halcyoncmdr@piefed.social 75 points 3 days ago

This isn't news to anyone that's paid attention over the years. Nearly every game that had Denuvo and removed it sees a measurable performance bump. Way more than what general optimizations would do, despite what the developer/publisher and the online propaganda repeaters always claim.

[–] belated_frog_pants@beehaw.org 50 points 3 days ago

Never buy a game until denuvo is removed.

[–] M137@lemmy.today 30 points 3 days ago

"What do y'all make of this?"

No surprise at all, it's well known that Denuvo has a major performance impact.

[–] Bluegrass_Addict@lemmy.ca 46 points 3 days ago (1 children)

why even bother playing aaa trash. it's garbage even without the performance of crippling junk they throw in

[–] NuanceDemon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 41 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I mean people play what they enjoy and not everybody cares about chasing frames.

Denuvo making games run worse is fucking garbage, but two things can be true at once.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

We would have much better games overall if people actually had a lick of restraint.

[–] NuanceDemon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Unlikely, most gamers are kids, most kids are totally agnostic to anything beyond the consumption of games.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 16 points 3 days ago (1 children)

That's just false. Most gamers are adults and if we narrow that to just PC, you will find the average age is over 30.

[–] Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

We are now at an average of 41 years, with nearly equal gender distribution: https://www.techspot.com/news/109812-esa-report-shows-average-gamer-41-ndash-nearly.html

Edit: that is across all platforms. Older people tend to play more games on mobile.

[–] Souvenir@lemmy.dbzer0.com 30 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Ubisoft is in serious trouble.

TBH I wouldn't be surprised if they started including a bitcoin miner in their games and filming customers 24/7 so they can sell the footage.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 22 points 3 days ago (4 children)

How has Denuvo even managed to convince the AAA market to purchase it's products when they are cracked almost immediately anyway?

[–] Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 27 points 3 days ago

Because they weren't being cracked AT ALL for the better part of a decade. There has been an entire generation of crackers failing to crack Denuvo until the start of 2026, and I'm pretty sure that the actual cracks being released today would not be possible without the Hypervisor workaround being developed first.

[–] halcyoncmdr@piefed.social 34 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Because not having a DRM solution makes shareholders nervous. So a pointless system that actively makes the game worse, is a positive still.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 20 points 3 days ago

Always the damn shareholders

[–] Geologist@lemmy.zip 19 points 3 days ago

Most games make the largest amount during the first week or two, so if it takes longer then that for someone to crack it, then it was probably worth it to the publishers. I don’t follow all the denovo news, so maybe with the new hypervisor stuff this is a moot point, but most games haven’t been cracked immediately.

for quite a while it wasn't

[–] Mwa@thelemmy.club 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

i dont buy video games that uses Denuvo (and maybe from companies/developer that use it too),
i dont want that malware on my PC,
also am fine with a developer/company using it on one or a few games and removing it on those games.

[–] muhyb@programming.dev 15 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Did Ubisoft actually remove Denuvo from a game or is this some cracked version?

[–] Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Voices38 has been systematically removing Denuvo from every game they get into their hands - these are 1A cracked games

[–] bad1080@piefed.social 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

no, it's the voices version with the lower mins and bigger .exe, rune published a version without denuvo. voices cracks/bypasses denuvo, not removing it.

[–] Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 5 points 3 days ago

oops, didnt see Rune there - thought it was a comparison between Voices and standard

[–] Matty_r@programming.dev 7 points 3 days ago
[–] barooboodoo@lemmy.zip 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I haven't had time to look into it so take this with a grain of salt, but I believe it was like a test version of the game that leaked? Someone please weigh in if they know better.

[–] muhyb@programming.dev 4 points 3 days ago

Ah, that's fine. I just wondered if they removed it themselves because if so that would be first, as far as I know they never removed Denuvo from their games before.

[–] huquad@lemmy.ml 14 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Isn't this a single player game too?

[–] halcyoncmdr@piefed.social 14 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Yeah. Denuvo is DRM, not anti-cheat.

[–] brax@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago

anti-cheat

Aren't those all rootkits?

[–] gankouskhan@bookwyr.me 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I don't think they mean they want to cheat, just that they would expect a single player game to be offline entirely and maybe a dose of "fuck you I bought this it's mine". Could be wrong tho

[–] halcyoncmdr@piefed.social 3 points 3 days ago

I was thinking along the lines of wondering why a single player game would need anti-cheat.

Required online check-ins and similar were a thing before Denuvo came on the scene, so I didn't even consider that aspect. Especially since the online portion of Denuvo is secondary to the encryption crap.

[–] huquad@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago

Yes that's my point. The performance impacts are especially egregious considering it's not even anti cheat.

when people say denuvo they mean copy prevention, although the game may have some anti-tampering features to protect the real money store that ass games have had for a long time.