New Denuvo DRM technology promises to crack down on DLC pirating

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A new type of Denuvo DRM technology promises to crack down on DLC pirating. Dubbed Denuvo SecureDLC, the software is already integrated for clients using Denuvo anti-tamper and refigures the platform’s API to block attacks and prevent unauthorized access.

“Denuvo has become a one-stop shop for game developers to ensure the safety of their game against cheating, tampering, and piracy and to protect the gaming experience,” Reinhard Blaukovitsch, Denuvo’s managing director, said in a press release. “Our current clients, big and small, are ecstatic with the results and we are happy to help them maximize revenue and also enable new business models for these games they spent so much effort building.”

The press release and website don’t mention which clients are using it, though it’s probably a safe bet that Sega, Capcom, and the other usual suspects have or will implement it in the future – especially as we get closer to major DLC launches for games like Resident Evil Village.

Denuvo gets a bad reputation for making games unplayable, and it’s not entirely unearned. When Resident Evil Village launched on PC, it did so as a stuttering mess thanks to Denuvo DRM’s heavy CPU requirements, though the extent of Denuvo-related problems usually depends on the game in question. Resident Evil, for example, used Capcom’s proprietary DRM, which we speculated might have interacted poorly with Denuvo.

Either way, Capcom fixed the issues promptly, and while extending the level of DRM protection to include add-on content sounds like it may create its own raft of potential problems, they probably – hopefully – won’t be game breaking. Often.