Several PC games, including Tomb Raider, Guardians of the Galaxy and Football Manager 2022, were out of action last Sunday (7). The problem happened because the Denuvo anti-piracy protection domain had expired and been offline for a few hours. As a result, users could not authenticate their purchased games on Steam.
The flaw was first detected when players tried to run Guardians of the Galaxy on Steam. Whenever they opened the game, users received error messages saying that it was not possible to “maintain a connection with the servers”.
To try to resolve the situation, some people contacted Square Enix support. The company informed that it had noticed the error, but could not explain the cause. After a while, one of the individuals said that the producer had spoken via private message about the fall of Denuvo’s domain.
After that, several players began to criticize the use of Denuvo and other DRM protection tools, especially in single player titles that, in theory, do not require an internet connection. On Steam, users vented their frustrations on the original Guardians of the Galaxy forum post.
“The reason this game still has servers online with DRM is just ridiculous considering it’s a non-multiplayer title. I’m really glad I didn’t buy it now, but I’m sad for the people who bought it and can’t play it.”
ForbeZ, on the Steam forum.
“That’s exactly why I refuse to support games that use Denuvo. I don’t want to support a DRM that will make them unplayable if some intern forgets to renew a domain or the company just shuts it down. This shows how much care and attention they put into it.”
pige, on the Steam forum.
Denuvo games may require more processor
Denuvo is one of the most popular DRM protections in the gaming market, used by companies like Ubisoft, Sega, Capcom, Square Enix, among others. In addition to recent flaws, the tool is often criticized for supposedly causing games to consume more PC processor performance during use.
In certain cases, as happened in Resident Evil Village, games have improved performance in pirated versions, as they run without DRM. In these situations, developers often release a fix patch to decrease Denuvo’s performance drain.
Recently, some producers have started removing Denuvo from their titles, especially those that have been available for some time. Square Enix, for example, has already removed the feature from Marvel’s Avengers and Final Fantasy XII. Id Software also disabled Doom Eternal protection last year.
Source: Tecnoblog, VGC, Torrent Freak.
