The first of the tools Denuvo is offering to Switch developers is Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection, a “revolutionary technology to protect games launching on Nintendo Switch from piracy”.
According to Denuvo, the new tech can be applied to Switch games to block the ability to play them on PC emulators.
“Even if a game is protected against piracy on its PC version, the version released on Nintendo Switch can be emulated from day one and played on PC, therefore bypassing the strong protections offered on the PC version,” the company says. “This can happen with any of the numerous games available on Nintendo Switch.
Personally, I’m not much of a PC gamer, so I don’t have a lot of personal experience with Denuvo; but this sounds pretty concerning.
My understanding is that by Denuvo LoJacking into every part of the game, it seriously hampers performance; and the Switch is underpowered enough as it is. I can only imagine how poorly games will run if the Switch has to devote resources to Denuvo as well.
Plus, from a preservation standpoint this is terrible too. Even if the studio drops Denuvo down the line, it will forever be included on the cartridge. This means that in the future, the only way to play this game will have to be an emulated copy, since you won’t be able to get the update to clear the (no longer supported) Denuvo from the game.
I can only imagine how poorly games will run if the Switch has to devote resources to Denuvo as well.
Pokemon Go added code obfuscation (I forgot the name of the company that provided it) some months after it was first released. Phones started running very hot, battery life dropped drastically, and people who played a lot had to replace their batteries (or phones) in a fraction of their normal lifetime. Also, as you imagined, performance dropped significantly.
Exactly. But AFAIK every Denuvo game eventually gets cracked, so at least we will have the pirate copies. From a preservation standpoint, a dumped ROM is much better than a physical cartridge anyway, since it’s more portable and easier to back up. It’s the contents of the cartridge minus the physical limitations.
There’s plenty of games which haven’t been cracked. More often than not, a game is updated to remove denuvo or a drm-free .exe is released accidentally.
It’s been hard to crack games and from what I’ve read, it now relies on one person and they have been a bit of a lunatic.
And like every other DRM, it’s just going to be something that the people who bought the game and play it unaltered will be forced to deal with in one way or another… while those who modify the game, emulate or pirate it, won’t. I love DRMs. Nothing like feeling like a sucker for actually buying the game and not cracking it.
How is this going to affect battery life? Some of us don’t have the switch connected to power 24/7. Sounds like a bad idea for an underpowered handheld device.
It’ll probably rely on offline checks
Will be equivalent to steamdrm, uplay, etc
Surely a 1:1 emulator would just run DRM as expected and it would never know… Feels like it may stop day1 piracy via emulators but anything beyond I’m sure would be patched.
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Honestly, I’m not sure. I don’t have a lot of experience with PC gaming (or its related piracy), but there seems to be a lot of drama in the pirate community due to the difficulty in bypassing Denuvo.
In this particular case, a good Switch emulator may be enough to bypass it; but my guess is it’ll be more complicated and resource taxing on the Switch than a simple hardware check.
IMO the worst part about Denuvo is that it just ruins any game they add it to by being a massive resource hog.
Welp, I guess we’re going to be getting a DRM-breaking emulator accompanied by some weird new rant by Empress.
Was she the one who released an nfo where she went off on a random insane rant against trans people?
it would be preferable to have someone other than her cracking denuvo lol
No one else is batshit insane enough to wanna warp their minds working with this garbage. She is already warped, so it doesn’t affect her. Much.
personally I think that theres loads of people with the skillset to do it, but they all have nice jobs in cybersecurity instead of cracking video games.
