Some Denuvo enabled games faced an outage over the weekend, possibly due to Denuvo’s network failure

Publication date of the original Japanese article: 2021-11-08 16:06 (JST)
Translated by. Ryuki Ishii

Several Denuvo enabled games faced an outage over the weekend. Twisted Voxel reports. Users have been mentioning on social networks and forums that they can’t access certain games, and the cause is believed to be a network failure on the part of Denuvo.

Affected titles include Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Planet Zoo, Back 4 Blood, Resident Evil Village, Persona 4 Golden, and Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles. The situation seems to have been restored now, as users are reporting that they were able to launch these games without trouble.

Denuvo Anti-Tamper is an anti-piracy technology provided by Denuvo Software Solutions. It aims to “prevent crackers from debugging, reverse engineering and modifying games” to strengthen the security.

On the other hand, users have been pointed out that its integration may affect the performance of games, and there are users who are displeased by it. In fact, there’s even a case where Amplitude Studios decided to launch their game HUMANKIND without Denuvo to ensure the game’s performance (PCGamesN).

Depending on how Denuvo is implemented in the game, users need to go through an online authentication process. Therefore, if the authentication server goes down or faces a system error, it may affect the game. While Denuvo is often used in major titles, it is a controversial tool among users for these reasons.

As for the outage that occurred during the weekend, some of the reported error messages contained text directing users to “codefusion.technology” domain. This is the URL that Denuvo uses for user support, and the error message stated, “the server is not reachable.” From the information above, we can assume that the cause of the issue is likely due to some kind of failure in Denuvo’s server or network.

As mentioned above, there are many users who are against Denuvo because of its possible effect on games’ performance. And with an incident like this, the risk of not being able to launch a game due to DRM failure, has become a reality. Users are expressing their concerns and opinions about this matter on forums like Reddit and ResetEra. Some are mentioning the problems they have encountered, and some are voicing their dissatisfaction with the technology. On the other hand, some are pointing out that pirated games and their users are to blame.

It goes without saying, but videogame piracy is a serious issue, and using DRM as a safeguard against it, is an understandable choice to make for developers and publishers. That said, it is also inevitable for users to be concerned or dissatisfied with the technology as a result of major outages or performance issues. Users who are caught up in the struggle between developers and videogame piracy, may be the biggest victims.