This week a representative of Denuvo, makers of the Denuvo Anti-Tamper piracy prevention tech, told Kotaku that — contrary to speculation — the company does not offer clients refunds if the Denuvo protection on their game is defeated within a certain timeframe.
That’s worth knowing because Denuvo has rapidly become one of game development’s highest-profile anti-piracy measures, in part thanks to a memorable moment back in January when a group of practiced game crackers, flummoxed by Denuvo protection on Just Cause 3, predicted the death of game piracy altogether.
Of course, they were wrong — game piracy continues to be a problem, and by August pirates were reportedly finding ways to circumvent or defeat Denvo Anti-Tamper on games like Doom. Denuvo responded by updating its tech to address those vulnerabilities, but the “cat-and-mouse game” Denuvo’s Thomas Goebl described to Gamasutra earlier this year continues apace.
“We only ever refer to our Anti-Tamper solution as being ‘hard to crack’, never ‘uncrackable,’” Goebl told Gamasutra in response to a question of whether or not game piracy could ever really be stopped. “It is, ultimately, a game of cat-and-mouse.”
And indeed, Denuvo Anti-Tamper was recently removed from Doom and other games, prompting Kotaku and other outlets to ask whether the piracy prevention tech was in fact removed because it had been breached (and in turn, whether or not there had been a refund.)
The aforementioned Denuvo representative told Kotaku that “the simple reason why Denuvo Anti Tamper was removed from Doom was because it had accomplished its purpose by keeping the game safe from piracy during the initial sales window. The protection on Doom held up for nearly four months, which is an impressive accomplishment for such a high-profile game.”
This is, again, well in line with the stance Goebl took in our conversation earlier this year: that Denuvo’s ultimate goal is to increase a game’s sales window on PC by delaying pirates for as long as possible.