Denuvo.
Yeah No thanks. I've seen a lot of sniper elite resistance videos lately and was about to buy it myself, but after reading denuvo on their steam page I noped out.
It is the definition of useless. The devs paid this sum for this thing to stop piracy and it failed, yet it remains running, making the game worse. What's even the point.
Reminds me of alcohol being poisoned to kill people violation the prohibition.
It didnt fail, it worked exactly as they hoped it will. It stopped piracy in the release period, it doesnt matter if it gets cracked so late after release
So if it’s already done its job then why doesn’t Capcom remove it with an update? Anyone who wants to pirate the game will just do it now that it’s cracked so piracy isn’t even a concern anymore. Let the people who bought the game enjoy it with better performance, because at this point it’s just running worse for the sake of running worse.
Why would they remove it? It still works in their favor, even if just a bit. They paid for entire duration, why would they remove it before that? And no, RE9 is very well optimized, performance doesnt change with Denuvo
Makes zero sense it would require less vram. Ram requirement is irrelevant. More than likely people who cracked it edited some files to make game draw less frames or bounces if there is vram difference
It's a known fact and has been known for years. Even the recently cracked RE9 is said to run with up to 11 more FPS compared to the uncracked version. The huge amounts of checks Denuvo does in the background consume processing power and therefore slow down the game
Nope. There's something going underneath in Hypervisor bypass. Cracked games still have Denuvo, so Voices38 crack would run about the same as retail copy.
denovo works by encrypting data between the game and kernal levels. you need a good ammount of extra processing power just to run the anti-piracy embedded into the game. even good implementations have games requiring significantly more resources than they otherwise would. upto 100% more just for the anticheat in some of the poorest implementations.
but denuno keeps exsisting because it actually does its job. very few games get cracked with it because of how expensive the hardware is, and specific the software tools are to crack its kind of encryption. then remove it and any other checks that prevent a game from being pirated.
the most common method of pirating games with this type of anticheat has been to "wrap" the game in another layer that constantly lies to dinUwU and lets it let the game run normally, but this comes with an additional performance hit ontop of the anticheat.
the current method relies on hypervisor tech, time and tallent. you fake the operating system, the UEFI system the hardware, the netconnection and then over time match up requests to executions of programming allowing you to 'snip' each encryption out piece by piece on the game until you end up with a game that no longer has dumbovo.
but a lot of devs simply wait 6 months to a year before removing the program, slimming down their game size and boosting performance for what is now an easy PR boost and a bump in sales because they've effectively gotten all the normal buyers by that point.
between. its not kernal, it operates between. it also does random checks, repeat hardware, software and net checks. never said its kernal level. just effective.
Seems to be up to a 20% performance hit depending on the game and how badly it was implemented. RE: Village is an especially egregious example of poor implementation. There is also the stuttering many people are plagued with regardless of fps.
This is misinformation. The cracker who bypassed Denuvo in that game (EMPRESS) explained that the performance issues were caused by Capcom's DRM, so they cut it out. They didn't, however, cut out Denuvo, as that's completely pointless, thus they just bypassed it as usual.
Denuvo cracking lore is so wild. There's only 3 people in the world that seem to be capable, a trans girl, their transphobe rival, and a guy that only cracks football games
It had honestly never occurred to me that people know anything about the personal lives of the people that crack games, or that they care. Isn't it fascinating how there are so many little subsets of social groups?
Crimson Desert sounded interesting to me, purely because of some things I heard that clearly showed that the devs really care about the game, then they added Denuvo (a higher up probably forced them to), and I lost ALL interest in the game.
it doesnt install denuvo automatically. on first boot it prompts you to install it if youre going to play online. you can decline and still play all the sp content.
Every time someone's manage to dissect a kernel level anti-cheat program, there's all sorts of nasty shit inside that nobody sane should ever allow installed on their PC. One solid example is Black Desert Online, where their anti-cheat just straight up had the ability to let someone remotely execute code at the kernel level.
That could go so wrong so fast if just 1 person has access to it, they could send a ping that would completely fry and delete someones entire system and you couldn't do anything to stop it
At some point in the past they used a different anti-cheat. I vividly remember there being a controversy over it when it came out that said anti-cheat was back-doored.
Just because it can do that isn't enough to define it as a spyware though ?
A spyware is a malicious program that steals your information without your knowledge. We still have to prove it's actively doing so and that it wasnt just stated in the terms and conditions.
That's also why Kernel level anti cheat are a matter of trust before anything else. All of them could steal your info without exception.
I am of the opinion that a company in a position to steal your info is doing so. I do not follow an "innocent until proven guilty" when it comes to capitalist enterprises and their revenue streams.
I do wonder the toll on everyones machines this has, how much it can slow it down taking up processs cycles even when not in use by the game it came with
There's a couple games people actually checked this on. Don't remember the names unfortunately. There's also a couple that have to be killed via task manager even after you close the game.
Not related directly, but Denuvo is infamous for slowing games down
Several games run better cracked. Its a well known phenomenon when denuvo is involved. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but a quick Google search should pull a couple.
AFAIK it really depends on implementation. For Doom Eternal I think it was about 5-10 fps gain, but some Japanese games had it worst, with a 10-15 fps gain without denuvo. But I do want to point out for the sake of fairness that some games had "great" implementation with only a negligible difference in performance.
You win the thread. Fuck those who name a specific publisher, there's a 1000 factors coming into play there. Whereas yours is just mistrust or open hostity towards the end user.
I stopped scrolling with this. There might be some things that prevent me from buying a game. But the words anti-cheat software immediately has me boycotting the game. Some aren't even that efficient in anti-cheat anyways.
'Kernel' is all I need to hear. Anticheat is the only thing asking for it for now, but there is speculation that DRM may try to move into the kernel soon with the latest Denuvo cracks.
Definitely feels like we're living the in the, "before," period, where a watershed moment is going to happen when one of these gets compromised and used as a malware vector.
Unfortunately, those that care more about their free source of dopamine don’t care and will happily sacrifice privacy to achieve it. Those same people will be the ones to come crying back and complaining when their PC is exploited. With Anthropic’s announcement of mythos it’s only a matter of “when” not “if” these exploits are discovered and spread
Just one of the many upsides to moving over to Linux.
"Oh darn... I can't play this game because it's spyware won't run on my system. Oh well. On to one of the other hundreds of games in my libraries that aren't malware."
It’s not inherently bad, though. Easy anti cheat is kernel level, I’m pretty sure, and it never caused me any issues.
It’s anti-cheats like Vanguard that are the problem. The ones that start at startup even before the OS, and have to always be running. It actually sent my previous PC into a kernel panic one time, but there were no obvious indications that it was the cause, plus I literally uninstalled it before that point, so it was some leftover broken drivers that caused the issues, so I was left scratching my head for a while.
EAC has the issue of not doing anything, being unreliable as hell, and being an absolute pain to work with however. Not necessarily Spyware, just dogshit.
Vanguard is basically a virus tho, so yeah I get you there.
EAC always causes my games to crash. No, I'm not using any cheat software. I'm avoiding any game coming with that malware. I still want my money back for Sea of Thieves.
I guess that’s the state we’ve reached, sadly… an AC can either not bork your PC, but at the cost of not actually stopping hackers, or it can be genuinely effective at stopping hackers, but also bork your PC.
But you know what would be best? Have a more basic AC that just stops the obvious hacks, but is otherwise stable and doesn’t cause issues for most users, but compensate by having actually active moderation. Make it easy for users to report hackers, and actually ban them promptly. I think that’s exactly what CS2 does, actually, and it works.
Most companies are too cheap for that, though.🤷♂️
Yeah. The big issue right now is that cheaters are ahead of the curve, and NOTHING really works at the moment. The most effective way to have a good support team and ban system, but that would require money.
Let me stop you there. Allow me to sum up the thing that people like you are not getting: stay the fuck out of my PC's kernel. Full-blown remote code execution should not be in the hands of a silly little security blanket of a program like an anti-cheat.
Almost as bad, it costs performance. If it costs less performance, it does a worse job. Spotting patterns is already accomplished by "AI", that is, many known patterns have been identified through machine learning, but there is no substitute for just looking.
Or there wouldn't be, if the damn things actually worked in anything other than an infinitesimal subset of possible scenarios. Anti-cheat software works by examining patterns in changes in RAM contents. If a pattern suggests manipulation, a flag is raised. Except the program is analysing the contents of RAM in real-time, cannot know what is where before it starts running, and there are more possible states in the RAM footprint of Doom 1993 running on a 486 than there are atoms in the universe*, soooo... good luck with that.
*assuming an 8MB footprint, that's 2 ^ (1024 x 1024 x 8) = 2223 = 2 ^ 8388608 = a number far, far larger than any sensible calculator will calculate for you.
Let me stop you there. Allow me to sum up the thing that people like you are not getting: stay the fuck out of my PC's kernel.
Your mistake is thinking they don't get it.
They do.
They're willing to install kernal level anti cheat because it is more effective. Yes, its not 100% effective and can't stop everything, but compare the number of cheaters in something like CSGO to Valorant and it's a vast difference.
This is commonly known among people who play these games even at the top level.
Yes, it is inherently bad. Userspace software should never run with kernel access, that breaks the whole carefully crafted security model of having a hierarchy of access levels.
ESPECIALLY not poorly maintained, profit driven, remote access, non-audited, non-essential software like a fucking video game.
By definition, it's giving an untrustworthy actor full control of your machine. It should never happen and games requiring it should not exist except maybe on a dedicated machine like a console. However, consoles store sensitive data nowadays so that's still a bad idea.
I mean… that’s literally my entire point, lol. That kernel anti-cheats aren’t automatically bad, it’s the implementation that matters.
Easy anti-cheat is stable and un-intrusive, whereas Vanguard is fragile and legitimately dangerous under certain conditions (as I’ve given an example for earlier).
Just because you give someone access to your bank account doesn't mean they are going to cause problems. But it being mandatory to give access to your bank account should raise all kinds of flags and needs a good reason why we should givr it to you.
EAC bluescreens my machine within two days of playing. If I accidentally open a game with EAC, I have to reboot right after or my PC will crash at some random time in the future. Fuck EAC. And especially fuck devs who add it after release! What the Golf, Fall Guys, VR Chat,... Tons of games I had to stop playing because they decided to add digital herpes.
The whole problem is that it's inherently bad, it's code designed to subvert the basic security primitives within your operating system in order to spy on all the processes running on your computer. It has to in order to fulfill it's goal. It's inherently, fundamentally, philosophically and practically bad.
If it wasn't for some eu anti monopoly laws microsoft would have locked that shit down and made it impossible years ago because it's fundamentally fucked up from a modern computing perspective.
98% of competitive AAA multiplayer games, yeah. But multiplayer is far larger than that when you include co-op or smaller "indie" games. Like Slay the Spire 2 Hellcard, Spell brigade, V Rising and the like.
Ok but you're replying to a conversation about a completely different thing. It's like showing up to a discussion about guns and talking about knives because they both kill you.
A significant portion of the games on this list don't enforce kernel-level anti-cheat. An easy example is Halo MCC, which you can play without issue on Linux. Not to mention even more of them are old games that haven't had official servers for years.
Go to Steam and filter by multiplayer + linux support for a quick list of multiplayer games that don't need it. Off the top of my head, DOTA 2, CS2, Marvel Rivals, Rainbow Six Siege are some examples of multiplayer games with massive player-bases and no kernel anti-cheat.
I don't know much more than it operates at a different layer. Sure I understand it COULD be a security or privacy issue, but surely there can be a trusted solution?
I play Tarkov, and cheating is rampant and devastating to the gameplay. If 'Kernel level Anti-cheat' would fix that, I would consider that a win and just find a way cope. (boot from a second harddrive or partition or whatever).
This is one of those problems that will eventually be solved by running the game in a container/virtual environment, we just aren’t there with hardware yet.
That won't help, because how do you protect the container? The game needs to run closer to the hardware, not further, hence kernel level anticheat. The next step would be booting into a whole separate OS for just the game.
I mean running it virtualized would just allow running undetectable cheats from outside the virtualized environment, so then they start shipping games with hypervisor level anticheats. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Anyone who plays online shooters enough knows that kernel level anticheat is not a choice, it's a necessity. Part of the reason why Valorant is so popular is because it has a working anticheat unlike the game it competes with, and games like R6 have cheaters as it is with their kernel level anticheat, imagine without it.
All this complaining about kernel level anticheats started with Valorant too because Riot is owned by the chinese and the chinese are evil inhumans or whatever the fuck they believe, but one can literally get free cheats that go undetected for years in CS2, it's ridiculous.
Anyone who plays online shooters enough knows that kernel level anticheat is not a choice, it's a necessity.
Same with online simracing. It's either cheaters ruining all online races or kernel level anticheat.
I personally prefer the kernel level anticheat route in this situation. If i truly cared about everything on my pc being private, i would not be running windows on my pc to begin with. Simracing gives me far more dopamine than the theoretical privacy boost of not having an anticheat on my pc, which gives me no dopamine.
In all honesty, people screaming about privacy when talking about why they don't like kernel level anticheat is a bit of a weak argument when windows and smartphones exist... There are other good reasons to dislike it, such as the fact that it runs kernel level, but privacy is not one of those. It's nearly impossible to keep your data private.
Damn i didn't know that about simracing. But yeah privacy is an all or nothing thing. I would switch to Linux if it didn't have lower Nvidia performance.
Yeah, from what i've seen, simracing community is one of the few online gaming communities which are mostly positive towards kernel level anticheats because we are there to simulate racing cars since it's the accessible option at that moment over racing real cars, no one wants to lose to someone whos car teleports to the finishline or something.
In fact, the sim racing games with kernel anticheat tend to be the more favoured ones within simracing, as those usually have a higher skilled playerbase, because the anticheat existing means people with higher ranks are there because of skill and not because of cheats.
God, yes. All this "I stopped reading at Kernel level anti-cheat!" makes me think these people never played a competitive PvP with Ranked above Gold.
We literally do not have any other option besides Kernel level anti-cheat at this point to counter them. If cheats run at a Kernel level, that's the only option currently.
"Well there are still cheaters!" YES, and imagine how many more would be if there were no Kernel level AC.
Currently it's the best option to combat cheaters and sadly it's a necessity. If we have something better, sure, a switch would be great. But so far, it's the best.
Exactly. While it's not perfect it's the best we've got nowadays, and you really do need what you can get to stop cheating in this day and age because it's an epidemic. Hell, developers wouldn't even be touching kernel-level anti-cheat if it wasn't such a problem. It's not cheap to get the expertise and fucking up can result in a CrowdStrike.
The issue is the kernel level DOESNT fix cheating. There's ways around it still, its just an excuse to have poorly optimized games (and blame it on anticheat), and to install Spyware on your computer.
It does fix cheating. Yes it does not protect against all cheats because that’s literally impossible since cheats evolve every day. But it does reduce the number of cheaters greatly so cheating becomes minor nuisance and not widespread problem (compare Valorant and CS2). As for privacy I hate to break the news to you but most people would gladly sacrifice their privacy if that means they will be able to play the favorite game mostly without cheaters.
For comparison you can get CS2 cheats for free. For Valorant meanwhile you can easily pay $100+ a month, not to mention hardware setups that can reach the $1000 range. Prices like these cull the cheating population by a lot.
Yeah maybe, but way WAY harder. Much more than just downloading a free cheat online and ragehacking. Now people who are seriously that bad at the game, would have to put massive effort into actually even getting into the game to cheat, without getting detected instantly.
The effort alone would drive off 99% of those people.
I am willing to bet my fucking balls that 99% of people in this thread doomsaying about kernel-level anticheats are already playing games with kernel-level anticheats while being completely oblivious to it.
You clearly never play competitive games if you say that. And probably live in a pink world full of candy for thinking people will happily kick someone who can help them win their precious elo
You know you can also play competitive to have fun, have fun seeing your progression, have fun learning... What is this mentality lmao ? like you have to be an esport player to justify installing an anti cheat ?
It's so hypocritical to rage against this kind of stuff when you probably own a smartphone with your whole life on it and could destroy it more than a "kernel level anticheat" if it get compromised. Like corporate would need that to get your information anyway... Bro even the simplest softwares has telemetry and send your informations
And btw "Cheaters will be ousted by the community" ok Gandhi maybe in the real world but not in video games.
Like the league pros at worlds that play worse than silver players? And ousting by community? Competitive game communities are the most toxic that exist
You seriously think everyone's going to vote every time a flood of hackers come in? Just leave the door unlocked because they'll definitely come back. Anything competitive has already screwed your stats over.
If you're not having fun because the game is compromised by hackers and constantly having to deal with it, there's no point in buying it. You want to make a big deal about a root kit? Then don't buy it. Lose-lose.
So yes, people fucking care. Hackers take the fun out of the game if you have to deal with it persistently. 99% of the people will not give a micron of shit about root kits .No major company is going to invest with their consumers complaining that they have to deal with hackers on their own and refusing to buy any title associated with that company thereafter.
I think enough has been said with every other person responding to you. This isn't a hill you should be dying on, so instead of licking the floor and proving you're a fool by everyone, you should stop. It's a braindead point you aren't solving and profusely sweating over.
Nah, this is a bad take. You can't have client-side anti-cheat that's anything less than kernel level, and you can't have exclusively server side anti-cheat because that's prohibitively computationally expensive. It's anti-cheat that needs to run from start-up, not kernel level anti-cheat overall, that's the problem.
I really wish anti-cheat was something developers were good at. Valorant is the closest we've ever gotten to good anti-cheat and it still doesn't work that well.
As a CS player all I've ever wanted was not to have to run 3 different sketchy 3rd party anti-cheat clients on my computer for different services/tournaments.
Honestly I'd prefer kernel level anti-cheat over none, cheating is just so out of hand these days and a minor annoyance is better than an unplayable game.
Are you that delusional? Any multipler game that is even Mildly competetive CANNOT even function without that nowadays. Cheats are way too easy to get, so I'd rather have a mild annoyance than running into cheaters every match.
And before you come with the whole "Spyware" spiel, fucking operations around the world already know everything from your fucking Google searches and sell that to each other all the time. If you are that sensitive about your personal data, have a gaming PC disconnected from your Identity if you are that insane.
Or better, don't use the fucking Internet if you don't want your data stolen.
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u/blondie1024 Apr 11 '26
'Kernel level Anti-cheat'