Denuvo appears to have been cracked

PC gaming’s brief flirtation with watertight security may already be over.

TorrentFreak reports that Denuvo, which had proved so successful that one of China’s biggest hacking groups called it quits altogether, now seems to have been properly cracked wide open.

Until now, and despite a few rumours, FIFA 16 stood as the only Denuvo title to have been released illegally on Torrent sites, but in that instance its DRM had been bypassed as opposed to actually broken.

Then over the weekend a second more general bypass utilising a Steam vulnerability was discovered. That led to the release of illegal versions of titles such as Return of the Tomb Raider, Doom, Just Cause 3, Inside and Abzu.

Denuvo closed this particular loophole within days – but the security company suffered a further blow when just as quickly, a more serious crack was revealed that might potentially end the Denuvo party for good.

An illegitimate version of Rise of the Tomb Raider remains available online and utilises what seems to be a full and proper crack of the DRM. So far the Lara Croft outing is the remains the only cracked game to be released. It’s possible that others won’t follow, although this seems unlikely, especially owing to the hacking community’s enthusiasm about the new methods.