Denuvo and 2K Reportedly Add Two-Week DRM Checks After Pirates Crack All Denuvo-Protected Single-Player Games

The war on piracy in video games between the game publishers selling games and the parrot-companioned players who would rather not pay for those games has just seen its latest milestone, as a committed community of players known as the MKDev Collective and user DenuvOwO, who are known for cracking games, claim they have cracked all Denuvo-protected single-player games. Which has seemingly caused Denuvo and at least one publisher, 2K Games, to respond with online DRM checks with a two-week window.

This all comes from a new report from Tom's Hardware, which spotted claims on X (formerly Twitter) that games published by 2K, including NBA 2K25, NBA 2K26, and Marvel's Midnight Suns now include a mandatory online DRM check with a two-week window. It's Denuvo's alleged retaliation after the aforementioned community of crackers found a way to bypass Denuvo's protections with a method known as installing a 'hypervisor-based bypass' (HVB).

The bypass isn't a full crack, but it's good enough to play the game, which is what anyone looking to pirate a game really cares about. But because it's not a full crack, it can't defend against Denuvo adding a DRM check that only goes between the user trying to play a Denuvo-protected game and Denuvo's servers.

Similar to PlayStation's recent addition of 30-day DRM checks for recently purchased digital games, the backlash towards Denuvo for adding this two-week check has been fairly severe, particularly because Denuvo's reputation among gamers is one of an unnecessary addition to games that only hurts performance and provides a worse experience for players who bought the game, while those who pirate it and remove Denuvo end up with a better experience without the kernel-level protection getting in the way.

And that's without even going into how DRM checks like the one we're reportedly seeing here inevitably means players who might suffer from poor internet or who simply want to play their games on a handheld PC device like the Steam Deck or ROG Xbox Ally X could find themselves in a situation where they can't play their games because they can't connect to the internet for the DRM check. It's not the biggest inconvenience ever, but paired with the performance issues Denuvo is known for, it easy to see how players will start to look for any and all options to avoid it at all costs.

It's even become a celebratory marketing point for developers to make when they tell players their games won't have Denuvo, and something that publishers face backlash for if Denuvo is added. The backlash is even worse if it's added just before a game launches, which is what happened with Crimson Desert earlier this year.

The problem for anti-pirate software makers like Denuvo is that pirates aren't going to stop finding ways around their protections, and they won't stop making their cracks easier to use, which is also what's happened with the latest version of HVB, which isn't nearly as risky to use as previous versions.

Previously, you had to disable several layers of protection within Windows to get HVB and your pirated games to work, but now you only have to disable Core Isolation, which is your PC's memory protection. This still opens you up to serious risks, and you still have to just trust the source of your pirated game that they haven't installed any vicious malware into the cracked copy of whatever game it is you're looking to play, but it's not as bad as it used to be, and it'll likely only get easier to use as the bypass improves.

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