Modding is about to become much more difficult in the near future due to a new Unreal Engine Protection technology that could be used in conjunction with Denuvo or independently.
As confirmed on Irdeto's official website, the Unreal Engine protection technology is a feature designed to prevent malicious users from manipulating games created using Unreal Engine. This solution is easy to integrate into any game on a binary level and will prevent users from data mining attempts, block cheaters, protect game data files against decryption, block usage of in-game debug consoles, and conceal entry points to deter game modifications. Needless to say, this is extremely bad for modding, as it will make it extremely difficult for developers even to access the game's files, if not even impossible.
Additionally, Denuvo is known to impact performance of any game that implements it, so it wouldn't be surprising for Unreal Engine protection to have an impact as well, which is almost as bad as preventing modding, considering the many performance issues of UE 4-powered games.
In addition to Unreal Engine Protection, Irdeto also announced Integrity Verification, which will allow developers to verify the integrity of their own game code, protecting it against static and dynamic tampering, essentially preventing users from making any change to the code both at startup and during gameplay.
As the Unreal Engine Protection technology has only been revealed, it's not clear when developers will start using it. Hopefully, it won't be widespread, but the gaming industry always finds a way to adopt the worst possible practices at all times, so the future is definitely not looking too bright for modding.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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