Notorious game cracker has removed Denuvo from Hogwarts Legacy, sees performance boost

In context: Denuvo is an anti-tamper expertise and DRM answer usually adopted by massive recreation publishers (and typically by indie studios) to guard their newest titles in opposition to piracy. There’s somebody, nevertheless, who has apparently made cracking this highly effective DRM their life’s mission.

Sport cracker “Empress” has as soon as once more achieved the unattainable. After a quick beta interval managed by way of their Telegram channel, the infamous hacker has launched a “cracked” model of Hogwarts Legacy. The brand new motion RPG set in Harry Potter’s wizarding world was launched simply a few weeks in the past, and it seemingly will not undergo a lot as writer Warner Bros. has already bought greater than 12 million copies (on PC, PS5 and Xbox).

Empress’ capacity to crack Denuvo on the most recent DRM-protected video games is a exceptional achievement. The cracker explains that Hogwarts Legacy is protected by “Denuvo v17” plus Steam’s personal (delicate) DRM. The “NFO” file accompanying the cracked release (no obtain hyperlink is supplied, in fact) is extraordinarily opinionated as per custom, as Empress is seemingly absolutely supporting authoress J. Okay. Rowling as a “actual lady” in opposition to what she describes because the “woke system.”

Regardless of questionable opinions and foul language, Empress’ technical abilities are among the many finest within the “scene.”

As a Reddit consumer put it, with the ability to crack Denuvo right now is actually “insane.” Empress is only a single developer in opposition to a complete staff of pros, she has (or ought to have) no entry to Denuvo supply code, and but can seemingly defeat the DRM and anti-tampering expertise in only a couple weeks.

Denuvo is commonly accused of affecting recreation efficiency negatively, and the proposition of a DRM-less model of Hogwarts Legacy appears to corroborate this assumption as soon as extra.

One YouTuber compared the Steam model of the sport and the Empress launch on a low-end gaming system (Core i7-7700, GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, 16GB of RAM), and located the cracked launch to offer larger body charges on a relentless foundation.

Earlier than being banned from Reddit, Empress had expressed some frustration in opposition to the complexity she discovered within the newest Denuvo variations. Because of this, the anti-DRM cracker determined to vary her habits by reserving a substantial quantity of her time to defeating the a lot maligned Denuvo tech on the most recent video games approaching PC.