Anti-cheat Denuvo is now available to all developers and publishers on Steam
Since last year, the Austrian company Denuvo has been offering developers and publishers not only DRM protection of the same name but also DAC (Denuvo Anti-Cheat). From now on, all members of the Valve Steamworks program can implement the system directly into games. This was reported by the Dutch company Irdeto, which owns Denuvo.
DAC is designed to fight against bots for automatic aiming (aimbot), cheats that allow you to see and eliminate opponents through walls (wallhack), and other dishonest algorithms that change logic and game data. The developers emphasize that the integration of the system does not require changing the source code of the games. At the same time, the DAC itself does not affect their performance, and its methodology for detecting problems and alerting them about them is not able to interfere with either developers or players. The DAC is now built into the Steamworks toolkit and can be used by all Valve partners.
In a press release, Irdeto cites the results of its own research: 77% of gamers around the world will prefer to leave a multiplayer game if there are cheaters in it, and 48% of users will buy less content for it in this case. “A networking platform as large as Steam has many benefits that are shared among all participants, ” said Reinhard Blaukovitsch, Managing Director of Denuvo. ” We’re thrilled to be able to make it easier for game creators to manage communities and share our latest technology with them.”
Irdeto introduced DAC in March 2019. The first defense was used by id Software, which added it to the PC version of Doom Eternal in May 2020. However, players soon started complaining about performance degradation and other issues (such as conflicts with antivirus software), and although the shooter’s developers did not acknowledge the connection between technical issues and the DAC, the anti-cheat was removed from the game after two weeks.
According to Irdeto, Denuvo systems are used by developers in more than a thousand games. The number of installations of games protected with them for different platforms has exceeded two billion.
Meanwhile, players continue to believe that Denuvo’s DRM system can slow download speeds in games, and in some cases, even degrade performance. In July 2020, YouTube blogger Overlord Gaming showed the negative impact of protection on the example of Metro Exodus, Prey, and several other games. In December, the owners of the PC version of Death Stranding, which the developers got rid of Denuvo shortly before, began to report about the acceleration of downloads.
It is known that Denuvo’s anti-piracy defense will be used in the PC versions of the shooter Deathloop and the RPG slasher Persona 5 Strikers.
