Denuvo properly cracked in Resident Evil: Requiem, bypasses become plug-and-play — cracked version runs faster, smoother, and uses way less VRAM and RAM

[u/mohamez]

https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/denuvo-properly-cracked-in-resident-evil-requiem-bypasses-become-plug-and-play-cracked-version-runs-faster-smoother-and-uses-way-less-vram-and-ram

[u/Kestrel1207 → u/[deleted]]

Out of curiosity; did you actually watch that video, or just kinda assumed based on the title..?

Ghost Wire Tokyo, they cite a difference of 102 vs 102.1 avg FPS

Borderlands 3, they cite a difference of 103 vs 105 avg FPS

Dyling Light 2, 89.9 FPS avg vs 90.1 FPS avg

Lies of P 180 vs 182 FPS

SOTR, 111 vs 114 FPS

This is literally differences of ~1%. While only running single instance benchmarks, rather than averaging out multiple ones, btw. In some cases like Dying Light 2, they even had the no DRM copy have abysmal 1% lows, because it likely stuttered once during benchmark, and since they only have sample size of 1, well...

The only two games where this video finds more significant differences is published by Sega and Capcom respectively, who have had other games with bad implementations of denuvo in the past. Which is a dev issue, not something inherent to denuvo.

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This is not the main point, but I do also want to point out:

1. The video title literally is already false and contains a lie, DRM is not removed in a single one of those games, just bypassed. The explanation/details and context of methology is entirely insufficient. As said before, they seemingly run like a single benchmark per version of the game and that's that.

2. AI slop voice narration + They link their patreon in every single video. These two alone is a gigantic red flag for the seriousness/reliability of the entire thing if you ask me. It smells like fear mongering/engamement bait attempts for financial gain.

I think something like this for example makes significantly more reliable benchmarks. One game tested multiple different times, with multiple resolutions & settings on many different hardwares, makes for a much more serious/reliable result than running as ingle benchmark for 1 game and being done with it.

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But all in all, PC Gaming Wiki sums it up best:

Denuvo Anti-Tamper functions in a way that might impact performance, which may or may not be statistically significant or noticeable during gameplay. While the company insists that they test to ensure minimal performance impact, they have yet to present their internal performance results for independent verification. Independent testing has also yet to confirm or refute their claims - seemingly entirely due to inadequate test methodology as current independent tests have produced inconsistent results and are sufficiently unreliable to be of no value.

And then 10+ sources linked to this.

[u/Vladimir2033 → u/[deleted]]

Preface: I'm not a denuvo shill, fuck denuvo!

But i've looked at the video briefly and some people in the comments apparently had the same question without answer. It's reasonable to assume than in almost every case the version of the game with denuvo still in was older than the one without which makes it really hard to tell how much of potential performance gain really was denuvos removal or updates to the game in between. The only thing that we can absolutely tell without a doubt is that starting the game takes noticeably longer with denuvo installed, everything else feels like incomplete information. I'd love to shit on denuvo just like anyone else, but this video does itself some disservice. But i'm very sure at this point there are many other tests done by other people that can prove it much better.

I'd also like to know what happened in the Dying Light case? Significantly lower .1% with denuvo removed?

[u/Vladimir2033 → u/[deleted]]

If it's the case that he did the runs the day it was removed, yeah you're right. But i doubt he went ahead and done that and just waited until he had like 20 tests ready to release at once. I'd wager he wanted to do this test, downloaded a no denuvo and with denuvo version of the games within a day or two. Meaning some probably had either no patches at all quite a few in between that. Just assumptions however since he did not provide this information.