In what is considered a major development in the video game piracy community, pirates have cracked a title with Denuvo protection. Denuvo, the anti-piracy measure that has kept dozens of notable releases from being cracked, comes weeks after pirates began wondering if the war against piracy had been won.
As first shared on Reddit, Starlink: Battle for Atlas, a Ubisoft game, has been cracked by voice38. While the game itself isn't particularly noteworthy (it has a 74 on Metacritic and certainly doesn't make one of Ubisoft's most important franchises), that a Denuvo title was even able to bypass it is significant in its own right.
It is unclear why this game was chosen first, piracy secrets are rather closely supported, especially Denuvo, but a user on Reddit theorized that Starlink is a title that contains patched loopholes, meaning it was a good test that the new methods could also work in the first place.
Now, the real test will be whether current titles, such as Stellar Blade or Borderlands 4, can be next.
The fight against Denuvo has been a long one
For those not in the loop, games with Denuvo have historically been impossible to crack by pirates, forcing bad actors to either purchase the game outright or wait until the game is cracked, the latter a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of result.
Still, that hasn't stopped the piracy community from thriving, apparently. Because for every game that features Denuvo, there are dozens more that don't, meaning Dying Light: The Beast and Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater are available for free. Recently, Call of Duty titles have joined the ranks of pirates being cracked after years of work.
Which means, if Denuvo manages to crack it, it will take the highly active piracy community to the next level.
