007: First Light drops last-minute Denuvo DRM bombshell, leaving pre-order customers and fans furious — Bond title risks FPS drops and strict online check-ins, Pirates eagerly await repack as day-one cracks become the norm

007: First Light drops last-minute Denuvo DRM bombshell, leaving pre-order customers and fans furious — Bond title risks FPS drops and strict online check-ins, Pirates eagerly await repack as day-one cracks become the norm | Tom's Hardware

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(Image credit: IO Interactive / Amazon MGM Studios)

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007: First Light, developed by IO Interactive (of Hitman fame), is one of the most anticipated games coming out this year, but it seems to have hit a roadblock right before the finishing line. The game's Steam listing has just revealed that it comes with "Denovo Anti-Tamper" DRM to safeguard against piracy on PC. As you'd expect, customers who paid for the game in advance are frustrated.

(Image credit: Future)Steam Forums for the latest James Bond adventure are now filled with players expressing their disappointment and, conversely, a few trolls showing gratitude for the DRM's inclusion. To be clear, pretty much every modern game release on PC is protected by DRM to some degree; Steam has a built-in DRM feature that many titles use as a basic precaution, for instance. It's easy to bypass, however, as it usually requires just swapping out a single .dll file with a fake one that passes the ownership check.

(Image credit: Future)That being said, adding Denuvo is a deliberate choice. The software has even been found to affect FPS in certain cases, and it's not free. Studios spent millions to incorporate it in their titles, only for it to end up affecting the people who actually bought the game. The pirates will always find a way, whether it's through hypervisor bypasses or just conventional cracks that break the DRM entirely.Latest Videos FromSpeaking of which, all current versions of Denuvo have already been cracked by a new voice in the community. Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight was pirated on day one, coinciding with the game's official launch just yesterday. It was in early access for three days before that for those who pre-ordered it, which is likely the window of opportunity the pirate utilized to ready the crack.Therefore, 007: First Light shipping with Denuvo only hurts paying customers who might experience slightly worse performance because the DRM is consuming CPU cycles. It's one of the most common misconceptions in the community that Denuvo Anti-Tamper runs at the kernel level — it does not; those are anti-cheat programs. Denuvo runs entirely in user space and is embedded inside the game's executable.That's why mods that alter the game's .exe file in any way are shut down because of Denuvo's strict memory-injecting protections. Also, if your internet ever goes down and the game hasn't pinged Denuvo's servers for more than 48 hours, it may even refuse to launch. There is an entire Steam Forums page dedicated to these lockouts, and we recently saw the PlayStation community fall into turmoil because of a similar policy, too.Now, we're not going to sit here and pretend that piracy will magically fade away if there's no Denuvo to incentivize the pirates even more. Those familiar with the seven seas will chart that course no matter what, but it ends up being a paradox for the paying customer. From the developers' perspective, it's a no-brainer to use DRM to maximize sales rather than to protect the customer who has already paid.Stay On the Cutting Edge: Get the Tom's Hardware NewsletterGet Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsAnd it's not like the devs don't have any other choice to curb illegal installs; Cyberpunk 2077 famously dropped without DRM and in a broken state, but it's since established itself as one of the most successful games in recent memory. Of course, we don't condone piracy, but a good game should and will sell on the merit of its quality.Moreover, piracy is actually shown to increase overall sales, according to a 2017 European Commission report, a few years after Denuvo launched. Illegal users often convert to paying ones. Some people use pirated games as demos before buying the real thing, and many of us pirated games in our childhood, which led us to become part of the hobby as paying adults, adding another customer to the industry.

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See all comments (20)

Hassam NasirContributing WriterHassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.

20 Comments

Comment from the forums

If they want to look on how to fix piracy, look no further than music piracy. That was heavily pursued by the music industry, led to a large amount of copyright violations and convictions, and today music piracy is at an all time low and the music industry completely changed.

In the end both the industry and the users now have a much better business model. I can now pay $12/month and have digital access to stream from a music library of +100 million songs, available in minimal CD quality and often HD quality, on as many devices as I have. Why would I bother now having my own library of music?

They need to do the same for software: One stop shop where you can get all software available for $12/month. They are however not interested in that so far. Maybe one day.

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That is exactly the kind of thing Steam should force developers to disclose before preorders go live. I am going to wait until (and if) the game is available on GOG, thanks.

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I don't like drm but I understand the reason for it. I have never had much performance issues with it. I know the steam reviews will be terrible but unfair. The reviews should be based on the game not drm. I will still buy the game as it looks amazing.

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vanadiel007 said:Why would I bother now having my own library of music?Or the other option, still maintain your own library and only pay for music when someone makes something worth paying for. Preferably buying direct from the musician so they get as much of the money as possible and not pennies from the streaming companies.

The fact that music is almost all DRM free means it's actually possible to maintain a library that you can use as you want. DRM on almost every other type of media means you can't control your use of it and streaming becomes your only option in many cases. Too many movies and anime shows that we like that are owned by Netflix and others are completely unavailable to purchase. Keeping an active subscription is the only way you will every be able to consume the media which is very sad.

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I can bet that their sales will actually drop, lower brand value, and still have it cracked day one. I wonder why do white collars earn millions to make such obvious bad calls.

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BillyBuerger said:Keeping an active subscription is the only way you will every be able to consume the mediaYou need an eye patch, a hook, a bad case of scurvy, and a parrot to sit on your shoulder. Arrrrgh.

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Some people use pirated games as demos before buying the real thing, and many of us pirated games in our childhood more like games use to get demos back then so you could try it out before blowing 30 dollars on it.

today if you cant try out a game that costs 70$ prior to buying should be a crime especially given how quality has taken a MASSIVE downfall compared to past and games are released in very VERY low quality.

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vanadiel007 said:If they want to look on how to fix piracy, look no further than music piracy. That was heavily pursued by the music industry, led to a large amount of copyright violations and convictions, and today music piracy is at an all time low and the music industry completely changed.

In the end both the industry and the users now have a much better business model. I can now pay $12/month and have digital access to stream from a music library of +100 million songs, available in minimal CD quality and often HD quality, on as many devices as I have. Why would I bother now having my own library of music?

They need to do the same for software: One stop shop where you can get all software available for $12/month. They are however not interested in that so far. Maybe one day.You want to know who doesn't have a much better business model? The actual artists that get paid pennies on the dollar for