Developer IO Interactive sold a special edition that released to select high-spending customers on Friday, five days before the wide release. To be fair to Denuvo, this problem may be partially of Hitman 2's own making. Central hubs of game piracy like reddit and Pirate Bay were completely stumped by Denuvo through 20, but now it's common for games like Soulcalibur 6 and Football Manager 2019 to reportedly get cracked within those all-important first four days. That value proposition has gotten a little shakier in the last few months, though.

'For highly anticipated titles, this could include up to 80% of sales, 50% of which are within the first four days.'ĭenuvo maintains that if its protection can just last during the initial blast of publicity and cultural relevance, developers will have gotten money back on their investment with Denuvo. 'The most critical part of the release cycle is the first 14 days as the majority of activations occur during this period,' Irdeto, the company that purchased Denuvo early in 2018, wrote in a press release just last week. Like movies banking on money from a big opening night, video game releases make most of their money in the first 14 days from eager fans ready to play full price for the latest and greatest games. Instead, their stated strategy is to simply delay the hack. With full Denuvo protection, pirates shouldn't be able to launch Hitman 2 at all.ĭenuvo's makers knows better than anyone that nothing is hack-proof. According to users on Reddit, the crack currently allows the game to be launched and for pirates to play the prologue level for Hitman 1, the 2016 entry for the Hitman series.

Motherboard was able to confirm that pirated copies of Hitman 2 are being distributed on Pirate Bay. Denuvo's effectiveness seems to be waning, however: yesterday, a partial crack for Hitman 2 was posted by an anti-DRM group a full three days before its official launch. Recent large games that use Denuvo include Battlefield V, Hitman 2, Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, Madden 19, and Far Cry 5. Since Denuvo launched in 2014, it has maintained a status as the most crack-resistant and most widely used third-party DRM solution by large developers and publishers.

Madden 19 crack status