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Over the past couple of months, game crackers have begun rolling out more up-to-date cracks for games protected by Denuvo DRM. Now, a number of games are updating their Denuvo anti-tamper protection with forced online check-ins to try and limit piracy.

As spotted by Tom's Hardware, 2K Games is one of the first publishers to work with Denuvo on this, adding forced online check-ins for titles like NBA 2K25 and 2K26, and Marvel's Midnight Suns.

The system works by providing the game user with an authorisation token that expires after 14 days, at which point another online check-in will take place at game start-up to provide a new token. Without the token, the game cannot be loaded offline.

The news comes at an interesting time, as a recent PlayStation service agreement update indicated that Sony was going to do something similar for digital PS5 titles moving forward, but with a more lenient 30-day check-in window.

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KitGuru Says: I'm surprised something like this wasn't happening with Denuvo titles before. Online check-ins have been around since the Xbox 360 era after all, even if consumers largely dislike them.  

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While past versions of Denuvo have been cracked for plenty of games, many 2025 titles have remained protected through the latest version of their anti-tamper DRM software. That looks to be changing now, with the first crack for DOOM: The Dark Ages appearing online. 

As reported by The Gamer, the very first crack for a 2025 Denuvo game has arrived. The version of Denuvo that shipped with DOOM: The Dark Ages has been cracked, and the person responsible for it has teased that more cracks are still to come, indicating that more ‘recent' Denuvo-supported titles may soon become piratable.

In the past, we've seen a number of studios drop Denuvo several months after a game's launch period but in more recent years, a number of major titles have kept the DRM in place indefinitely. Many gamers take issue with Denuvo, claiming that it harms performance and performs intrusive on-going checks while a game is running.

Recently, there was some backlash against the anticipated game Crimson Desert, as the studio behind it suddenly decided to implement Denuvo just weeks ahead of launch.

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KitGuru Says: Pirates have caught up to Denuvo before but as is always the case with things like piracy and anti-cheat, it is a cat and mouse game. Crackers may have caught up for now, but Denuvo will no doubt roll out a more secure version, starting the cycle over again.