TECH NEWS – When a copy protection program, Denuvo, doesn’t work properly on new hardware, it’s not the new product that’s to blame, it’s the DRM…
Intel announced on its website that the 12th-gen, Alder Lake CPUs don’t support several games that include Denuvo DRM in them. The processor manufacturer revealed a list of games that need a small workaround to make them run on Windows 11: Anthem, Bravely Default 2, Fishing Sim World, Football Manager 2019, Football Manager Touch 2019, Football Manager 2020, Football Manager Touch 2020, Legend of Mana, Mortal Kombat 11, Tony Hawks Pro Skater 1 and 2, Warhammer I (the previous games will be working after a Windows 11 update in mid-November); Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, Far Cry Primal, Fernbus Simulator, For Honor, Lost in Random, Madden 22, Maneater, Need for Speed – Hot Pursuit Remastered, Sea of Solitude, Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, Tourist Bus Simulator, Maneater.
The Windows 10 list is even longer, as these titles join the Win 11 games: Ace Combat 7, Assassins Creed Odyssey, Assassins Creed Origins, Code Vein, eFootball 2021, F1 2019, Far Cry New Dawn, FIFA 19, FIFA 20, Football Manager 2021, Football Manager Touch 2021, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Ghost Recon Wildlands, Immortals Fenyx Rising, Just Cause 4, Life is Strange 2, Madden 21, Monopoly Plus, Need For Speed Heat, Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Shinobi Striker, Soulcalibur VI, Starlink, Team Sonic Racing, Total War Saga – Three Kingdoms, Train Sim World, Train Sim World 2, Wolfenstein Youngblood.
Several games have recently had their Denuvo removed, so a few might run (Ace Combat 7, for instance) already, but Intel says they are working with developers on a fix. Intel claims DRM software (such as Denuvo) may wrongly assume the Efficient Cores (E-Cores) are an entirely different system to the other CPU cores included in Alder Lake, the Performance Cores (P-Cores), preventing the game from running successfully.
Here’s Irdeto’s (as they own Denuvo) statement, provided by Reinhard Blaukovitsch, Denuvo’s managing director: “Denuvo has been working closely with Intel, as we do with other hardware providers, to verify that all our security features are working as expected and test the compatibility with their newest CPUs. It is essential to highlight that almost all game titles using the Denuvo technology will work out of the box with the Alder Lake CPU.
Suppose you are a fan of older games. In that case, a minimal number of affected titles would need to be re-protected and patched to ensure compatibility with Intel’s latest processors. In rare cases, compatibility issues may result in a crash, sometimes hours within the gameplay. Denuvo already contacted each publisher of the affected game titles and provided patches for those titles to be compatible with Alder Lake ahead of its release. We are confident that publishers of the few affected titles are working on releasing updates that address this incompatibility as soon as possible,” Blaukovitsch wrote. We have to ask: if an unsupported game is several years old, WHY keep the Denuvo in it if its licensing fee costs more than the income the game generates from sales?!
Until then, Intel has provided a workaround to fix the issue. Turn on your PC and enter its BIOS. Enable Legacy Game Compatibility Mode. Save changes and exit the BIOS. After booting to Windows, press Scroll Lock. Then, launch the affected game, and when your session is over, turn Scroll Lock off. A more straightforward solution to the problem would be removing Denuvo. For instance, F1 2019 is two years old, two newer instalments launched since, and 2020 got rid of the DRM. Why the Starforce 2.0 in the title? When Windows Vista launched, the Russian copy protection effectively lost everything.
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