2w ago

Denuvo will lock you out of games on Linux, SteamOS, Steam Deck if you keep changing Proton versions

www.gamingonlinux.com Denuvo will lock you out of games on Linux, SteamOS, Steam Deck if you keep changing Proton versions

Although for some of us this is a well-known problem, it has appeared again with the release of DOOM: The Dark Ages so it's worth a quick PSA to remind people about Denuvo activation limits with Proton on Linux, SteamOS / Steam Deck.

Denuvo strikes again!

PC Gaming @lemmy.ca

Denuvo will lock you out of games on Linux, SteamOS, Steam Deck if you keep changing Proton versions

www.gamingonlinux.com /2025/05/denuvo-will-lock-you-out-of-games-on-linux-steamos-steam-deck-if-you-keep-changing-proton-versions/

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119 comments

That would certainly make me request a refund and just pirate the game.
- There are no groups currently cracking Denuvo.
  
  In that case, request a refund and just forget about the game. It's that little bit worse for the publisher who chose Denuvo.
  
  There are several individuals though. Fitgirl and Empress come to mind.
  
  Is anything worth cracking? GTA 6 will be. But what has come out recently is worth the effort?
  
  Is it because companies tend to strip denuvo from the games after some months?
- Heads up, Steam has stopped refunding even broken games if it passes the two hour mark (even if it's from sitting there on your system process locked).
  
  Illegal where I live, probably why they give me warnings about that but always end up approving the refund

It's always the paying customers, who get absolutely shafted. Wouldn't be any other way, in modern society
- Pirates never had Sony install a rootkit on their computer. Paying customers did, though.
  
  Pirate here, can confirm.
  Playing the new God of War was great on Linux, though.
- Same with modern streaming services, you get awful resolutions on linux without them even telling you when you are a paying customer.
  But the pirates get the full quality version no issue.

Just ignore all games that have Denuvo. It's actually working I don't see much good games with denuvo lately.
- It's s actually working
  You should keep following your principles, but that's not the reason it's working. The amount of gamers that even know about Denuvo is tiny, and those who care enough to not buy a game because of that is an even smaller fraction of that small number.
  The reason is simply because Denuvo is expensive and a recurring cost. Once a developer removes it, they no longer need to pay for it.
  
  I don't think that's true about denuvo specifically. I've known some pretty big "normies" for lack of a better term that knoe denuvo makes games run worse.
  
  Lmao imagine paying a monthly fee for software that ruins the game you made... Wtf
- If i'm ever desperate, I just install the cracks and buy the game on steam sale years down the line after denuvo gets removed anyway.
- Basically the only games I want to play that have Denuvo currently are a handful of games published by ATLUS like Persona 5 the Royal and Metaphor: Refantazio.
  I actually bought Metaphor, not realizing it had Denuvo, and then was just randomly unable to launch the game. After fiddling with some proton settings and reopening the game I got a very generic error message with a link to a website that told me I was locked out of the game for 24 hours.
  I wound up returning the game.
  
  It's a shame when amazing games like ATLUS's stuff are kneecapped by shithead corpos.
- As far as I can tell, Doom the Dark Ages has it, and many reviews are quite good. I don't know if they're good enough to convince me to install it though. Maybe I'll wait until they remove it months or years later.
  
  CAD$90
  
  From what i've heard the game crashes a lot

This problem is solved by not giving money to devs who use denuvo. If you gotta resort to malware to sell your game, it’s not worth playing.
- How do I know which do? (Genuine question.)
  
  As of a few months ago (IIRC the timeline) Steam shows this directly on the game's store page. You've got to scroll down for it a little bit, but it's right under where it lists features of the game, E.G. single-player, controller support, etc.

Remember kids, complain to the publisher and developer. They are the ones paying for Denuvo and you are the ones paying for the game.
- If you are paying for a game with Denuvo then you are paying for Denuvo. Don't buy games with invasive software in them you don't want invasive software 🤷‍♀️ Sure, complain to the developer and the publisher, but you give them the money to waste on Denuvo if you buy the game
  
  Do both. Don't buy it and tell the publisher you'll buy it when they remove denuvo.

Honestly, Denuvo makes me want to sail the high seas. When I browse Steam and see Denuvo, I mentally write off the game, saying "Might buy this in a couple of years if they fix this shit." If the company fails to do so, the game becomes valid to pirate, far as I am personally concerned.
I am not paying money to be rootkitted.
- Sometimes i pirate games I’ve bought so I don’t have to deal with this nonsense. Like titanfall.
  
  Honestly, I've been pirating games that I own on Steam for awhile now.
  It's so fucking annoying to launch a game on Steam, only to have to sit through some update that didn't get triggered for some stupid reason.
- The stupid part is it doesnt even work. Denuvo games are cracked just like any other. Pretty sure Hogwarts legacy was cracked day 1 as a fuck you to jk Rowling.
  
  Hogwarts Legacy was literally the last Denuvo game to get a crack. Otherwise you just wait until the denuvo license expires, then get it.
  
  Denuvo cracks are extremely rare though. Gone are the glory days of CPY and Empress.
- Right? In the past we got software for free when we let companies use our data. Now they want to take our money too.
- “Might buy this in a couple of years if they fix this shit.”
  Why wait? Pirate today.
  
  Because Denuvo games take a long time to crack, and only a few people can do it reliably? There are games released as far back as 2018 that still haven’t been cracked.
  
  Because early Denuvo cracks tend to not work correctly, and often require you to do stupid shit like set your OS's year to 2015 or something like that just for the game to boot.
  I rather just wait a year or two for either a proper crack, or for the developer to decide to remove the DRM themselves, a la Capcom. Especially it's a single player game, cause there's no need to worry about the player population dying down by the time a crack comes out. And you also get to reap the benefits of having bugfixes available since the game has been out for awhile.
- Yeah I don't remember the last time I pirated a game but Denuvo just gives me an ick and I'd rather not.

nice, I have some games that use denuvo in my wishlist: I'll make sure to kick them from there.
and for anyone wondering, this profile seems to track games using it:
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/26095454-Denuvo-Games/
- Any idea why some games are not recommended and others are "informational"?
  I can't seem to find an explanation on the informational.
  
  As far as I can tell, this is a user who reviews games that use Denuvo, and always reviews them as Not Recommended, but will change that review to "Informational" and the review text to "Denuvo removed" when the game removes Denuvo. There may be other circumstances when they'll change it, though, so if you're thinking of actually buying one of these games, it seems wise to click on the game's "Not Recommended" or "Informational" and then scroll down on the store page until it shows you the relevant review. It should be highlighted on the page, though you have to scroll a ways down to see it. There is also a box just after the controller support info that lists 3rd party DRM a game uses, which should be there if the games uses Denuvo.
- That list is super helpful. So many games to avoid. Although, I was somewhat surprised by the number of Denuvo removed I've gotten through Humble.
- Underrated comment, this should be at the top.
- Thanks for the list. I'm glad none of the games look like something I would buy in the future. Although I did see one or two that's in my library, which I've already beaten years ago when I played on Windows.

If it doesn't exist on GOG, it doesn't exist. Life is good.

Fuck Denuvo

Like I needed more reason to never buy games with Denuvo. But hey added to the list.

Are there even any good games worth putting effort into that use Denuvo at this point?
- the damn yakuza series is amazing but sega has such a hard on for denuvo
- Denuvo makes games bad, so no, there aren't.
- The Steam release of Persona 5 Royal, unfortunately. Which is kind of insane, it's a single-player game.
  There's some others that I can't personally attest to, but that sure look good from what I've seen. Monster Hunter: Wilds, for example. And the new Doom from a few days ago, if you're into that sorta thing. Metaphor Re-Fantasio. The new Prince of Persia from last year. Hi-Fi Rush. Rocksmith, of all things.
- Anno 1800

I don't buy anything with Denuvo.

Steam deck is a thing now.
Whine at the developer and Valve. They will whine at Denuvo. Chances are it's something Denuvo haven't checked for and can fix quite easily.
Especially on a "Steam Deck Verified" game.
- I actually doubt it’s an easy fix. The issue is that each version of proton looks like a different machine. So when Denuvo only allows you to boot on [x] machines in [y] days, it’s easy to get locked out of a game simply because it looks like you booted it on a bunch of different machines.
  Some of the game streaming services have this same issue. Nvidia has that thing where you can boot it on Nvidia’s servers, then stream it. But the issue is that when you boot it, you don’t get the same server each time. So if you’re playing a game that is prone to crashing, you can easily eat through your [x] machines count quickly. Not because you were playing it on different machines, but because it was booted on a different server each time you launched it.
  
  I would have thought it would be a client side patch rather than server side, but surely it's a case of taking whatever Proton is changing out of the machine "fingerprint" when generating it on a Steam Deck. There's plenty of other things they can use to identify a machine.

That was definitely a thing trying to get Monster Hunter Wilds to work when it first came out.

denuvo can suck my balls

I genuinely wish nothing but the worst for Denuvo. Scum of the earth. DRM sucks, I do my best to avoid games with Denuvo.

This sounds like a challenge almost. Why is this behaviour not flooding their support and legal team?

There is a class action law suit coming together on this.

This game frankly sucks anyways. I played it for 2 hours and refunded it. Awful performance and incoherent as fuck gameplay.
- Performance hit might be due to Denuvo too. I think it was the Harry Potter game that was terrible with Denuvo, but the cracked version run like a breeze
  
  Possibly though I think it is probably mostly the boneheaded decision to force RT.

DeNOvo.

Denuvo has a set limit on the amount of activations it allows per-game. This is five systems it detects within 24 hours.

Happened to me with Persona 4 a couple years ago. Got locked out of the game for 24 hours because I was trying to make FMVs work.

Just boykott games using this kind of shit.

What's the fix, presumably it must sure that data somewhere, or is it an online DRM? No interest in buying the game as they fuck over the UK on pricing, it's so expensive here, more than Australia too.

One more reason why I don't see Proton as a replacement for official native support. Things can and will break, and they'll say it's not their problem because they only support Windows.
- That's why Proton is in continuous development. When it's broken it's usually a matter of days or weeks before it's fixed. If the dev is going to ban you for the offense of using a compatibility layer then that's grounds for a refund (at least on Steam).
  
  I like Proton and have nothing against it, but you are not really selling "continuous development" very well.
  Proper and tested releases are often better for stability.
- That's fair.
  From my POV, Denuvo isn't my problem because they don't support Linux.
  So if I never buy a game with Denuvo, I guess I'm good and I'll be one more lost customer. Oh well for me, oh well for them.
  I don't really see myself as missing anything from modern AAA gaming, so no loss, here.

Should every game be forced to support your chosen platform? I don’t see Mac users acting like this.
- Imagine supporting Denuvo lmao. What a guy
  
  I’m not supporting any particular game or constellation of software. Just noticing the entitlement in the thread, and across Lemmy.
  When people act entitled to pirate something, that’s when I think things are off the rails. They act like it’s their right to obtain other peoples work.
  Invasive DRM is shitty. And it’s a bummer software does not easily work on all platforms. But no one is automatically entitled to a copy of someone else’s labor.
  You know who else acts entitled to copies of other people’s labor? The AI companies.
- This isn't even a platform issue per se, windows user complain just as much about denuvo, allbeit for different reasons.
  
  They do, but this is a compatibility problem first and foremost. And as a Mac user since the 90s, that’s glaringly obvious to me.
  It sucks that DRM is the wrench in the gears of Proton. But the game doesn’t have official support.

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