Denuvo and 2K Games add online DRM to several games in piracy crackdown

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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