Developers and publishers working on titles for the PlayStation 5 now have access to a very well-known anti-cheat software. Irdeto has announced that their Denuvo technology has officially joined the PlayStation 5 Tools and Middleware program in order to give studios creating future titles for the console the ability to implement the software into their IPs. Those who have been gaming on the PC platform will recognize this name, as it is the same program that has been used on plethora of titles in order to deter cheating, as well as protecting the studio’s Digital Rights Management (DRM). It is also infamous in the gaming community as it has been known to slow down, and severely impact the performance of the titles that they are embedded into.
While cheating may not be as prevalent as it is in the PC gaming community, it’s still an ongoing issue for those who play on home consoles. With this placement into the Tool program, Denuvo will essentially become available to anyone creating new titles for the PlayStation 5 and wish to utilize it. In the post, Irdeto touts that Denuvo was already being implemented when the PlayStation 5 launched back in November. “A number of games incorporated Denuvo’s Anti-Cheat at launch of PlayStation®5 to ensure best experience for the gamers.” While that’s not a major surprise, it is interesting that neither Sony nor Irdeto elaborated on which titles currently use the software.
Irdeto also states that the Denuvo anti-cheating software is applicable to both online and offline titles, making it that much harder to cheat in-game, even if it’s single-player only. While this is all wonderful in practice, the elephant in the room when it comes to Denuvo is its promotion of DRM, something that a lot of players have a hard stance against. It also doesn’t help that Denuvo has been the main cause of a lot of titles operating at a much worse efficiency due to the additional coding from the software, making it harder on the PC to even process the game.
As if that wasn’t enough, several times over the course of many, many years, players have been able to bypass Denuvo and end up cheating anyway. This of course all takes place on the PC platform, whereas it will probably be much harder to go around Denuvo on the PlayStation 5. Still, the track record hasn’t been great for Irdeto and their product in which the software was actually removed from specific titles. These instances include Metro Exodus, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, Hitman 2, and most famously Doom Eternal where it was taken off after just four days.