What happens when you throw down a challenge? Typically, someone picks up that challenge and runs with it and that’s exactly what happened to Tequila Works. They recently released an eagerly anticipated action/adventure title, Rime, for multiple platforms. However, when it came to the PC version, they bundled it with the anti-temper software. Of course, developers are expected to protect or at least attempt to protect their works from piracy, it shouldn’t come at the cost of impacting the game’s performance.
Sadly, that’s exactly what happened to with the release of Rime. This impacted countless gamers who purchased Rime on the PC, who complained about it. Issues such as poor frame rate and long loading times were commonplace with the release. Fingers were then pointed at Denuvo, which had been known to cause these very same issues. Tequila Works did the unexpected and threw down a challenge, claiming they would remove Denuvo from the title, if someone was able to crack it.
I’m not sure why they even did this, especially since Denuvo has been cracked in the past on multiple titles. Resident Evil 7, Prey, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Inside and DOOM are just a few of more popular games that were cracked. Rime’s developers were pretty adamant that their DRM implementation was rock solid and wouldn’t be defeated.
“We are very committed to this, but also to the simple fact that nothing is infallible. That being said, if RIME is cracked we will release a Denuvo free version of RiME and update existing platforms.”
Challenged accepted and completed, with Skidrow Games Reloaded, providing proof that they had indeed cracked the title. Not only was the title now cracked, but it was stated that the game’s performance improved once Denuvo was bypassed. Adding insult to injury, outside of Resident Evil 7, Rime has been the fastest game that is powered by Denuvo to be cracked. Ouch!
“The game will be much better without that huge abomination called Denuvo. In Rime that ugly creature went out of control — how do you like three fucking hundreds of THOUSANDS calls to ‘triggers’ during initial game launch and savegame loading?” Baldman explained. “Did you wonder why game loading times are so long — here is the answer.”
From what I understand, the way the DRM worked is that it would constantly ping the game in question. This would introduce addition overhead that simply wasn’t accounted for.
The only question that remains is if and when Tequila Works keeps their word and eventually releases a patch that would remove Denuvo. Adding to that, would this patch lead to increased sales for the title, which is a fantastic title.
We’ll just have to wait and see.
