After recent reports of hackers finally cracking through the Denuvo DRM solution, publisher 2K is now looking to double down on the security measures on all of their titles which has resulted in mandatory online check-ins for several of their games. As claimed by Pirat Nation and Tom’s Hardware, titles such as NBA 2K26, NBA 2K25 and Marvel Midnight Suns will now be using authorization tokens that will only last for 14 days and players will be required to log in for getting new tokens each time. And if your token runs out of the 14 day time period, your game will stop launching entirely, even if it’s a genuine copy.
According to Pirat Nation, the new version of Denuvo is even stricter and more draconian than the previous one: “This is stricter than earlier versions of Denuvo, which only required an online connection after significant system alterations. The requirement is not clearly disclosed on Steam store pages, in the EULA, or at the time of purchase, meaning many buyers were unaware they would need periodic internet access even for single-player modes.”
Tom’s Hardware also provides the following insights on the new DRM solution: “This is impossible for the HVB (hypervisor-based bypass) to emulate, as it’s a request/response call to Denuvo’s servers and thus in practice can’t be replicated,” Tom’s Hardware’s report reads. “At some point, the code that executes this check could be removed, but that requires a full game crack rather than the HBP.”
It seems 2K has succeeded in replacing an inherently unfair security solution to an even more unfair and potentially problematic one and only time will tell whether this becomes more of a hindrance for players or not.
Originally intended to curb piracy for good, the implementation of many DRMs have ended up punishing the legitimate customers in many different ways. And one of the biggest offenders in DRM solutions today are Denuvo–something that is proven to cause a dip in FPS in almost all the games that use it.
