List of Games Affected by DRM Issue in 12th Gen Intel Core Processors

Flogger23m

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Looks like the new Intel CPUs are having problems with DRM solutions, in particular Denuvo. Full list here on Intel's website. Some of these will be receiving patches soon so check out that info as well.

Games with issues on new Intel CPUs on Win 11:
  • Anthem*
  • Bravely Default 2*
  • Fishing Sim World*
  • Football Manager 2019*
  • Football Manager Touch 2019*
  • Football Manager 2020*
  • Football Manager Touch 2020*
  • Legend of Mana*
  • Mortal Kombat 11*
  • Tony Hawks Pro Skater 1 and 2*
  • Warhammer I*
  • Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla*
  • Far Cry Primal*
  • Fernbus Simulator*
  • For Honor*
  • Lost in Random*
  • Madden 22*
  • Maneater*
  • Need for Speed – Hot Pursuit Remastered*
  • Sea of Solitude*
  • Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order*
  • Tourist Bus Simulator*
  • Maneater*

Win 10. I know Ace Combat 7 recently had Denuvo removed, so I am not sure if it is still a problem. Other games have also removed it in the past week but this is Intel's current list:

  • Ace Combat 7*
  • Assassins Creed Odyssey*
  • Assassins Creed Origins*
  • Code Vein*
  • eFootball 2021*
  • F1 2019*
  • Far Cry New Dawn*
  • FIFA 19*
  • FIFA 20*
  • Football Manager 2021*
  • Football Manager Touch 2021*
  • Ghost Recon Breakpoint*
  • Ghost Recon Wildlands*
  • Immortals Fenyx Rising*
  • Just Cause 4*
  • Life is Strange 2*
  • Madden 21
  • Monopoly Plus*
  • Need For Speed Heat*
  • Scott Pilgrim vs The World*
  • Shadow of the Tomb Raider*
  • Shinobi Striker
  • Soulcalibur VI*
  • Starlink*
  • Team Sonic Racing*
  • Total War Saga - Three Kingdoms*
  • Train Sim World*
  • Train Sim World 2*
  • Wolfenstein Youngblood*

Seems like some of these DRM solutions are becoming a bit too invasive, IMO. I doubt many people actually have these CPUs currently but if you did score a new CPU and found out you could no longer play the game you paid for because of its DRM that is a problem. An inexcusable one.
 
It would be nice if this made some of these publishers think twice before putting this sort of garbage in future games but I doubt it.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider had devuvo removed in a patch recently but it was causing issues so they rolled it back, it can still be opted into as a beta patch though. One of the issues was that they added epic online services that was allegedly optional and just for match making but the game wouldn't launch unless it could connect to epic's servers, they haven't specifically said whether this online requirement would be removed after they fix the patch so it might just be trading one dumb DRM for another.
 
It would be nice if this made some of these publishers think twice before putting this sort of garbage in future games but I doubt it.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider had devuvo removed in a patch recently but it was causing issues so they rolled it back, it can still be opted into as a beta patch though. One of the issues was that they added epic online services that was allegedly optional and just for match making but the game wouldn't launch unless it could connect to epic's servers, they haven't specifically said whether this online requirement would be removed after they fix the patch so it might just be trading one dumb DRM for another.

They're lucky there is a likely a massive shortage of these new CPUs. Most of the games have been out for a while, so they should just release a patch removing Denuvo and possibly other DRM for most of these games. I understand basic DRM but this is clearly a case of DRM causing potential problems for people who legitimately purchased a game. Yes, it seems like there are patches in the work. But it seems like a three way with Intel, Denuvo, and game companies scrambling to get updates and patches. I'm sure some games will have issues persist for a while. Which again, is unacceptable. I'd hope this would've been a big backlash against these types of DRM but I am doubting it.

I am okay with basic DRM (Steam, etc.) but some of these modern solutions are just too problematic.
 
Denuvo claims they sent out info to game devs a couple of months ago, on how to get games working with 12th gen. And it’s the game devs/publishers fault, for not having patches ready.
 
Denuvo claims they sent out info to game devs a couple of months ago, on how to get games working with 12th gen. And it’s the game devs/publishers fault, for not having patches ready.
If devs could've make an easy quick fix then this could've easily been prioritized. I'm guessing the fix involved complex work for devs. I wonder how much Denuvo costs in extra development time.
 
If devs could've make an easy quick fix then this could've easily been prioritized. I'm guessing the fix involved complex work for devs. I wonder how much Denuvo costs in extra development time.
The cost of DRM seems to be something publishers never consider or talk about. It costs money to license the DRM itself, costs dev time to implement, costs support time to troubleshoot, etc. However I've never seen or heard of an analysis of if it is useful vs increased sales. They just seem to take it as an article of faith that you have to do it lest those evil pirates take your shit.
 
OK, these games are affected, but WTF is the actual issue affecting them? What an useless article.
 
OK, these games are affected, but WTF is the actual issue affecting them? What an useless article.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...0088259/processors/intel-core-processors.html

Certain third-party gaming Digital Rights Management (DRM) software may incorrectly recognize 12th Generation Intel® Core™ Processors efficient-cores (E-cores) as another system. This prevents games implementing that DRM software from running successfully. Games may crash during launch or gameplay, or unexpectedly shut down.
 
I think some board vendors are implementing a 'legacy game mode' which disables E cores.
 
I think some board vendors are implementing a 'legacy game mode' which disables E cores.
Hopefully that is a very temporary solution. Shutting half the chip down while your running things like the latest Creed game would really suck.
My suggestion go and find yourself a copy of the games crack. lol Its sad that pirates get better service.
DRM needs to die. Its existence is insulting really... but perhaps I'm odd I also avoid stores that look like prisons.
 
Hopefully that is a very temporary solution. Shutting half the chip down while your running things like the latest Creed game would really suck.

Exactly. At this point I'd hope some publishers reevaluate if these types of DRM are worth the trouble and money. They likely cost a fair amount, take time to implement, occasionally have issues if not implemented right, may have a load time impact, and require some extra developer time to get working. Now you have debacles like this. At some point I question if it is even worth the money.
 
Hopefully that is a very temporary solution. Shutting half the chip down while your running things like the latest Creed game would really suck.
My suggestion go and find yourself a copy of the games crack. lol Its sad that pirates get better service.
DRM needs to die. Its existence is insulting really... but perhaps I'm odd I also avoid stores that look like prisons.
100% agree. But some paying customers don't want to risk infecting their PC with malware to have to do that.
 
Exactly. At this point I'd hope some publishers reevaluate if these types of DRM are worth the trouble and money. They likely cost a fair amount, take time to implement, occasionally have issues if not implemented right, may have a load time impact, and require some extra developer time to get working. Now you have debacles like this. At some point I question if it is even worth the money.
I just saw that several games with denuvo weren't working over the weekend because they forgot to renew a domain that it connects to. If they can't even make sure that a mission critical server domain gets renewed that doesn't speak well to their overall competence and leadership, also who knows what the security risk might have been if someone had snagged the domain after it lapsed.
 
Exactly. At this point I'd hope some publishers reevaluate if these types of DRM are worth the trouble and money. They likely cost a fair amount, take time to implement, occasionally have issues if not implemented right, may have a load time impact, and require some extra developer time to get working. Now you have debacles like this. At some point I question if it is even worth the money.

https://www.techpowerup.com/275158/...emastered-leaked-over-usd-100k-for-a-year?amp

That was leaked pricing for just one vendor, but pretty cheap all things considered. Which is probably in-line with how quickly DRM is being cracked. Only meant to protect those initial release sales, then it’s not doing shit but hampering legitimate customers.
 
Publisher unlocks special non-DRM level with purchasable loot box that includes patch (hey, we've got to pay for this somehow)
 
Publisher unlocks special non-DRM level with purchasable loot box that includes patch (hey, we've got to pay for this somehow)
Assassins Creed Valhalla: Secrets of the Alder Lake - $19.99
Madden 22: Alder Lake Roster Expansion - $19.99
Fishing Sim world: Alder Lake Catch of the day! - $19.99
Mortal Kombat 11: Alder lake Arena of Blood - $19.99

Perhaps Intel can offer a Alder Lake Gaming bundle that allows you to pick 3 alder lake themed expansions with the purchase of every 12900k.... pick 2 with a 12700k and one with a 12600k.
 
The cost of DRM seems to be something publishers never consider or talk about. It costs money to license the DRM itself, costs dev time to implement, costs support time to troubleshoot, etc. However I've never seen or heard of an analysis of if it is useful vs increased sales. They just seem to take it as an article of faith that you have to do it lest those evil pirates take your shit.

Like marketing it could be an hard science to estimate the actual return and it could have become an contractual habbit to please third parties involved, but I imagine that when they consider and study it, they keep it all that hard spent money study made confidential without giving that info to competitor, why would they talk about that and to who ?
 
Soo... are these going to be patched? Will they just remove Denuvo? Do they expect users to just use the workaround?
They can't leave it broken forever. And so far there's just crickets.

Nearly all AAA games in the last 5+ years have Denuvo, the list of broken games covers most of those, and people buying Alder Lake CPUs are buying them to play AAA games. Hello, hello...
 
Like marketing it could be an hard science to estimate the actual return and it could have become an contractual habbit to please third parties involved, but I imagine that when they consider and study it, they keep it all that hard spent money study made confidential without giving that info to competitor, why would they talk about that and to who ?
Investors. Show them how this is a worthwhile spend of money, vs no DRM which costs less upfront and makes consumers happy.
 
No clue if it's related, but I cancelled my ubisoft+, and it's still been working for like the past 3 days beyond my subscription. I can't add/download games that aren't already in my library, but everything in there still says my subscription is active.. And it isn't. I wonder if they turned off the DRM until they release a patch..
 
SPOILER_Yarrr.gif
 
https://www.techpowerup.com/275158/...emastered-leaked-over-usd-100k-for-a-year?amp

That was leaked pricing for just one vendor, but pretty cheap all things considered. Which is probably in-line with how quickly DRM is being cracked. Only meant to protect those initial release sales, then it’s not doing shit but hampering legitimate customers.

Looks more like 180,000 Euros if over 500,000 copies are activated. Which for most AA and AAA games, isn't too hard to hit. Which is cheap all things considered.
 
Denuvo has been around for like 7 or 8 years.
If it weren't profitable, publishers wouldn't keep using it. Duh.
 
Denuvo has been around for like 7 or 8 years.
If it weren't profitable, publishers wouldn't keep using it. Duh.
Businesses often do unprofitable things because they are forced or otherwise think they have to. Generally necessary evil type things like this, that aren't a profit center, get extremely little attention.
 
Denuvo has been around for like 7 or 8 years.
If it weren't profitable, publishers wouldn't keep using it. Duh.
Funny thing is most games get Denuvo cracked within the same day or days later. Very few games take much longer. Resident Evil 8 took longer to crack with two forms of DRM but at the same time the game got negative attention and forced Capcom to push a patch out to fix the performance issues that people weren't even aware of that existed in the game. I'm willing to believe that games get Denuvo because it makes investors happy and nothing more.
 
Funny thing is most games get Denuvo cracked within the same day or days later. Very few games take much longer. Resident Evil 8 took longer to crack with two forms of DRM but at the same time the game got negative attention and forced Capcom to push a patch out to fix the performance issues that people weren't even aware of that existed in the game. I'm willing to believe that games get Denuvo because it makes investors happy and nothing more.
That and/or some sales director/executive at the publisher(s) gets a kickback/has a financial interest in keeping Denuvo afloat.
 
Funny thing is most games get Denuvo cracked within the same day or days later. Very few games take much longer. Resident Evil 8 took longer to crack with two forms of DRM but at the same time the game got negative attention and forced Capcom to push a patch out to fix the performance issues that people weren't even aware of that existed in the game. I'm willing to believe that games get Denuvo because it makes investors happy and nothing more.
Like schoolslave I think it's probably more of an executive decision but I'm sure it's done at least in part so they can tell investors that they're doing something about piracy, also because execs are often easily swayed by charts with impressive numbers.

I'm sure that the presentation given to them by the drm reps use inflated piracy numbers and equate every pirated copy as a lost sale while ignoring lost sales due to it containing drm. I know there's plenty of people that don't care about it but most will also turn on it after dealing with issues first hand and more importantly I doubt drm convinces many would be pirates to buy rather than pirate, especially when they know it will be cracked in fairly short order.
 
All affected games use the same DRM system, Denuvo?

So 1 company has to patch its DRM, then each game just has to patch it out.

Sounds like it's not that big of a deal to me. Give it a month, patch will be out for anything that's anything. I can't play Fishing World Sim, oh no!
 
Funny thing is most games get Denuvo cracked within the same day or days later. Very few games take much longer. Resident Evil 8 took longer to crack with two forms of DRM but at the same time the game got negative attention and forced Capcom to push a patch out to fix the performance issues that people weren't even aware of that existed in the game. I'm willing to believe that games get Denuvo because it makes investors happy and nothing more.

Many of games take longer. Watch Dogs Legion still isn't cracked almost a year later. Only a few games were cracked same day or within a few days. Depends on how active the cracking groups are.

All affected games use the same DRM system, Denuvo?

So 1 company has to patch its DRM, then each game just has to patch it out.

Sounds like it's not that big of a deal to me. Give it a month, patch will be out for anything that's anything. I can't play Fishing World Sim, oh no!

Well if you paid $40-$90 for a game, and then weren't able to play it for a month you'd probably be annoyed. If you aren't good for you. But waiting a few weeks or a month isn't acceptable for paying customers.
 
Many of games take longer. Watch Dogs Legion still isn't cracked almost a year later. Only a few games were cracked same day or within a few days. Depends on how active the cracking groups are.



Well if you paid $40-$90 for a game, and then weren't able to play it for a month you'd probably be annoyed. If you aren't good for you. But waiting a few weeks or a month isn't acceptable for paying customers.
This is a known risk of purchasing bleeding edge hardware. If using a specific piece is software is critical to you then you shouldn't be an early adopter of any new architecture.
 
This is a known risk of purchasing bleeding edge hardware. If using a specific piece is software is critical to you then you shouldn't be an early adopter of any new architecture.

The problem is the software itself is fine. It is just the DRM solution that is having issues. In the absence of this DRM, the games would be working fine. Video games aren't critical either, they're entertainment. This isn't like some production software not working on new hardware. It is mass consumer software that individuals purchase. Quite the difference.
 
The problem is the software itself is fine. It is just the DRM solution that is having issues. In the absence of this DRM, the games would be working fine. Video games aren't critical either, they're entertainment. This isn't like some production software not working on new hardware. It is mass consumer software that individuals purchase. Quite the difference.
If playing a game is super important to you, adopting a brand new cpu architecture is a terrible idea. Same goes if you need to use photoshop, or any other productivity software. It’s a known risk when being an early adopter. Same for switching to Windows 11 or the new zen architect on day 1. There’s going to be issues. So you jump in and take the risk or wait it out for things to stabilize.
 
If playing a game is super important to you, adopting a brand new cpu architecture is a terrible idea. Same goes if you need to use photoshop, or any other productivity software. It’s a known risk when being an early adopter. Same for switching to Windows 11 or the new zen architect on day 1. There’s going to be issues. So you jump in and take the risk or wait it out for things to stabilize.

I think you're missing the point. The games work fine. If you're playing a pirated copy you won't have any issues.
 
Many of games take longer. Watch Dogs Legion still isn't cracked almost a year later. Only a few games were cracked same day or within a few days. Depends on how active the cracking groups are.
To be fair Watch Dogs Legion is so bad that nobody cares to crack it. Meanwhile Far Cry 6 made by the same company is already cracked.
 
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