Announcing the first major patch for Mass Effect: Andromeda last week, BioWare highlighted fixes to the game’s much-maligned facial animations, as well as gameplay tweaks like larger inventories and skippable cutscenes. However, one thing BioWare forgot to mention in its patch notes is an improved version of Denuvo DRM that forces pirates to use an outdated version of the game… at least for now. The CPY collective has released a crack for version 1.04 of Mass Effect: Andromeda just ten days after release, making it the latest in a long line of games to quickly crumble the previously unbreakable Denuvo anti-tamper technology. But after last week’s update to version 1.05 for the game, Reddit user NTStatus noted that the game’s executable now contains a new reference to an “InjectableGTPSteam.pdb” file.
That same file path can be found in games like Dead Rising 4, 2Dark, and Kidney: vending machines, recently released titles known to use a revamped version of Denuvo, which launched in February and has yet to be cracked. Games like for honor and Sniper Elite 4 have been on the market for almost two months now with this new and improved Denuvo protection intact, showing that Denuvo’s latest salvo in the fight against piracy seems to be holding up for now.
It is unclear why Mass Effect: Andromeda did not contain the latest version of Denuvo in the initial release. Either way, the updated DRM leaves pirates with a much less polished version of the game, and it could keep them away from months of further patches already in the works. It’s a situation that reminds us a bit of Game Dev Tycoon and other games that intentionally make pirated versions inferior to legitimately purchased copies.