In its desire to prevent the piracy of its games, Nintendo uses the services of Denuvo on its Switch hybrid console.
Specifically, the goal of this partnership is to prevent the emulation of Switch exclusives on PC.
Nintendo’s fight against piracy
Nintendo’s aversion to piracy is nothing new. The Japanese giant has been fighting against this practice for years, not hesitating to resort to justice to crush any form of activity approaching it.
The most striking recent example is the condemnation of the owner of ROMUniverse to pay $2.1 million in damages, as well as the destruction of all Nintendo ROMs on the site.
However, Nintendo’s strictness in this regard has not prevented many of its flagship games from being emulated on PC. One can notably cite Breath of the Wild or Metroid Dread, pirated only a few days after its release. Nintendo even went so far as to attack YouTubers emulating games from the firm on their Steam Deck.
The Japanese giant is taking it to the next level to protect its games from piracy. Irdeto will therefore deploy for the first time a version of Denuvo integrating a technology specially dedicated to protection against emulation.
A decision to the detriment of the players?
Denuvo has long cut its teeth on PC, with titles like death loop, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy and so many others. More recently, Sony teamed up with Denuvo to develop an anti-cheat solution for PlayStation 5.
But if this news seems good for Nintendo, it is much less so for its fans. Denuvo is indeed infamous for causing severe performance issues in the games it protects. Worse still, when Denuvo’s servers fail, they take the games under its care with them.
For now, it’s still hard to say how well Denuvo will roll out to Nintendo Switch games. We bet that this will concern the biggest headliners like Bayonetta 3expected on October 28.
One thing is certain: unless Denuvo has revised its formula, its presence on a more or less large scale on Nintendo Switch games could in the long term do much more harm than good, given the somewhat weak hardware. of the hybrid console.
Source : Irdeto
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