Latest Sonic Mania Beta Patch Removes Denuvo
One good patch on the books recently is the latest beta patch for Sonic Mania.
With a big change that is the removal of much maligned DRM software Denuvo Anti-Tamper.
Denuvo is a DRM system so brilliant that it has been defeated in the past before the game has even been released.
The main Sonic Mania executable itself has dropped from 117MB to 3MB in size. Creating a saving of 33% on the original total game size, down to 200MB from 300MB.
Although as some have noted, the game still contains Steam’s own DRM to stop you from doing much at the moment with the game.
It appears that the latest update for Sonic Mania removes Denuvo Anti-Tamper completely, I opened it up in a disassembler and looked for traces but in the short time I looked, I couldn't find a trace of it anymore.
Nonetheless, the EXE went down from 117MB to 3MB. pic.twitter.com/Fti0vjD8yh
— ⠋ Sewer56 ⣠ (@TheSewer56) March 8, 2019
It is quite amazing to see such a difference in the file size of a game protected by Denuvo, although Sonic Mania itself is a big outlier because it is a fairly compact game already.
With Denuvo being such a mainstay in the gaming world its nice to see developers removing it from their releases (even if this is over a year after release).
Given how ineffective it seems to be, I wonder how long it will remain as a choice for DRM. Especially since each iteration of Denuvo seems to cause a rallying cry to hackers out there just to see how quickly it can be beaten (which is pretty quick)
What are your thoughts on DRM? Are stores like GOG who sell games without DRM your first point of call, or do you put up with the DRM on modern games because you have to…
(For those wanting to access this beta branch of Sonic, you can do so with the instructions below)
In case it is not obvious: This post regards the beta branch. You can access it by right clicking Mania on Steam and in Properties => Betas entering the password `sonicmaniabeta` as per the official post https://t.co/MnGt449onz
— ⠋ Sewer56 ⣠ (@TheSewer56) March 8, 2019
