Irdeto is a brand that some may not be familiar with, but many will know the name of their controversial anti-piracy software, Denuvo. After attempting to crack down on the piracy of PC games, Irdeto has set its sights on the Nintendo Switch. Believing piracy to be rampant on the platform, either through modded consoles or emulation, Irdeto has unveiled their aptly named "Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection" technology.

As with all other Denuvo solutions, the technology integrates seamlessly into the build toolchain with no impact on the gaming experience. It then allows for the insertion of checks into the code, which blocks gameplay on emulators.

They claim that their solution, which would run similarly to Denuvo, would have occasional checks to ensure the software was legitimate, and prevent the games that use it from being emulated. Irdeto also promises that there is no impact on the gaming performance with it enabled, a claim that has led to many controversies in the past with Denuvo.

Beyond the press release, there's not much known about the Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection, when it will launch, and what games it will launch with. By the phrasing in the announcement, however, it appears that Irdeto is targeting indie developers or third-party studios more than they are Nintendo itself, specifically for multi-platform games that can be protected from piracy on both PC and Switch.

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[linuxares]

By that I meant those who would never pay for the game, no matter the circumstances.

I excluded people like you who start pirating as soon as it becomes easy, as they are a minority compared to the rest of the pirates.

And I still buy games I like. I don't understand why people stop supporting game development as soon as they can pirate stuff

 

[Kioku]

And I still buy games I like. I don't understand why people stop supporting game development as soon as they can pirate stuff

....because they had no real intent to support devs? I choose to believe that even those who pirate often still buy the games they enjoy.

 

[HinaNaru Cutie]

Good grief, I go here to just see this shart splattered here, cringy as heck man; this ain't gonna do nothing, it's just gonna cause even more dispute because they will screech at basically the community for being villians, because one of the members of the community found out how to easily just slap the thing..I just..this is sad. - What makes it even more grotesque as Sana stated here; these people are smearing lies, that in itself is dangerous, because not only will one ignorant costumer will just hop in and believe it, more of them will, and make this fake belief community of "how to properly do homebrew" to whatever they title it, - and spread just lies even more based off fact checkers sources - it's just gonna be a big hot mess man, and the reason I know of this, it's cause i have seen first head example from the animal crossing new horizon community; these people seriously believe that using a program that was created by the same people they use resources from are villians doing illegal stuff..they're on Twitter posting ignorant tweets to demonize people who use a program that I found out what it can actually do..but no let's make up stuff because you yourself can't be bothered to research it up.
Finally, the thing that really bugs me about this actual act that these ignorant people are spreading in the new horizon community on the mod side...these people will target, get upset over the most dense things ever demonize anybody that knows how to mod as the bad guy, it happened to the poor Chinese user who was using a program I found out that doesn't banned nobodies Island like the Twitter user i used as an example here was spreading it out to be as. No the real reason these ignorant people island's are being taken down its because you are putting them online while being modded, some know this and they still upload it online with nintendo online serves but refuse to admit that it's they're own fault not the mod communities fault for the actions they did.


Anyway, I hope folks are having a good laugh out of this, and enjoy your day, God bless.

 

[Dragon91Nippon]

Right, because those sanity checks to bypass emulators always worked forever, just look at those games that specifically targeted Dolphin Emulator in its later days.
Sure, it did work for some time, but at the end, more accurate emulation rendered those hacks pointless since the emulated console ultimately behaved exactly like the real thing, and thus became undetectable.

I give at most 1 week for 1 game release that uses this fancy new Denuvo for Switch to run without any issue.

I doubt Yuzu devs would allow Something designed to check for emulators to run on their Emulator, they would consider something like that Piracy and might even tweak the emulator to make them run worse on purpose.
They cater to these shitty publishers and Game companies.

 

[Dragon91Nippon]

I hate this absolute lie that people "would just pirate the game regardless"

It's simply not true. Before the switch was hacked I had spent $600 on switch games. I bought about 20 games over the first 12 months. The second it got hacked I never paid for another game. 4 years on not a penny spent. The same for my WiiU, my 3DS, my PS4. I own games for all those systems when there's no piracy and the MOMENT they're hacked I never buy another game again.

That's not people, that's you. Just because you're a dirty good for nothing pirate doesn't mean everyone else is too.

 

[stanleyopar2000]

yuzu devs read this and their response is: like hold ma beer

That's all funny jokes aside but if Yuzu bypasses this...would this give Irdeto literally the excuse to shut the emulator down or sue them? (with Nintendo's blessing of course)

This could be a trap to get Yuzu to bypass "copyrighted" technology

 

[AkikoKumagara]

the MOMENT they're hacked I never buy another game again.

That's called an anecdote.

Almost all of my game systems are modded in some way that enables piracy, but I still will buy a game that interests me if I can justify the price.

Damn, it's like not all people are the same or something.

 

[Dragon91Nippon]

That's all funny jokes aside but if Yuzu bypasses this...would this give Irdeto literally the excuse to shut the emulator down? (with Nintendo's blessing of course)

This could be a trap to get Yuzu to bypass "copyrighted" technology

probably not, making an Emulator better and more accurate isn't inherantly illegal. Although I don't really see the Yuzu Devs ever being likely to Bypass this anyway, if anything they would probably make an effort to ensure the games don't run.

 

[diggeloid]

Nobody is making their money back with this lol. No idea what Denuvo is charging, but even if this worked, it's pretty much established fact at this point that a pirated copy does not equal a lost sale.

The solution for developers who are concerned about emulation piracy is to ship multiplatform. Who in their right mind would go through the effort of pirating a switch rom when they can just buy that same game on Steam/Epic/Itch/etc? Or at they very least pirate the PC version. If their PC can run the game in an emulator, it can likely run the game natively.

I know this is Denuvo's entire business, so they're going to try to sell this as hard as they can. I would be curious in seeing what that pitch deck looks like. Do they have any real statistics on Switch emulation piracy? Probably a bunch of vague numbers combined with fearmongering.

I'm not a fan of piracy or anything, but this type of thing is bad for users who are interested in game preservation and legitimate backups, especially with Nintendo's history of permanently shutting down their store and making it impossible to download games (see Wii shop, and likely the Wii U/3DS shop in the next few years)

On the bright side, hackers will probably figure out how to disable this crap eventually.

 

[Dimensional]

Claiming to not impact performance. It's clear they don't understand themselves or how much players hate their crap. Maybe they believe the sun orbits the earth, or the pyramids were made by aliens? I hope Nintendo calls them out with a statement that no software with Denuvo will be allowed to run on their hardware. No matter what happens, Denuvo will hurt sales for the developers, and anyone who is dumb enough to think Denuvo is the best solution to stop piracy deserves to lose money from all the negative reviews associated with their Denuvo-throttled software.

In effect, Denuvo isn't Anti-Piracy Software.. It's Pro-Piracy, because nobody in their right mind wants to buy a Denuvo-wared Piece of Crap. Sales will be far below needed levels, and half of what will be sales are from developers looking to crack this failure of security or people who want to dat the software for preservation in No-Intro, but they won't play it, nor would they be able to with it's riddled malware dropping performance to the same crawl as a 600 MHz Windows ME computer.

 

[DJPlace]

i hate the name Denuvo...

 

[Purple_Shyguy]

That's not people, that's you. Just because you're a dirty good for nothing pirate doesn't mean everyone else is too.

Except the other guy literally claims that people that pirate wouldn't buy the game anyway. Well I would have had I not been able to pirate. So the claims not true.

 

[supergamer368]

the switch already struggles to run many games adding in the switch equivilant of denuvo is not gonna do high-demand games any favors

 

[City]

I'm not sure if the people anthropomorphizing a company that's quoted in the public market and thinking they wouldn't try to fix the drop in value of last year's trend are simply young (and therefore understandbly dumb) or worringly adults that can't really understand what COMPANIES do to make money.

 

[Kioku]

I'm not sure if the people anthropomorphizing a company that's quoted in the public market and thinking they wouldn't try to fix the drop in value of last year's trend are simply young (and therefore understandbly dumb) or worringly adults that can't really understand what COMPANIES do to make money.

....

Those are definitely words...

 

[rafpoop]

"Recent research conducted by Irdeto in collaboration with Omdia found that 84% of game developers are continuously concerned about tampering and piracy. The study also found that 93% of those using anti-cheat and anti-tamper solutions are satisfied with the protection and value brought by game protection technologies."

This part made me laugh a lot. "We did our own research and we've found that most people like our product!" must be a great way to sell it.

 

[MasterJ360]

Eh even if Yuzu devs allow a piracy check it will flop. Remember that 1 guy on Steam that made the Special K mod tool for certain PC games and he had anti-piracy bundled in to the point it would remove files from the game to prevent it from launching? This infamous incident happen around 2018
Nier Automata & Tales of Berseria were his examples and Steam temporary banned him for that. Anyway ppl will just find a way to remove the checks as unofficial builds and move on like nothing happen.

 

[mspy]

So this is only supposed to work on PC and not the Switch itself?

Also does Denuvo work on Linux?
Cuse the Switch emulators run pretty well on Linux and I'd argue that running them on a Steam Deck is the way to go so if Denuvo would only work on Windows people just need to use Linux instead...

 

[KingVamp]

I wonder which company will be first to look at the mess that is Denuvo and still decide to put it in their console games.

 

[rafpoop]

So this is only supposed to work on PC and not the Switch itself?

Also does Denuvo work on Linux?
Cuse the Switch emulators run pretty well on Linux and I'd argue that running them on a Steam Deck is the way to go so if Denuvo would only work on Windows people just need to use Linux instead...

That's the impression I'm getting because it specifically says emulators. I don't think it does anything about pirated games on a normal Switch.