Mass Effect Andromeda Patch 1.09 Ditches Denuvo
Patch 1.09, the latest update to Mass Effect Andromeda, added some new romance options, further improved the facial animations, added new multiplayer content, and so on. Apparently, it also secretly did away with the Denuvo anti-tamper. This doesn’t mean that the game is now entirely DRM-free, since it’s still protected through Origin.
We’ve written recently about the Mass Effect Andromeda Update 1.09 and what it had to offer. Among other things, it brought a new character and difficulty to the multiplayer, a ton of various fixes, new romance options, and other minor stuff. One thing the patch notes don’t mention is that the patch completely removed the Denuvo anti-tamper tech.
This was discovered by the ever-vigilant people over at Dark Side of Gaming. Of course, games doing away with Denuvo, especially after getting cracked, are nothing unusual. DOOM did it, as well as RiME, Hitman, and many others. This doesn’t mean that Mass Effect Andromeda is completely unprotected now. It still guarded with Origin’s DRM, it’s just Denuvo that they got rid of.
That being said, Dark Side of Gaming were careful to point out that this development doesn’t mean Mass Effect Andromeda will permanently ditch Denuvo. Some games have removed the anti-tamper tech, only to re-apply it with further updates. After all, back in update 1.5, ME: Andromeda introduced the latest version of Denuvo, which effectively blocked pirated games from getting future updates. We’ll just have to wait and see how this develops.
Of course, Denuvo is under no circumstances unbreakable. In fact, hackers usually manage to crack it pretty quickly, usually in a matter of days. Resident Evil 7 was cracked in under five days. Same goes for Rime. They even issued a challenge to pirates to crack the anti-tamper tech, which they promptly did in a matter of a few days.
