The Bulgarian responsible for cracking the latest variants of the Denuvo anti-tamper technology has slammed SEGA for being "anti-consumer". Voksi says that when cracking the protection on Sonic Mania Plus, he noticed that the anti-piracy system hadn't been deployed properly, meaning that even people who buy the game will be negatively affected.
The latest accusations come from Voksi, a cracker in his early twenties, who recently cracked the latest variant of the anti-tamper technology. Yesterday he released a cracked version of Sonic Mania Plus just a day after release and says SEGA did a poor job of implementing the system.
"SEGA rushed to implement the newest Denuvo in the new update of Sonic Mania and did a poor job of it, causing many issues and game slowdowns for legit users," he informs TF while accusing SEGA of being "anti-consumer".
Voksi describes the release as having "an insane amount of bloated Denuvo code," compared to the previous version, "which can cause all kinds of issues if not handled properly."
"My game runs slow whenever I enter the Replays menu in time attack mode, and the time attack level select too for some reason, and it continues even after leaving both," user 'Crashed' reports.
"The issue is serious because it directly impacts legit users," (Voksi) says.
"This particular issue is that the game triggers Denuvo, but it doesn't close the trigger properly. Denuvo keeps writing and writing into the game's memory, causing additional stress to the game, which might be handled by a stronger CPU, but those who have a weaker CPU can experience massive slowdowns."
Another Steam user, who complained that he couldn't get past the game's menu screen, also sounded familiar to Voksi. He says that he found Denuvo code affecting that part of the game when working on his crack.
"One person even couldn't load the game. It stuck for him in the loading screen right before the menu, which is an anti-tamper trigger I've encountered while I was cracking the game, which did exactly the same thing as described. I don't know what is the reason to trigger for this person on a legit copy, but nothing can surprise me anymore," he says.
"The truth is after my Shining Resonance Refrain crack that I did on day 1 (which also had the latest Denuvo), it seems that SEGA got scared. It tried to rush the implementation of an even more bloated variant of the latest Denuvo with all protection features and this is the result," he says.
