[1] The company was formed through a management buyout of DigitalWorks, the arm of the Sony Digital Audio Disc Corporation that developed the SecuROM DRM technology.
[5] 3DM, a Chinese warez group, first claimed to have breached Denuvo's technology in a blog post published on 1 December 2014, wherein they announced that they would release cracked versions of Denuvo-protected games FIFA 15, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Lords of the Fallen.
[10] Denuvo's marketing director, Thomas Goebl, claimed that some console-exclusive games get PC releases due to this technology.
Nintendo Switch owners widely criticised the announcement on social media, expressing concerns that it would decrease game performance.
[26] According to Empress, a notable Denuvo cracker, the software assigns a unique authentication token to each copy of a game, depending on factors like the user's hardware.
[27] Denuvo has been criticised for high CPU usage and excessive writing operations on storage components, the latter potentially causing significant life-span reductions for solid-state drives (SSDs).
[28] In the case of Tekken 7 and Sonic Mania Plus, Denuvo caused a significant decrease in performance in several parts of these games.
[29][30] Sam Machkovech of Ars Technica reviewed in-depth how Denuvo was causing performance penalties, releasing an article on the matter in December 2018.
[38] On October 18, 2024, Denuvo launched its official Discord server as part of a PR campaign, which they claim is an important step toward building stronger connections with game developers, publishers, and players.