Monster Hunter Rise Cracked Despite Denuvo’s Anti-Tamper Protection

Anti-Piracy and Anti-Crack protection has been a major point of contention in the gaming industry. And Capcom is no stranger to receiving the most backlash primarily because of the strict anti-piracy protection integrated into their games. Monster Hunter Rise was also considered impregnable.

But it now doesn’t appear to be the case, as a hacker named EMPRESS has announced on her subreddit that she has finally managed to crack Monster Hunter Rise. It took her over a year to crack the game. She is known for cracking games like Deathloop, Forza Horizon 5, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.

Monster.Hunter.Rise.Sunbreak-EMPRESS from EmpressEvolution

Monster Hunter Rise, same as most Capcom games, was protected with Denuvo’s anti-piracy protection. As described by one user, it works by making frequent connections with the “server,” making sure whether .exe is genuine and “intact.” If the .exe is found to be tempered, it sets out triggers that eventually shut the .exe file down.

Empress also confessed about two weeks ago that Denuva has been getting harder to crack every year. But that wasn’t the only hurdle in cracking the Monster Hunter Rise. Along with Denuva, Capcom had integrated other anti-piracy protections, especially on their DLCs.

Those include DRM (Digital Rights Management), which prevents users from “editing, saving, and sharing” the protected software,e, and VMProtect, which protects the software from being “reverse-engineered.”

Complications from EmpressEvolution

Most anti-piracy protections are marketed as preventing a game’s piracy for a limited duration of time. Just to allow the developers and publishers to get their efforts worth. And the majority of gamers are ok with it. But Capcom is notorious for keeping those protections intact for an extended period.

This, coupled with monetized DLCs for Monster Hunt Rise, made Capcom the subject of immense backlash. The whole cost of the game, combined with DLCs, shoots up to $450. The fact for which Empress calls them out. In her message to Capcom, she wrote

How dare you charge $450 for 99% worthless DLCs? How dare you even charge to make edits to the main character in the game? It didn’t help to pay denuvo to protect your DLCs, did it?… It also didn’t help that you made DRM of your own on top either, did it?… Next time please don’t waste more of your money, and don’t shame yourselves focus on the actual game instead.

She also addressed Denuvo, calling their anti-piracy software “pathetic” and promised to do the same with their future “anti-tamper” protection. She also warned other publishers, especially Warner Bros., not to integrate Denuvo’s anti-tamper protection in their games, as it is top of her hit list.

In a message to gamers, she advised them not to waste money on Capcom’s games but instead wait for her cracked releases. For her future projects, she wrote

I have decided that I am going into an entirely new phase. I am no longer going to mess around with 6 months or 1 year later cracks. From now onward. I am putting most of my projects aside and I am going to work on Major & Most anticipated games that people donate to me directly on release, or soon afterward.

What do you think of increasing anti-piracy and anti-tamper protection in games? Discuss in the comments section below.