Is Denuvo malware?

[BFeely]

There are people on the Internet claiming that Denuvo Anti-Tamper (a DRM anti-tamper solution) is malware.  Is there any truth to that or is it just making your job more difficult?

[exile360]

Greetings,

No, technically speaking it is not actually malware.  In general, malware is software that performs some form of malicious activity, usually installing itself without the user's knowledge or consent and while Denuvo may do some things that some users do not like/do not agree with, the solution for removing it is fairly straightforward; they just have to uninstall the game that uses it as part of the game's DRM scheme, and of course vendors/game developers do not conceal the fact that it is going to be installed if the user chooses to install a game protected by it.  Technically it *might* be considered by some users as PUP (Potentially Unwanted Program), however I doubt that any users would actually want Malwarebytes or any other vendors detecting/removing it since it would render their games which use it for DRM unplayable.

You might find this article to be enlightening on the subject.

[BFeely]

Has Malwarebytes themselves analyzed it?

[exile360]

No idea, but they've probably checked it to at least make sure it doesn't qualify as PUP or anything like that.  I doubt they'd ever decide to remove it though because again, every user would complain about it since it would literally break their games rendering them unplayable.  Unfortunately DRM is just one of those things we have to live with if we want to use those programs, otherwise we have to wait until a game gets old enough that (hopefully) the developer finally decides to remove the DRM to improve performance and usability since by that point it doesn't serve much purpose any more since the game is usually not selling for nearly the same price any more and most of the people who were going to buy the game by that point have already purchased it and the developer has moved on to developing and releasing their next title.