After a rough few years, anti-tamper specialist Denuvo says things are "back on track"

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Denuvo's fall from grace has been quite spectacular.

In 2015, the anti-tamper firm was widely seen as the death of piracy in video games, with top cracking groups talking about throwing in the towel. Since, things have been slightly less impressive, with titles like Middle-earth: Shadow of War being cracked within a day its launch at the end of 2017, while earlier this year there were even reports of Final Fantasy XV: Windows Edition's anti-tamper being broken before the game even came out.

When pressed on the topic before, Denuvo said it never claimed to be uncrackable but that its strategy was to safeguard a video game's launch window.

That's a hard argument to make when titles are being cracked this early in their lifecycle. Sales director Elmar Fischer (pictured, above right) says the strategy remains the same but admits that the end of last year was rough for Denuvo.

"The message hasn't really changed," he says.

"It's still about protecting the initial sales window. That's something that varies from publisher to publisher - it can be two months, it can be two weeks. We've had a rough couple of months, especially September and October last year, especially when FIFA and Total War: Warhammer 2 launched and were cracked in hours. It is a cat and mouse game with the ups and downs. We were definitely in a down in autumn of last year."

It was around this point that Denuvo started talking to cybersecurity specialists Irdeto, with the latter snapping up the anti-tamper firm in January of this year. As a result, Fischer says that its offering has improved, pointing to Capcom's Monster Hunter World having not been cracked 22 days after launch (at the time of writing - 10 days after the interview).

"Right now, we are at a