Assassin's Creed Origins bucks recent trends, remaining without a crack or other piracy method for a full month

Assassin's Creed Origins has piracy protection that's still standing after a month.

It's been a rough old time for video game copy protection on PC lately. Middle-earth: Shadow of War was cracked in a day. Resident Evil 7 took five days to crack, which at the time was a record. Sonic Mania took a week, and Mass Effect Andromeda took under two.

Assassin's Creed Origins is in no hurry to join that club, it seems, and as it stands right now the game remains protected by the combination of Denuvo and VMProtect, as reported by DSOGaming.

Assassin's Creed Origins has done one thing quite differently to the other games listed above, however: it has two layers of copy protection. Each of the other games merely used Denuvo alone, but Assassin's Creed Origins pairs it with VMProtect, seemingly making it that much more difficult for the pirates and hackers to crack open. Even if able to break one layer, they'd then be stopped in their tracks by another. Cold blooded, like.

This all caused a bit of a stir when the game first came out, as some reports claimed that the double-dip method of copy protection was negatively impacting the performance of the game. This is something Ubisoft denied at the time, as we reported, but this still remains a contentious topic, with some claiming that the copy protection can use up to 40% of CPU power, leaving much less for the game even on high-end machines.

DSOGaming also points out that in addition to VMProtect Origins is using a new version of Denuvo shared by Sonic Forces, Injustice 2, Football Manager 2018, Need for Speed Payback and Star Wars Battlefront 2. As it stands right now, all of those games remain uncracked.

If you're playing Assassin's Creed Origins legally, remember we've got loads of tips on the game from Papyrus Puzzle Locations and solutions, tomb locations and things like the best abilities. The game is pretty great, by the way. It's worth the money.

Whatever the case, however, it's seeming more likely we'll see more copy protection in this style since it seems to be working so well. We'll see how much longer this one-two combo can hold out.