Bethesda Blooper Sees Doom Eternal Get a Day-One Crack

So, Doom Eternal is out today and so far the initial reviews for the game have been widely exceptionally positive. Some have, in fact, already gone as far as to say that it’s one of the best gaming releases of 2020. Well, so far, at least.

In a report via DSOGaming, however, it seems that Bethesda may have just made a huge cock-up with the launch. Specifically, a version available on their own store may have just seen (or more accurately, allowed) the game get cracked within literally hours of hitting shelves.

Bethesda Error Sees Doom Eternal Get Day-One Crack

So, what went wrong? Well, the Steam version of the game includes Denuvo. An anti-piracy protection which, as you may know, can sometimes give ‘crackers’ more than a little difficulty to bypass. All sounds good so far, right? Well, what didn’t include Denuvo, however, was the version sold from their own store!

Yes, if you buy Doom Eternal from Bethesda directly, you’ll essentially have an executable file which allows you to play the single-player campaign with Denuvo turned off! Well, at the very least, disabled. This is, for pirates, a dream come true as it’s basically done all the hard work for them!

Whoops…

With this executable file (that is reportedly only 67MB in size compared to the 450MB ‘Denuvo-on’ file) it’s essentially giving piracy websites everything they need to bundle together a cracked version of the game. It is, quite simply, a major oversight on Bethesda’s part. Particularly since, as you may know, the import part of piracy protection is to attempt to keep games ‘good’ for at least two weeks.

If this is true, then there may already be hundreds if not thousands of people playing the ‘bootleg’ version of their hottest release! I daresay someone over at Bethesda’s management isn’t happy!

What do you think? Have you played Doom Eternal? If so, what are your thoughts on the game so far? – Let us know in the comments!