It’s actually release day for Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight. Well, it is at least for players who purchased the Deluxe Edition, which offers 3 days of early access. The game releases for everyone else on May 22. Just ahead of opening its doors to Deluxe Edition customers, Legacy of the Dark Knight has been leaked, and pirated versions of the game are being shared online.

The past week or so seems to have been a successful one (depending on how you look at it) for video game pirates. Subnautica 2 was leaked about 48 hours before launch, and before that, Forza Horizon 6 suffered the same fate. The latter forced Microsoft/Playground Games to threaten and hand out bans to those accessing the game earlier than intended.

Denuvo wasn’t enough to protect the new Lego Batman game

The brand-new Lego game has reportedly been cracked via a Hypervisor bypass. This process is a low-level virtualization technique used by hackers to bypass DRM protections such as Denuvo by spoofing CPU data and security tokens. Dark Knight’s Steam store page reveals that the game does indeed use Denuvo Anti-Tamper at launch.

Downloads were shared on a hacking forum, and news of the hack was shared on Reddit soon after. One user even shared a short video of some gameplay, which looks to be within an early section of the game, considering the on-screen control tips.

On the bright side for game developers and publishers, both Subnautica 2 and Forza Horizon 6 enjoyed massively successful launches – despite the piracy – and we would expect a tried-and-tested format such as TT Games’ Lego series to put up some solid numbers, too. The game costs $89.99 and $69.99 for the Deluxe and Standard editions, respectively.

Subnautica 2’s design lead later stated that he was ‘not bothered’ by the piracy, which is easy to say after enjoying record numbers of concurrent players for the franchise. Likewise, we saw the Forza Horizon 6 player count on Steam hitting more than double the peak of Forza Horizon 5, and that was only during the early access period for Premium Edition owners.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.