Assassin’s Creed Mirage has become the center of one of the most unusual Denuvo developments we have seen in 2026. A new Proof of Concept published by RUNE claims to completely remove Denuvo DRM and VMProtect from the game executable, rather than leaving the protections in place and finding a way around them.
That distinction is what makes this release so interesting. Hypervisor methods work by creating an environment where a Denuvo-protected game can still run, while traditional cracks normally patch or intercept parts of the protection. Here, the claim is much more ambitious: Denuvo and VMProtect were stripped from the executable itself, with protected and obfuscated code reconstructed afterward.
According to RUNE’s own notes, the process involved removing dozens of VMProtect virtualized functions, around 200 Denuvo VM bodies, restoring hundreds of obfuscated bodies, and reconstructing roughly 25,000 stolen function bodies. RUNE also describes the result as a Proof of Concept, making it clear that this is not being presented as a normal game release or a routine bypass.
If those claims hold up, Assassin’s Creed Mirage represents something very different from most of the Denuvo stories we have covered this year: not another way to work around the protection, but an attempt to remove it completely.
