Mass Effect Andromeda pirates can't get updated faces

Last week's big Mass Effect Andromeda patch made faces look better, fixed some shonky animations plus all sorts of other things. And, quietly, it also updated the game's Denuvo anti-piracy protection.

Andromeda made headlines for being pirated in just 10 days - an incredibly short amount of time for a game using Denuvo's famed anti-tamper tech, coupled with EA's own Origin protection.

How was Andromeda cracked so quickly? It now appears the vanilla version of Andromeda launched with an outdated version of Denuvo - one which had already been cracked (thanks, DSO Gaming). Oops.

This may be the version of Denuvo which was compromised back in February, when Resident Evil 7 was cracked within a week of launch - by far the fastest any game with Denuvo protection has been pirated.

Now, BioWare's newly-updated Denuvo protection for Andromeda means anyone with a cracked copy won't be able to update their game - so, no improved faces for them.

The slip-up follows a similar boo-boo by Conan Exiles publisher Funcom, which accidentally released an updated version of the game without any Denuvo protection whatsoever. A further update was issued which restored Denuvo, but the damage was done.

Denuvo rose to prominence back in 2014 after it protected another BioWare game - Dragon Age: Inquisition - for nearly a month. In PC game-pirating terms - aeons. Bertie spoke with Denuvo at the time about how it all works.