Creative Assembly and Sega are now the owners of a rather dubious world record - Total War: Warhammer 2 fastest cracked Denuvo title ever. The ambitious strategy sequel set in Games Workshop’s Warhammer Fantasy universe launched yesterday on PC, and yet within 24 hours it’s already been busted open by crackers.

This is nothing less than disastrous for Total War: Warhammer II, leaving Creative Assembly open on all sides. Not only has the copy protection not lasted the crucial few weeks after launch, but legal copies of Total War: Warhammer 2 are still burdened with the much-derided Denuvo Anti-Tamper DRM that’s serving zero purpose. The Denuvo-free version of Total Warhammer 2 is now probably available on hundreds of torrent sites around the world. I’m sure this will somehow help its sales though, using the mental gymnastics which have been applied to an EU study on piracy that was recently unearthed.

Regardless, Total War: Warhammer II is now comfortably the fastest Denuvo game to be cracked, beating the previous record-holder Tekken 7, which held out for all of four days. Resident Evil 7 and Rime share the third place on the podium - their copy protecting crumbling in five days.

The big question now is how is Creative Assembly or, more likely, publisher Sega going to react. It seems kind of redundant to leave Denuvo in there now that TW: Warhammer 2’s been cracked, so hopefully a patch will be along shortly to remove it. That’s not always how it works but now Denuvo is only harming sales rather than attempting to improve them.

How have you held out from buying Total War: Warhammer 2 due to the use of Denuvo? Would you buy it if Denuvo was patched out? Let us know!