Has the *Resident Evil 9* cracking scene started tearing itself apart? Who’s to blame for the 11-frame gap?

To sum it up, this looks more like two technical approaches trash-talking each other than one side having completely crushed the other. Over the crack patch for Resident Evil 9: Requiem, DenuvOwO and the veteran hacker voices38 have recently made things pretty ugly. One side is pushing a Hypervisor virtual machine solution, emphasizing speed and broad compatibility; the other insists on traditional reverse engineering, emphasizing stability and near-native performance. Put bluntly, this is the cracking scene’s own “console war” — except this time, they’re not fighting over exclusives, but over frame rates and pride.

The trigger wasn’t complicated. voices38 first released a traditional crack patch for Resident Evil 9: Requiem, and soon after, DenuvOwO core member KiriGiri mocked them on social media, saying they already had a “universal cracking solution,” that the old toolset would no longer be needed, and even hinted that the other side’s patch might contain bugs. Right after that, DenuvOwO’s official account piled on, claiming that what voices38 had actually cracked was an “outdated version of the game.” The tone was incredibly aggressive, like those old forum arguments over which PS2 emulator plugin was the true orthodox choice — barely a few lines of technical discussion before the pecking order gets laid out on the table.

That said, voices38’s counterattack hit a pretty sharp spot: performance. According to him, while the Hypervisor approach can adapt to new versions more quickly, and even has a kind of “one-size-fits-all” feel, the tradeoff is lower frame rates. Based on tester data, this crack runs on average about 11 FPS lower than a native crack, and the impact is even worse on older or lower-end hardware. He also explained why, saying the Hypervisor driver disables the AVX instruction set, while many games rely on AVX for optimization. It’s a lot like the kind of patch old-school players hate most: yes, the door is open, but the moment you step inside, you trip over the floor.

The issue right now is that overseas media reports have not delivered a final verdict on this controversy. In other words, what we’re seeing at this stage is still mostly a public war of words, plus a clash of values between two cracking approaches. The advantages of the Hypervisor side are obvious: it’s fast, and adapting to new versions is less hassle — like installing a universal boot disc on an old console. Traditional reverse engineering, on the other hand, is much slower and requires painstaking work on specific versions bit by bit, but what it often gives you in return is frame-rate performance much closer to native. If you want to ask which one is more advanced, hold your applause for now — in the end, what players care about is whether the game runs stably, not which cracker posts the harsher insults.

From the perspective of an ordinary player, my advice is actually very simple. If your hardware is only average — especially if you’re on an older platform or a low-end PC — don’t let the phrase “cracked on day one” dazzle you. A noticeable performance drop can really drag the experience back to mid-PS3-era levels. If you’re just watching the evolution of the technology, though, this argument is quite interesting. At the very least, it shows that the pressure Denuvo is putting on crackers is pushing the scene toward two increasingly divided paths: one pursuing speed, the other stubbornly defending quality. It’s fine to support either side, but don’t mistake slogans for results. Better to wait until a patch comes out that’s truly stable, has reliable frame rates, and makes its version support clear before taking sides.