long story short, I bought FFXV long before I cared about Denuvo but never played it, the game got cracked but Square Enix still haven’t removed Denuvo from the game on Steam; now I don’t want to install Denuvo spyware, if I download the game from Steam, don’t launch it, and just overwrite the .exe with the one from a repack, am I in the clear? would it work? I’d like to get the achievements, otherwise I’d just install a repack
Denuvo cracks are usually just bypasses. You’re still runnung denuvo unless the crack has actually removed the DRM and that’s very rare. Denuvo getting removed by the developers before it even gets cracked at all is pretty common since Denuvo is a subscription service, not a one time fee.
You can get them separately from gamecopyworld or cs.rin.ru forums.
The benefit of grabbing cracks separate is you’ll see which exact files are included/affected.