List of Broken Games on Alder Lake Down to Just Three

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Alder Lake is nearly free from the shackles of DRM incompatibility

Intel and Denuvo have worked steadily to fix many of the games plagued with DRM incompatibility issues stemming from Alder Lake's hybrid architecture. As a result, what used to be a list of over 90 titles has been brought down to just three, including Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, Fernbus Simulator, and Madden 22.

This is good news for Alder Lake, as gamers can now buy Alder Lake without worrying about running into incompatibility issues with the new leading-edge hybrid x86 architecture unless they're running one of those three games. With how quickly Denuvo patched these DRM issues, we suspect the remaining three games should get a fix soon.

The issues all started when Alder Lake first arrived on the scene. It was quickly discovered that over 90 game titles were incompatible with the new Intel architecture thanks to its new hybrid design that consists of two entirely different core clusters.

The main reason for the issue mostly stems from incompatibility issues. The Denuvo DRM identified the two core clusters on Alder Lake processors as two entirely different systems, causing the program to force quit the game because it thinks it is running on two entirely different computers. 

Thankfully, it has been just a month since the Alder Lake launch. All these game issues have effectively been fixed thanks to DRM updates, developers deleting DRM solutions from their games, and Windows 10/11 cumulative updates.

All that remains are the current three titles that have to be fixed -- in the meantime, there is a current workaround that makes these games playable on Alder Lake systems. If your system supports it, you can repurpose the scroll lock key to temporarily disable the E-cores to ensure the DRM doesn't force close your game. 

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Aaron Klotz
Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

9 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Soaptrail
    No offense to AMD but I feel like if this was AMD instead of Intel it would be 3-6 months before getting the list down to only 3 games.
    Reply
  • spongiemaster
    Fernbus Simulator?

    Good luck, Intel. You've chosen to piss off the wrong crowd here.
    Reply
  • spongiemaster
    Soaptrail said:
    No offense to AMD but I feel like if this was AMD instead of Intel it would be 3-6 months before getting the list down to only 3 games.
    Also makes the fanboy crowd that was swearing off Alder Lake because they couldn't play some older games look pretty dumb too. As if Intel wasn't going to get this figured out in short order.
    Reply
  • hotaru.hino
    Or you know, those game developers could just remove Denuvo after 3-4 months after launch since their window for high-volume, short-term sales is gone.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    spongiemaster said:
    Also makes the fanboy crowd that was swearing off Alder Lake because they couldn't play some older games look pretty dumb too. As if Intel wasn't going to get this figured out in short order.
    There wasn't even anything to figure out, from before launch we knew that the issue is with denuvo seeing the ecores as 'tampering' hardware.
    The only unknown thing was the amount of work it would take and if they would care enough to fix the issue or if they would just let it be, like far cry 4 still launching on core 3 after so many years.
    Reply
  • Tigerseye101
    Unfortunately intel is wrong and so, I present to you the wrongness of your article. SWTOR is supposed to have an expansion in a few days and people with alder lake can’t even launch the game….note the “scroll lock” fix or disabling the efficiency cores does not fix the problem.

    https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=998523&page=8
    Reply
  • cryoburner
    Soaptrail said:
    No offense to AMD but I feel like if this was AMD instead of Intel it would be 3-6 months before getting the list down to only 3 games.
    This was more an incompatibility on Denuvo's end, and game publishers needing to update to a new version (or remove the DRM), rather than something Intel fixed directly. I suppose Intel likely played a role in encouraging them to fix it, though Denuvo was probably quick to act to keep publishers from dropping their often problematic DRM more than anything.

    I do find it a bit amusing that a 2016 bus simulator is using Denuvo though.

    Tigerseye101 said:
    Unfortunately intel is wrong and so, I present to you the wrongness of your article. SWTOR is supposed to have an expansion in a few days and people with alder lake can’t even launch the game….note the “scroll lock” fix or disabling the efficiency cores does not fix the problem.

    https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=998523&page=8
    There are no doubt other games as well, and some older titles might never be fixed, though I suspect that Star Wars MMO will eventually. The article makes it sound like these were the only games experiencing issues, but these are just the ones affected as a result of that Denuvo incompatibility.
    Reply
  • Soaptrail
    spongiemaster said:
    Also makes the fanboy crowd that was swearing off Alder Lake because they couldn't play some older games look pretty dumb too. As if Intel wasn't going to get this figured out in short order.

    Most companies care more about the revenue of the next game so i was not expecting all these games to get fixed unless Intel or Denuvo greased the wheels with cash to help. Or maybe it was a really easy fix for all these companies.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    Soaptrail said:
    Most companies care more about the revenue of the next game so i was not expecting all these games to get fixed unless Intel or Denuvo greased the wheels with cash to help. Or maybe it was a really easy fix for all these companies.
    Intel and denuvo are the wheels...
    Game devs have nothing to do with how DRM, that they don't own, works.
    Reply