Measures put in place to prevent software piracy are rarely popular, but Denuvo tends to generate more controversy and antipathy than most. So, fans of JRPGs will doubtless be celebrating the latest update to Final Fantasy XVI. Version update 1.03 of Final Fantasy XIV was released on March 4th and contained some bug fixes, including some graphical and text errors. However, to most PC gamers, the biggest and most significant change was the removal of Denuvo.

Last year, Denovo launched a PR blitz to try and salvage its reputation amongst PC gaming fans. This included several interviews with product manager Andreas Ullman, as well as the launch of a Discord server for players to talk about issues with the DRM. This went exactly as well as you might expect and did little to rehabilitate Denuvo.

Denuvo removed from Final Fantasy XVI

The main complaint amongst PC gaming fans is that Denovo tends to negatively impact performance. In the past, Denuvo has either dismissed or downplayed claims of performance impact. As Ullman told Rock Paper Shotgun last year: “I think it’s important to understand how our solution works. But considering that we are protecting 60 to 70 games every year, it’s quite interesting to see that there is only a handful of games where there was an effective performance impact cost.”

Evidence of performance issues

One of the major titles that was affected by Denovo was Tekken 7, though it’s worth keeping in mind that it was released on PC back in 2017. Regardless, a competitive fighting game absolutely cannot afford any detriment to its performance, especially at tournament level. Yet players were finding that the game took a significant hit from Denuvo.

“There are valid cases,” Ullmann admitted in an interview, “especially when we are talking about the one that comes up on a regular basis: Tekken 7. That was also confirmed by the technical producer back in the day on Twitter.” With this is mind, its not hard to understand why Final Fantasy and PC gaming fans are cheerful, as an increasing number of games drop the infamous DRM scheme.

About the Author

Rebecca Hills-Duty

Writing and journalism experience at VRFocus, UploadVR, The Escapist, HTC, PC Gamer, Tech Radar+ and Dexerto. Can sometimes be found playing with retro tech.