As reported by Dark Side of Gaming, a new update for the game released today removes the DRM.
This report is verified by SteamDB’s change tracker, which added an entry earlier today which reads: “Removed 3rd-Party DRM – Denuvo Anti-tamper, 5 different PC within a day machine activation limit.”
Those who avoided the Steam edition owing to rumors that Denuvo hampered the game’s performance will applaud the decision.
Players who played the PC version of the game when it was first launched in May 2021 expressed frustration that it occasionally had serious performance problems, with some speculating that background program Denuvo was to blame.
When a “cracked” version of the game—which eliminated the copy protection and ran substantially better than the original release—was made available in July 2021, this theory gained greater traction.
Richard Leadbetter, the technology editor for Digital Foundry, observed “horrendous frame delays and a collapse of frame rate on the official version, and a tremendous improvement with the crack installed,” when he compared the two versions of the game running on the same System.
During that month, Capcom released a patch to enhance performance, mentioning in particular that “Adjustments have been made to optimize the anti-piracy technology.”
It’s unclear if Denuvo will offer any more performance enhancements over the patched version of the game now that it seems to have been completely removed.
Resident Evil Village was a success at launch despite its PC troubles, according to Capcom, who also noted that the game moved 5 million copies across all media faster than the previous three games in the franchise combined.
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