Resident Evil Village’s New Update Removes Controversial Denuvo On Steam

Capcom seems to have removed the controversial anti-temper Denuvo DRM from Resident Evil Village after its arrival on May 7th, 2021. The giant company issued a hidden update without any patch notes that made the big change in the game. The change was initially seen on the Steam tracking site, SteamDB, with the page saying, “Removed 3rd-Party DRM – Denuvo Anti-tamper, 5 different PC within a day machine activation limit.”

The disposal of Denuvo DRM can also be verified by the Resident Evil Village owners on the Steam storefront; the exe file has been reduced massively in size after the latest changes by Capcom. Moreover, the removal has been praised by players in the recent reviews of the game on the digital store. The game’s initial release was met with a slew of criticism by users due to its bad performance, and the Denuvo DRM was alleged to be the culprit.

Denuvo is an anti-cheat tech that runs in the back end during the gameplay, which was blamed being the cause behind the recurring lag spikes and FPS drops in Resident Evil Village on Steam. The issue further soared after it was found that a cracked version of the game without DRM could run much better in contrast to the official release; Capcom was quick to apologize, and an update was later released addressing the lingering issues.

While Denuvo has not been confirmed to be the reason behind hindering the Resident Evil Village performance, it has been proven to be the culprit in the past with some other games. The brewing rumors and issues with the DRM have diluted its reputation in the industry. Thus, its dumping has been well-perceived by the RE8 community.

This is also not the first time Capcom has removed the polemical Denuvo from its games after a specific period elapsed. Entries, including remakes of Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3, Monster Hunter World, and Devil May Cry 5, also saw the removal of anti-piracy protection. Now, whether the deduction of Denuvo affects the Resident Evil Village performance positively in any way remains to be witnessed.

Capcom has not officially addressed the update so far, but we may hear something about it in the future. The game was a massive triumph upon launch after its release, rolling out over 5 million units faster than its previous three releases in the series since launch. Its performance has also considerably improved on PC after updates over the years.