Star Ocean: The Divine Force No Longer Has Denuvo DRM On Steam

It seems like Square Enix has silently removed the anti-tampering Denuvo DRM software from Star Ocean: The Divine Force. There is no mention of the tech anywhere on the Steam page anymore, and many users have noted its absence on various forums. The game has only been out for around six months, and the anti-cheat tech has been slashed rather quickly from it. It is a surprising turn of events and has resulted in fans celebrating the news.

Star Ocean: The Divine Force’s launch was a controversial one, with Denuvo tech deterring the game’s performance and leading to a lot of technical issues. It is an anti-cheat tech software that runs in the back end while the user plays the game, which was accused of causing frequent lag spikes and FPS drops in Star Ocean: The Divine Force on Steam despite the game featuring relatively simple visuals and system requirements.

Hence, the entry now harbors “mixed” reviews, with fans loving the JRPG’s PlayStation 2’s era combat, exploration, and gameplay but disliking the visuals, bugs, enemy AI, character models, and more. The addition of the anti-cheat software played a big role in earning a lot of disdain from the fans, which seemingly also led to the game freezing or crashing due to online verification after every 24 hours.

Star Ocean: The Divine Force has seen the removal of DRM earlier than anticipated. It has likely been wiped off the Steam version because of the negative backlash the game and team faced, and the anti-piracy software is no longer necessary. It is also possible that Denuvo has become somewhat of a subscription service, where devs are compelled to remove it instead of paying indefinitely after a certain time passes.

In recent gaming trends, developers tend to remove the anti-tampering Denuvo DRM software after a specific time period elapses. Many AAA and other large-scale titles usually release with the anti-cheat included to curb the initial piracy wave to ensure the sales of the game are not hindered, but it is taken out after a year or so in most games, yet not all.

For instance, the notable Resident Evil Village also recently saw the removal of the anti-tampering Denuvo software on the Steam version. Capcom also kept quiet about its disposal, but fans celebrated the occasion because the technology was notorious for massively reducing the game’s performance upon launch.

Many other recent franchises have recently dumped the Denuvo anti-cheat, including Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3, Monster Hunter World, Devil May Cry 5, and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. Regardless, some titles have not taken it out even though many years have passed. Warner Bros has removed Deunvo from some of its recent titles but not from older releases.

Square Enix has not officially addressed the update thus far, leaving fans wondering why Denuvo was removed from Star Ocean: The Divine Force. Despite its fair share of issues, the title was a success in its own right, and fans of the series purchased a slew of copies to relive the nostalgia on the PC version. It remains to be proven whether removing Denuvo has improved the performance of the game. 

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