The James Bond gaming comeback just hit a speed bump. Six days before the May 27th release of 007 First Light, a Denuvo (a controversial anti-tamper software) DRM disclaimer quietly appeared on its Steam listing. Many fans who had pre-ordered the game found this reason enough to cancel.
This isn’t an isolated incident. Publishers have made a habit of adding Denuvo close to launch. Crimson Desert did the same thing in March, giving players almost no warning, which led to significant backlash. IO Interactive is even worse, giving buyers only a six-day notice.
Should you be worried about performance?
It depends on who you ask. Denuvo’s impact on performance varies from game to game. According to Notebookcheck, marginal frame rate differences were detected in Resident Evil Requiem after its Denuvo implementation was analyzed.
Gamers also report that games with Denuvo often take much longer to load. Also, even if you are playing a single-player game, it requires an online connection to verify the game, which is, to say the least, very annoying.
007 First Light already raised eyebrows when its system requirements recommended 32GB of RAM for 1080p 60 FPS gaming, so concerns about additional performance overhead are fair. The developers later retracted this and lowered the requirement to just 16GB.
There’s also worry about long-term accessibility and the game’s server authentication requirements. These are valid concerns, especially for a title you are spending full price on.
Is Valve doing enough?
Gamers on Reddit and the Steam forums are not taking this quietly. Gamers are petitioning Valve to require publishers to disclose Denuvo before accepting pre-orders, similar to ongoing complaints about undisclosed generative AI assets in games.
Whether IO Interactive addresses these concerns before launch remains to be seen. If gaming companies should learn anything from the past, it’s that this behavior will turn away even the staunchest of supporters.