Humanity removes Denuvo DRM even before its release
Humanity, one of my most anticipated games of 2021, was you’re going to have Denuvo acting as your Digital Rights Management (DRM). But after its developers found out that it was affecting performance, they took it straight.
The strategy game, which is shaping up to be Of civilization first real competition in years, has been playable by fans and testers for a while, and those players have been giving feedback to developers Amplitude Studios during a closed beta. And some of that feedback involved some issues with Denuvo, and how it was affecting game performance, something that Critics of DRM / those who enjoy fluent video games have been saying for a while.
As a result, Amplitude has made the decision to remove Denuvo from the game before it comes out on August 17. The director of the study, Romain de Waubert, detailed the decision in a forum post, which says (emphasis mine):
Hello everybody,
Thank you for all your comments on this, we have been following and having internal discussions before responding to you. Based on our testing data during the closed beta, we have decided not to include Denuvo in Humankind at launch.
First, let me explain the reasoning behind our initial decision, including Denuvo: we work really hard and put our hearts into these games that we make, and piracy really does affect our ability to keep making games with you.
We have been working on this game for over 4 years and personally it has been my dream project for 25 years. We have been one of the most desired games on Steam this year, so we know that pirates attack us, more than any of our previous games. If Denuvo can delay a cracked version, even if only for a few days, that can already help us protect our release.
That said, our priority is always the best possible experience for the players who buy our games and support us. Denuvo should never affect player performance, and we don’t want to sacrifice quality for you.
We believe that it is possible with the correct integration, which is what we wanted to test during Closed Beta. However, we found that the way it was currently integrated was not good enough and is not something we can fix before launch. So, we are taking it out.
Hope this answers your questions. Thank you as always for your support, and we can’t wait to see you all at launch (and beyond!)
– Romain, CCO and studio director
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if more studies could figure this out before a game is released? instead of after. Of course, this does not mean that the game Never they do have DRM, but at least it suggests that if they replace Denuvo with something else, it will be something that won’t have a huge impact on the player experience.
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