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With Dragon’s Dogma 2 almost ready to grace our screens, the question of whether or not it features Denuvo is looming of its release. Triple-A games nowadays are jam packed full of anti-piracy and anti-cheating software, with some even being locked to online-only. While this comes from a place that protects developers and publishers, it’s often the players themselves most drastically affected by this, with in-game performance expected to take a hit.
Does Dragon’s Dogma 2 feature Denuvo?
According to the Steam page, it is now confirmed that Dragon’s Dogma 2 will feature Denuvo as a form of DRM protection. Capcom are well known for including DRM in all of their titles, with Street Fighter 6’s Denuvo controversy leaving a sour taste on the game’s launch last year.
As is usually the case, it’s not the fact that pirating the game is much harder, but the fact that performance and price is negatively impacted by the DRM’s inclusion. The game costs £53.98, far more than adjacent most other games released of the same calibre.
Whether or not it negatively impacts the performance in-game is yet to be decided upon, though it’s hard to imagine how it won’t.
Will Capcom remove Denuvo from Dragon’s Dogma 2?
Typically, Capcom only keep Denuvo in their games for 12 months after release. After this time period, the chance of piracy reduces drastically meaning that there’s little need to keep paying the subscription towards Denuvo.
After this period, any performance issues might be smoothed out slightly, while there’s also a chance that the price could fall if it hasn’t already. We’ve recently seen that Dragon’s Dogma 2’s graphics modes and settings will be uncapped on console, and the PC requirements for the game are going to demand a beefy graphics card. Could Denuvo only make things worse?
Does Denuvo impact Dragon’s Dogma 2 performance?
According to claims from Denuvo, it’s DRM does not actually affect performance at all. It’s hard to observe the effects of Denuvo, particularly due to the companies fair remark that the only time that players get to experience a Denuvo-free game is months after release, when bug-fixes and performance optimisations are shipped too. In the case of Dragon’s Dogma 2, we won’t know if Denuvo is playing a hand in performance until long after it’s released.