The time has come, it would seem, for Bethesda to ridDoom Eternalof one of its biggest faults: the infamous Denuvo DRM. Having launched in March of 2020,Doom Eternalfeaturedone of the most tone-deaf implementations of Denuvo yet, hyping the DRM up as a “feature” via official channels. Subsequently, there was some amount ofbackpedaling from id Softwareon the topic with a temporary removal of the DRM, but Denuvo did eventually come back into the picture due to the game’s multiplayer mode. Now, three years following that particular series of stumbles,Doom Eternalno longer appears to have Denuvo on board.
This information comes fromSteamDB, as highlighted by the community over at ther/Gamessubreddit. Bethesda itself didn’t announce the change or make a fuss of it in any way, shape, or form, which suggests the goal might’ve been to simply scrap the DRM while nobody was looking, and be done with it.
Is Bethesda distancing itself from Denuvo?
Denuvo DRM has, historically, been used as an early post-launch defensive measure against piracy, allowing developers and publishers to move copies of a given game without worrying too much about potential cracks and file tampering. To that end, keeping Denuvo around for years after a game comes out doesn’t necessarily make financial sense due to the costs of keeping the DRM around, anddevelopers like Capcom haven’t been shy about removing itfrom the picture relatively quickly.
Denuvo has acknowledged its bad PRalready, but it’s impossible to deny its ubiquity in the current market. Keeping this ubiquity in mind, it is rather curious that Bethesda would take Denuvo out ofDoom Eternalright now, virtually alongside the release ofStarfield. One would expect Bethesda to invest big bucks into keepingStarfieldsafe and sound from pirates, butthe game doesn’t leverage Denuvo at all. If Bethesda isn’t going to use Denuvo for its flagship release, are there plans at the company not to use the anti-piracy software at all moving forward? Only time will tell, but it is an interesting development, regardless.
