It appears the Steam version of Hogwarts Legacy will launch with the deeply unpopular DRM anti-piracy software Denuvo.
If you’ve never heard about Denuvo before, it’s digital rights management (or DRM) software. It’s designed to keep people from pirating games through anti-tamper measures and regular online verification. That part about online verification is important because it means you must have an available internet connection at all times, or Denuvo won’t let you play your game. It’s popular among publishers because it makes it significantly harder for pirates to crack or share online.
On top of this, numerous reports point to Denuvo as the source of significant in-game performance drops across multiple titles. Indeed, there has been no shortage of games that dumped the DRM post-launch because they could not overcome these performance problems. Both Rise and Shadow of the Tomb Raider launched with Denuvo and got rid of it shortly after. Monster Hunter World ran into similar issues and later removed it. Most recently, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition had to dump the DRM due to the problems it created in the PC version.
The news that the Steam version of Hogwarts Legacy would ship with Denuvo came in a recent update to the game’s Steam page. There’s also a version on the Epic Games Store that, at the time of writing, makes no mention of the Denuvo DRM. Keep an eye on that one, though, as it may change in the last couple of weeks ahead of launch.
Hogwarts Legacy launches February 10th for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC. The PS4 and Xbox One version arrives on April 4, and the Nintendo Switch version will complete the set on July 25. All dates on which JK Rowling will, most likely, still hold horrible views on transgender people. Its qualities as DRM software aside, the people who make Denuvo are not, as far as we know, openly transphobic, so it does, at least, have that going for it.
[Thanks, NME]
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