Pearl Abyss has confirmed that Crimson Desert will ship with Denuvo DRM on Steam, with the protection now listed on the game’s store page just one week before launch. The developer has also confirmed that all previously released performance benchmarks were already made using the final build with Denuvo included.

Denuvo quietly appeared on Crimson Desert‘s Steam page, immediately sparking backlash in the gaming community. On Reddit, a number of players announced they were canceling their pre-orders, while others said they would wait to see how the game performs at launch before making a decision. The article’s author notes that social media tends to skew toward enthusiast opinions, and suggests that Denuvo‘s inclusion won’t be a dealbreaker for most buyers.

Denuvo‘s poor reputation in the PC gaming community is not entirely without basis: comparisons of games that later went DRM-free have shown that, in some cases, removing the protection resulted in a measurable performance improvement. Developer-publisher Pearl Abyss is likely looking to guard against revenue losses from piracy: a recent study suggests a game can take up to a 20% revenue hit if cracked within its first week on sale.

Responding to a request for comment from Paul Tassi (Forbes), Pearl Abyss confirmed: “The benchmark videos and performance specs we released were all created with the exact same implementation of Denuvo that is in the launch build. This includes the performance videos by Digital Foundry. It’s important that reviewers and benchmarkers’ experience with the game is ultimately representative of the final consumer’s experience.” In other words, no performance changes are expected at launch compared to what has already been reported.

PC mod support will also not be available at launch, though the game’s system requirements remain surprisingly modest.

Source: PCGamesN