Digital Rights Management (or DRM) can be a mild inconvenience at best and completely break a game at worst. Some especially good news has come along for survival horror fans: the Resident Evil 2 remake Denuvo DRM has been removed from the game in its latest update, and a new achievement has reportedly been added to the Resident Evil 2 remake.
If you’ve unfamiliar with Denuvo, it’s a form of DRM that is supposed to make it difficult to crack games. However, there are sometimes undesirable side effects that affect legitimate customers, something that has earned this particular DRM scheme a special form of ire from gamers who have had to deal with it. The Resident Evil 2 remake Denuvo DRM was enabled at launch, but it appears to have been removed, at least according to the game’s Steam Store page.
ALSO: Previously out-of-print Blade Runner adventure game releases on GOG
This archived link of the game’s Steam Store page from Friday, December 13, 2019, shows the following message:
Incorporates 3rd-party DRM: Denuvo Anti-tamper
5 different PC within a day machine activation limit
A cursory examination of the Steam Store page as it stands today shows that that message is no longer there, indicating that the Resident Evil 2 remake Denuvo DRM has likely been removed. The apparent change to the game’s DRM scheme was first spotted in a submission on the /r/pcgaming subreddit and can be further confirmed via SteamDB.
More recently, a new achievement has been added in advance of the upcoming Resident Evil 3 remake. Titled “Chasing Jill”, it requires that you read a letter that’s been left behind by her in Leon’s campaign. This and the removal of Denuvo have been part of several small updates that have taken place in the last few days.
We can’t say for sure why CAPCOM made the decision to remove Denuvo from the game, but at least it’s gone for good for now. As this YouTube video shows, the game performs slightly better without it. Let’s hope that CAPCOM goes with something else for DRM when the Resident Evil 3 remake launches on April 3, 2020.
